7 ms·

These kind of startup excite me. More so than the "next killer app" or "look what we shoved AI into." Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's la

These kind of startup excite me. More so than the "next killer app" or "look what we shoved AI into." Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's lacking rail commutes and attack Europe's short flight market (which is already cheap). Now we need bigger planes or more frequent planes and the next startup to solve the energy needs.

torginus 1mo ago
Btw, I kind of changed my opinion on AI. Finally, everybody can build an app, so we no longer have to pretend the people who built one and made it big are some sort tech pioneers pushing humanity forward. Likewise, if you're a nerd, you can spend your free time building stuff you thought you would never get around to. Yes, AI as marketed is a bit of a snakeoil, but much more real and meaningful than crypto and social media. And math nerds finally can get a high paying job that's not about peddling ads or figuring out how to make a hedge fund even richer.
- danlugo92 1mo ago
  Rare soulful HN comment
- khriss 1mo ago
  Good for you.
infotainment 1mo ago
> Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's lacking rail commutes I'm not sure how building an electric aircraft would help with this. Are people going to suddenly switch to commuting by plane? Fixing America's commute problem is primarily an urban planning one (ie, putting all the homes nowhere near anything) and not an insufficient-electric-aircraft one.
- Waterluvian 1mo ago
  Could you imagine the (rather justified?) NIMBYism for all the airports required for commuter flight? If rail can’t be done, flight definitely won’t fly.
  - LastTrain 1mo ago
    Rejecting stupid ideas that are a net bad for the community isn’t NIMBYism
    - Waterluvian 1mo ago
      Yeah… Fair point! I’ve always perceived NIMBY as “we want the benefits but we want someone else to deal with the geographic price.” I bet we could find people who legitimately want commuter airports but just not near their house… wait… how would that even work?!
    - Spooky23 1mo ago
      Stupid in those that lack imagination. I happened to be in Plattsburgh the day of this flight, on my way to a fishing trip on the lake. They used that facility for the long former SAC base runway, but I think it’s also appropriate given the nature of the NY North country that an ultra low operating cost aircraft would see flight there. The death of most industry really hurt these regions, which are largely cut off from the prosperity of the normal economy. The ability to affordably link places like Plattsburgh or Watertown NY to the broader world. That region in particular prospered with rail links driven by iron and timber. 90 minute flights to places like NYC metro or Boston Metro would be transformative, and may even create new airline operating models.
  - _carbyau_ 1mo ago
    Curious, would electric flight be significantly quieter such that airport noise is significantly less of an issue? Or is the noise from turbulence through the air or something? I honestly would think they'd be minimising turbulence anyway for energy efficiency.
    - 1mo ago
- notyourav 1mo ago
  Not enough population density with single family homes. And if given a choice between living in a condo + better urban planning versus suburban housing, well. And then there is NY.
  - kmeisthax 1mo ago
    You can fix the density problem, at least on one end, with park-and-ride lots; every successful commuter / regional[3] rail service puts parking next to the suburban train stations. You just need a dense corridor for people to go to. For people commuting from suburb to suburb you put bus connections at the train station. Buses are lower capacity but cheaper to purchase and operate so you can run a bunch of them in low density[0] for improved coverage. If demand is really bad[1] you create a "microtransit zone" - i.e. offer shuttle taxi service to the rider's final destination. What I'm describing is basically how UTA's FrontRunner commuter rail service works; but it's not materially different from, say, the NY MTA's LIRR or MNR besides the larger scale of the NY systems and the fact that New York is weirdly bad at buses. For