I think about ways that electric aircraft may be different. The pros/cons don’t really apply much. Gravity fed fuel is irrelevant for battery aircraft. The mo

I think about ways that electric aircraft may be different. The pros/cons don’t really apply much. Gravity fed fuel is irrelevant for battery aircraft. The motors typically don’t require as much service (if direct drive, at least). The reliability of electric motors is kind of a new variable as in principle they could be more reliable (or the failures might occur in other places than the motor), and also there’s much less incentive to keep the number of motors to just 2 (although that may be a good idea anyway), and coaxial motors is also something you can do with electric aircraft but isn’t practical for jets. Also, the most efficient wings are high aspect ratio, so you wouldn’t even want to put the batteries/fuel in there (well, maybe a little bit). Also, simplifying the wing topology makes it easier to maintain laminar flow (for a few reasons). Then again, this article is primarily about large jets for long haul international travel, which will be one of the last areas to electrify. My daydream most efficient electric aircraft is a sailplane-like vehicle with extremely long wings, maybe a v-tail with a coaxial pusher dual motor propulsor. That way, you’re ingesting air that has been slowed by skin friction already, giving you an efficiency advantage (although it can be tricky to pull this off). And since propellers are more efficient for Mach 0.5 propulsion (or even transonic, etc), it’s good to put the loud propeller in the rear, far from the passengers.