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I don't believe there is technology even on the horizon which would make this remotely feasible. The best of electric aircraft at the moment can fly for 90 minu

I don't believe there is technology even on the horizon which would make this remotely feasible. The best of electric aircraft at the moment can fly for 90 minutes carrying two people; allegedly aimed at the flight training market. Except that gives it about enough endurance for a single lesson and it'd then need to be recharged for 3-4 hours before it could fly again. Compare this to a Rotax powered trainer which burns ~15 litres of fuel an hour and can be refuelled in 5 minutes.

0xffff2 7y ago
You are correct. There are people working on this, but the best estimates I've seen are that hybrid-electric airliners are ~30-40 years from commercialization and fully electric simply isn't feasible without a fundamental breakthrough in the battery energy-density space.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Even hybrids only make sense to me in the context of aircraft having the ability to taxi using electric motors, only starting their engines at the holding point (turbine engines burn a significant amount of fuel even at idle). I believe Airbus have a patent on this idea. Otherwise turbine engines are run close to their designed maximum continuous thrust for the majority of a flight. It's not like a car where they only need ~20% of their maximum power in cruise.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I can only repeat what I've seen in presentations. (I'm a software engineer at an aerospace research organization.) One specific area that I recall being investigated is the ability to decouple power and thrust. That is, convert some of the power generated by the existing turbines into electricity and use that to drive an electric fan in (a) non-traditional location(s). This can have complex aerodynamic interactions that I don't really understand in detail, but the take-away is that it can reduce drag and thus overall energy required for a given flight.

0xffff2 7y ago

You are correct. There are people working on this, but the best estimates I've seen are that hybrid-electric airliners are ~30-40 years from commercialization and fully electric simply isn't feasible without a fundamental breakthrough in the battery energy-density space.

VBprogrammer 7y ago
Even hybrids only make sense to me in the context of aircraft having the ability to taxi using electric motors, only starting their engines at the holding point (turbine engines burn a significant amount of fuel even at idle). I believe Airbus have a patent on this idea. Otherwise turbine engines are run close to their designed maximum continuous thrust for the majority of a flight. It's not like a car where they only need ~20% of their maximum power in cruise.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I can only repeat what I've seen in presentations. (I'm a software engineer at an aerospace research organization.) One specific area that I recall being investigated is the ability to decouple power and thrust. That is, convert some of the power generated by the existing turbines into electricity and use that to drive an electric fan in (a) non-traditional location(s). This can have complex aerodynamic interactions that I don't really understand in detail, but the take-away is that it can reduce drag and thus overall energy required for a given flight.