various reasons America has actually done decently well at retaining the commuter rail systems that worked and rebuilding the ones that got scrapped. This is primarily because these systems tend to be small-scale enough that state & local governments can fund them with their own money and the meager amount of FTA funds available. The comment you replied to confused "rail commute" with "commuter rail"; but the grandparent was specifically talking about intercity travel. Here is where America is actually malincompetent[2] at building anything. Our primary intercity rail operator, Amtrak, was built as a last-ditch service preservation measure as railroads were bleeding money on passenger traffic. It doesn't own most of the rail it operates on, and that rail has been actively getting worse as Class I railroads have been destroying their own infrastructure (especially Union Pacific). The two-and-a-half attempts at building high-speed services in the US have all been various flavors of bad: 1. The most successful, the Acela, works primarily because Amtrak owns most of the corridor. Even then, it barely gets up to speed because "high speed[4]" (80+ mph) trains have to be grade-separated in the US, which is expensive, and the Acela was sold on the promise of incremental upgrades that haven't really panned out 2. BrightLine partnered with a freight railroad that wanted to get back into the passenger market, and it's actually operating at "higher speed[4]", but it's also bleeding money. They have a second route planned from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, but it's a project they bought out because it was... also bleeding money. 3. California wanted to build their own Acela, with blackjack and hookers, and wound up massively overselling it to voters. At least in terms of how much it would cost and how quickly it could be built. They bet the farm on FTA funds that got impounded the moment Trump retook office. I have no idea if this will ever happen. You'll notice I never mentioned population density, and that's because it doesn't matter for intercity travel at all. The vast majority of flyers get a taxi to the airport and a rental car at their destination, and it still works out anyway. The only difference to those kinds of travelers between a train and a plane is time and whether or not they have to take their shoes off before boarding the vehicle. [0] Or, if you're New York, you run way too many of them through medium and high density areas that really SHOULD have a subway but don't anyway build QueensLink and NO WAY WITH QUEENSWAY [1] From a customer perspective, anything less frequent than an every 30 minutes bus probably could be served better with on-demand taxis. [2] Malicious? Incompetent? Why not both! [3] I am going to use "commuter rail" to refer to both commuter and regional rail systems as they are roughly the same scale. The difference comes down to scheduling patterns: commuter rail is scheduled around 9-to-5 rush hour traffic while regional rail is built to be more broadly useful. [4] Strictly speaking, "high speed rail" means 125mph or higher and anything less is conventional speed. Rail just was already pretty fast even before Japan decided to make really fast trains.
- waterTanuki 1mo ago
  It's clearly marketed for remote communities with little to no connecting infrastructure. Think Alaskan wilderness or Hawaiian island hopping. This isn't for getting from LA to Denver for skiing.
  - mgerdts 1mo ago
    But it may be for getting from Denver to Breckenridge or Winter Park. A flight to bypass Berthoud Pass in the winter seems quite attractive. More likely, this replaces the turboprop or commuter jet from Colorado Springs to Denver to catch the connecting fright to any other major airport.
  - enquirewithin 1mo ago
    An aircraft like this can be used two or three times a day, while spending the rest of the time charging. A piston or turbine powered aircraft can run all day.
    - Toutouxc 1mo ago
      Even Ryanair turnarounds take like 30 minutes. A bit more than that and you can charge the plane comfortably. Fueling bigger planes is quite the ceremony.
    - IAmBroom 1mo ago
