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No they don't, everything is already in place. In a few years the industry will catch up to Tesla and we'll see further price decreases across the board and mas
by martythemaniak 8y ago
No they don't, everything is already in place. In a few years the industry will catch up to Tesla and we'll see further price decreases across the board and mass EV adoption using current tech.
The battery will have to be reinvented for large planes to become electric, but that's a different discussion. Small planes will be able to ride off the EV battery tech to start the electrification of that whole industry.
- eptcyka 8y agoSmall planes will be able to ride off the EV battery tech for about 50 miles max.
- nickik 8y agoYeah but you can use the potential energy of the plane to produce power, just like car going down hill. Probably not gone work for small planes but it does have interesting advantages and new ways of thinking about planes.
- sokoloff 8y agoFor an airplane, there's no particular reason to turn potential energy into chemical energy for storage. Use the potential energy more directly to glide down to your approach point. Airplanes are typically "driven" (using positive power) all throughout the flight regime, including descent and approach.
- AshleyGrant 8y ago> Airplanes are typically "driven" (using positive power) all throughout the flight regime, including descent and approach. No, not really. Descent in most aircraft is typically done at idle. In jet powered aircraft, final approach will be done with the engines at some speed above idle, but that is to minimize spool-up time during a go-around, rather than because the aircraft needs the thrust.
- sokoloff 8y agoThe airplanes where electrics could possibly compete are piston powered and flown with power in the descent. Electrics don’t even compete well there yet (and may never as they are just as heavy on landing as takeoff). For airplanes with higher fuel burn (long haul jets), they benefit significantly from being lighter at the end of the flight. Even my piston airplane picks up about 5 knots in cruise at 1/4 tanks vs full. In jet descents, we rarely get what we prefer which is a slam dunk approach (much more fuel efficient to stay up high). Many times we’re down at 10K feet for 20+ miles because of sequencing. It’s only in the less busy airports where jets can regularly get slam dunk flight idle approaches. Even there, you probably want to use potential->kinetic rather than potential->chemical->(later) kinetic transfers because of unavoidable losses at each conversion. On the runway, using regen instead of thrust reversers or beta/reverse would be helpful, but that's a vanishingly small part of the overall flight regime.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago> Descent in most aircraft is typically done at idle. Went on my first flight in decades last year. The moment we started out descent really stands out to me, I remember the eerie-ness of hearing the engines slow down a ton all of a sudden and no one looking disturbed by it at all.
- mrguyorama 8y agoIdle turbo-fan engines produce enough thrust to taxi around an airport
- ams6110 8y agoEven so, the aircraft still needs to make a comfortable gradual descent. It must maintain lift as it descends, otherwise it will stall (aerodynamically) and fall out of the sky. The controlled descent takes most of the energy that you might think could be recovered by e.g. windmilling the electric fan motors as generators.
- AshleyGrant 8y agoI'm not sure what you're talking about with "must maintain lift as descends otherwise it will stall and fall out of the sky"... Wings stall when they exceed their critical angle of attack. A descent is inherently a low AoA maneuver. Heck, in pretty much all aircraft of decent performance, they have devices on the wings to help "spoil" the lift of the wings to help the plane descend more quickly. They're sometimes called speed brakes, sometimes called spoilers.
- kwhitefoot 8y agoHere is a quote from Pipistrel <https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/alpha-electro/overview> https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/alpha-electro/overview> Alpha Electro, the new 2-seat electric trainer: the greenest way of learning to fly! Performance of the Alpha Electro 2-seat electric trainer is tailored to the needs of flight schools. Short take-off distance, powerful 1000+ fpm climb, and endurance of one hour plus reserve. The Alpha Electro is optimized for traffic-pattern operations, where 13% of energy is recuperated on every approach, increasing endurance and at the same time enabling short-field landings.
- sokoloff 8y agoUsing propeller in the "beta" range for improved short-field operations and power recovery is a definite benefit to the Pipistrel. It's also an airplane that can't legally fly 95 miles/150 km and achieves those power recovery numbers only in pattern operations. I don't see that as representative or substitutive for even piston airplanes use cases.
- figers 8y agoI want this plane! why learn and deal with all the issues of an old school engine if you have this plane...
- sokoloff 8y agoWell, you might want to fly more than 100 miles...
- nickik 8y agoOf course you don't turn it into chemical energy, I'm talking about batteries. And it defiantly makes sense.
- sokoloff 8y ago> Of course you don't turn it into chemical energy, I'm talking about batteries. How do you think batteries store energy, if not chemically?
- outworlder 8y agoBy windmilling the propeller? This massively increases drag.
