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Without some decent advances in battery technology I have strong doubts about electric planes being common for commercial flights. This is just based on the wh

Without some decent advances in battery technology I have strong doubts about electric planes being common for commercial flights. This is just based on the wh/weight ratio - lithium batteries are far heavier then oil based fuel per watt hour, and aviation is incredibly weight sensitive.

redisman 6y ago
More likely is a liquid fuel generated in a net zero carbon way.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
What matters is two things: range & cost (kwh, maintenance & overhauls). For that battery is becoming unbeatable on short hops and longer hops pretty soon after. Basically if it flies cheaper, battery is going to win in the air as well. R&D done by hundreds of battery tech companies will help improve the range of already flying (or soon to fly) electrical planes to the point where the range becomes useful to somebody; or at least useful enough that the cost argument becomes decisive. There are a few planes in the process of certification that have useful but modest range that use battery tech from a few years ago. The price of certification is that you have to pick some tech and stick with it for a few years. Successors to these planes with more recent tech would probably get about 1.5-2x the range. That's roughly what Bye Aviation and Eviation are talking about for successors to their current first generation tech. To be clear that's just swapping out tech they picked a few years ago for the kind of stuff that Tesla is talking about next month. The fallacy in this argument is believing we need to match A320s, Boeing 787s, etc. specs to be able to match their cost per passenger. This is simply not true. Big jets get benefits out of fuel efficiency because fuel is stupendously expensive. That's literally the only reason to spend hundreds of million on a super complicated piece of technology that burns tens of thousands of $ of fuel per trip. This is not the case for electrical planes. Bigger ones are actually less efficient and the smaller ones are ultimately going to be cheap enough that you can simply get more of those to match the passenger volume. At the list price of the Eviation Alice (900kwh, 700 miles, 9 passengers + 2 pilots) of 3.5M$, you can easily buy the 20 or so you'd need to transport the number of passengers you'd typically cram in a A320 and still save a bit of cash. Eviation is not likely to ship the kind of volumes to allow airlines to make that kind of choice any time soon. But think autonomous planes flying much further and cheaper in a few decades and you get the picture. At some point, A320s stop making sense. It's mostly a matter of volume production and certification. Battery tech improvements during the time it will take to do that will help but are far less essential and partially already a done deal. More is better though; or rather less is more in terms of cost.

redisman 6y ago

More likely is a liquid fuel generated in a net zero carbon way.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

What matters is two things: range & cost (kwh, maintenance & overhauls). For that battery is becoming unbeatable on short hops and longer hops pretty soon after. Basically if it flies cheaper, battery is going to win in the air as well. R&D done by hundreds of battery tech companies will help improve the range of already flying (or soon to fly) electrical planes to the point where the range becomes useful to somebody; or at least useful enough that the cost argument becomes decisive. There are a few planes in the process of certification that have useful but modest range that use battery tech from a few years ago. The price of certification is that you have to pick some tech and stick with it for a few years. Successors to these planes with more recent tech would probably get about 1.5-2x the range. That's roughly what Bye Aviation and Eviation are talking about for successors to their current first generation tech. To be clear that's just swapping out tech they picked a few years ago for the kind of stuff that Tesla is talking about next month. The fallacy in this argument is believing we need to match A320s, Boeing 787s, etc. specs to be able to match their cost per passenger. This is simply not true. Big jets get benefits out of fuel efficiency because fuel is stupendously expensive. That's literally the only reason to spend hundreds of million on a super complicated piece of technology that burns tens of thousands of $ of fuel per trip. This is not the case for electrical planes. Bigger ones are actually less efficient and the smaller ones are ultimately going to be cheap enough that you can simply get more of those to match the passenger volume. At the list price of the Eviation Alice (900kwh, 700 miles, 9 passengers + 2 pilots) of 3.5M$, you can easily buy the 20 or so you'd need to transport the number of passengers you'd typically cram in a A320 and still save a bit of cash. Eviation is not likely to ship the kind of volumes to allow airlines to make that kind of choice any time soon. But think autonomous planes flying much further and cheaper in a few decades and you get the picture. At some point, A320s stop making sense. It's mostly a matter of volume production and certification. Battery tech improvements during the time it will take to do that will help but are far less essential and partially already a done deal. More is better though; or rather less is more in terms of cost.