      Making the battery replaceable by heavy equipment would drop the turnaround time for these. The planes fly regular routes (mostly), and could store a few extra batteries at their regular destinations. Odd added benefit: the potential ability to jettison a huge part of the weight in extreme emergencies to increase flying time by the backup ICE system.
- MobiusHorizons 1mo ago
  I think you could make a case for that, especially when landing in water. Quite a few dense urban areas people might need to get to have water nearby suitable for landing seaplanes. I think you would end up creating communities further from the urban areas dedicated to this mode of transport. It’s definitely not a simple or guaranteed idea, but it is actually feasible politically and technically.
  - 33MHz-i486 1mo ago
    seaplanes aren’t more broadly used because they don’t have a good safety profile.
- alkonaut 1mo ago
  I don't think it's the daily work commute being solved. More weekly meeting in Cleveland for someone who works in Chicago. Which today is a 5h one way drive and a hotel stay.
kmeisthax 1mo ago
USA's lacking rail commutes come down to the fact that America's leaders made the deliberate decision to destroy its own rail network and force people onto planes. The electric range of this aircraft is 125 miles[0], which is at the low end of the range where conventional intercity rail is time-competitive with the plane. A bullet train would absolutely smoke this. tl;dr I have a few qualms with this app[1]. Now, this thing might take off (pun intended) anyway, for one simple reason: a theoretically faster train does not compete with it if it doesn't exist. The midwest and west are chock full of towns whose rail connections were either abandoned or never existed in the first place, but have regional airports. This thing would be perfect to service feeder flights from hub airports to regionals or as a charter plane. That being said I wouldn't expect this to revolutionize air travel. You're still going to be packed into a sardine can and made to pay extra for the privilege of bringing a reasonable amount of toiletries with you. And all the long-haul flights are still going to be using fossil fuels because the energy density of batteries sucks. But still, I'd rather have this than 10 million AI companies. [0] 500 miles for hybrid operation on SAF, because the FAA would not certify a plane with such a small range [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- idiotsecant 1mo ago
  I'm not sure the Midwest is the intended target, here. I think it's more suited to small, frequent trips like island hopping or trips to remote settlements.
  - mgerdts 1mo ago
    It seems like a great option to get between MSN, MKE, or RFD and ORD. Maybe even an interesting connector between MDW and ORD. The key thing question is whether smaller more frequent flights eat up too much runway time to be economical.
- QuantumNoodle 1mo ago
  I'm rooting for electric planes not because I prefer them over rail but bc I share your disappointment and pessimism about American railway. I much rather take a train but when Amtrak NYC<->DC costs as more than a plane, leaves from the same destination, and takes hours longer then flying becomes preferable. There are many route similar to this. Only legup that Amtrak has is frequency. If planes become cheaper hopefully airlines will afford more of them and offer more frequent flights. I dream of a constant stream of aircraft flying between destinations. But never underestimate greed, airlines will probably reap the cut costs and charge customer the same as before :/
brnt 1mo ago
I don't think 30 pax airplanes are competing with 500 pax high speed trains. 125 mile range is also far from being suitable for all <2 hr flights. I don't think there are many sub 125 mile connections either. Love to see this work out. 100 pax and 500 mile (electricity) range minimum is where I see it having a (good!) chance for mainstream.
thrance 1mo ago
Realistically, you can't replace the entire global fleet on any reasonable timescale. And when climate change starts being such a problem that even politicians can't ignore it anymore, I think we'll have much bigger fish to fry than building electric planes. Flying is a luxury, after all. Now, I think this is very neat, but I doubt we'll ever set foot on an electric plane this century.