- aluskuiuc 8y agoAs a backup for engine failure that could be a substantially safer and cheaper alternative to a second engine.
- makerofspoons 8y agoWe could make aircraft carbon-neutral by using carbon capture and producing synthetic fuel from water, like what the US Navy is working on: https://phys.org/news/2017-10-nrl-patent-carbon-capture-devicea.html https://phys.org/news/2017-10-nrl-patent-carbon-capture-devi...
- martythemaniak 8y agoA "small" 737 will do about 50 miles, yeah. But by small I meant like small small: https://www.eviation.co/alice/ https://www.eviation.co/alice/
- kwhitefoot 8y agoSmall electric aeroplanes already exist and are in serial production. See https://www.tu.no/artikler/i-dag-skal-avinor-sjefen-og-samferdselsministeren-fly-elektrisk/440188 https://www.tu.no/artikler/i-dag-skal-avinor-sjefen-og-samfe..., https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/taurus-electro/overview https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/taurus-electro/overview.
- eptcyka 8y agoI stand corrected - last I checked, a production all-electric aircraft could do 15 minutes of flight time. It's nice to see a 4x improvement in the Pipistrel case. However, a 60 minute flight time is still 3 times smaller than the petrol counterpart.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoIt does seem inevitable now, VW have said their new electric car will be priced at about the same level as a Golf Diesel.
- TomMarius 8y agoYeah but it could also be Smart-sized...
- _ph_ 8y agoNo, it isn't. Prototypes have been shown already. It is roughly the outer size of the VW Golf, but offers larger interior space due to being designed to be electrical only, that means, the space of the engine can be saved: https://www.t-online.de/auto/elektromobilitaet/id_83655386/er-kommt-2019-vw-neo-aussen-xs-innen-xxl.html https://www.t-online.de/auto/elektromobilitaet/id_83655386/e...
- prostoalex 8y agoWhat's the range though? Considering the battery pack is the main cost contributor, it's always possible to introduce a lower sticker price by further compromising on range.
- clouddrover 8y ago330km to 550km depending on the battery size: https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/17/vw-id-range-and-more-info/ https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/17/vw-id-range-and-more-inf...
- Gravityloss 8y agoI think batteries with high investment but low operations cost, as well as self driving tech (comprehensive all solid state radars and lidars and cameras with sensor fusion can get quite expensive) fit the "mobility as service" or taxi / uber business model much better.
- b0bby_tabl3s 8y agoPlanes are small potatoes in the carbon footprint. Overseas shipping via cargo freighters...that is where your big players are. The fuel they use is the cause of most the worlds pollution.
- Nimelrian 8y agoLast time I checked, the extraction process for lithium, which is needed for the batteries, still has a heavy impact on the environment. This article mentions a cost of 500,000 gallons (almost 2 million litres) of water for a tonne of lithium. [1] Considering that as of now the most lithium is produced in desert regions of Bolivia and Chile, using what little water exists there in the first place may be detrimental to the population of these regions. Are there any news regarding new, more environment friendly mining processes? [1] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environmen...
- gameswithgo 8y agoextracting fossil fuels now also requires a ton of water.
- gleglegle 8y agoWater which is permanently and irreversibly contaminated, which is not the case for lithium extraction.
- adventured 8y agoYou can still recycle frack water for use over and over again, which is increasingly common. By necessity water recycling has become a big business in the fracking industry. "Sensing a chance for a big return, private-equity firms have invested more than $500 million into wastewater-disposal companies such as Solaris Water Midstream LLC, WaterBridge Resources LLC, Goodnight Midstream LLC and Oilfield Water Logistics LLC. There are roughly a dozen of these water-focused companies that analysts said could each be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. ... Some companies have a longer-term plan: recycling the wastewater to sell it back to drillers to reuse." https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-big-bet-in-fracking-water-1534930200 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-next-big-bet-in-fracking-wa... "The oil and gas industry is finding that less is more in the push to recycle water used in hydraulic fracturing. Slightly dirty water, it seems, does just as good a job as crystal clear when it comes to making an oil or gas well work. ... Until recently, many companies considered recycling too expensive or worried that using anything other than freshwater would reduce well output. But oil and gas companies are increasingly treating and reusing flowback water from wells, which unlike freshwater is very high in salt, with good results." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/analysis-fracking-waters-dirty-secret/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/analysis-fracking...
- stcredzero 8y agoIn a few years the industry will catch up to Tesla and we'll see further price decreases across the board and mass EV adoption using current tech. Can this catch up be quantified? There must have been a study of how entire industries ramp up infrastructure and develop economies of scale. This has happened in wartime many, many times, and well resourced countries had an interest in how fast these things could happen. (And how they could be prevented.)