torginus 1mo ago

Btw, I kind of changed my opinion on AI. Finally, everybody can build an app, so we no longer have to pretend the people who built one and made it big are some sort tech pioneers pushing humanity forward. Likewise, if you're a nerd, you can spend your free time building stuff you thought you would never get around to. Yes, AI as marketed is a bit of a snakeoil, but much more real and meaningful than crypto and social media. And math nerds finally can get a high paying job that's not about peddling ads or figuring out how to make a hedge fund even richer.

danlugo92 1mo ago
Rare soulful HN comment
khriss 1mo ago
Good for you.

infotainment 1mo ago

> Cheap electric transportation can finally offset USA's lacking rail commutes I'm not sure how building an electric aircraft would help with this. Are people going to suddenly switch to commuting by plane? Fixing America's commute problem is primarily an urban planning one (ie, putting all the homes nowhere near anything) and not an insufficient-electric-aircraft one.

Waterluvian 1mo ago
Could you imagine the (rather justified?) NIMBYism for all the airports required for commuter flight? If rail can’t be done, flight definitely won’t fly.
- LastTrain 1mo ago
  Rejecting stupid ideas that are a net bad for the community isn’t NIMBYism
  - Waterluvian 1mo ago
    Yeah… Fair point! I’ve always perceived NIMBY as “we want the benefits but we want someone else to deal with the geographic price.” I bet we could find people who legitimately want commuter airports but just not near their house… wait… how would that even work?!
  - Spooky23 1mo ago
    Stupid in those that lack imagination. I happened to be in Plattsburgh the day of this flight, on my way to a fishing trip on the lake. They used that facility for the long former SAC base runway, but I think it’s also appropriate given the nature of the NY North country that an ultra low operating cost aircraft would see flight there. The death of most industry really hurt these regions, which are largely cut off from the prosperity of the normal economy. The ability to affordably link places like Plattsburgh or Watertown NY to the broader world. That region in particular prospered with rail links driven by iron and timber. 90 minute flights to places like NYC metro or Boston Metro would be transformative, and may even create new airline operating models.
- _carbyau_ 1mo ago
  Curious, would electric flight be significantly quieter such that airport noise is significantly less of an issue? Or is the noise from turbulence through the air or something? I honestly would think they'd be minimising turbulence anyway for energy efficiency.
  - 1mo ago
notyourav 1mo ago
Not enough population density with single family homes. And if given a choice between living in a condo + better urban planning versus suburban housing, well. And then there is NY.
- kmeisthax 1mo ago
  You can fix the density problem, at least on one end, with park-and-ride lots; every successful commuter / regional[3] rail service puts parking next to the suburban train stations. You just need a dense corridor for people to go to. For people commuting from suburb to suburb you put bus connections at the train station. Buses are lower capacity but cheaper to purchase and operate so you can run a bunch of them in low density[0] for improved coverage. If demand is really bad[1] you create a "microtransit zone" - i.e. offer shuttle taxi service to the rider's final destination. What I'm describing is basically how UTA's FrontRunner commuter rail service works; but it's not materially different from, say, the NY MTA's LIRR or MNR besides the larger scale of the NY systems and the fact that New York is weirdly bad at buses. For various reasons America has actually done decently well at retaining the commuter rail systems that worked and rebuilding the ones that got scrapped. This is primarily because these systems tend to be small-scale enough that state & local governments can fund them with their own money and the meager amount of FTA funds available. The comment you replied to confused "rail commute" with "commuter rail"; but the grandparent was specifically talking about intercity travel. Here is where America is actually malincompetent[2] at building anything. Our primary intercity rail operator, Amtrak, was built as a last-ditch service preservation measure as railroads were bleeding money on passenger traffic. It doesn't own most of the rail it operates on, and that rail has been actively getting worse as Class I railroads have been destroying their own infrastructure (especially Union Pacific). The two-and-a-half attempts at building high-speed services in the US have all been various flavors of bad: 1. The most successful, the Acela, works primarily because Amtrak owns most of the corridor. Even then, it barely gets up to speed because "high speed[4]" (80+ mph) trains have to be grade-separated in the US, which is expensive, and the Acela was sold on the promise of incremental upgrades that haven't really panned out 2. BrightLine partnered with a freight railroad that wanted to get back into the passenger market, and it's actually operating at "higher speed[4]", but it's also bleeding money. They have a second route planned from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, but it's a project they bought out because it was... also bleeding money. 3. California wanted to build their own Acela, with blackjack and hookers, and wound up massively overselling it to voters. At least in terms of how much it would cost and how quickly it could be built. They bet the farm on FTA funds that got impounded the moment Trump retook office. I have no idea if this will ever happen. You'll notice I never mentioned population density, and that's because it doesn't matter for intercity travel at all. The vast majority of flyers get a taxi to the airport and a rental car at their destination, and it still works out anyway. The only difference to those kinds of travelers between a train and a plane is time and whether or not they have to take their shoes off before boarding the vehicle. [0] Or, if you're New York, you run way too many of them through medium and high density areas that really SHOULD have a subway but don't anyway build QueensLink and NO WAY WITH QUEENSWAY [1] From a customer perspective, anything less frequent than an every 30 minutes bus probably could be served better with on-demand taxis. [2] Malicious? Incompetent? Why not both! [3] I am going to use "commuter rail" to refer to both commuter and regional rail systems as they are roughly the same scale. The difference comes down to scheduling patterns: commuter rail is scheduled around 9-to-5 rush hour traffic while regional rail is built to be more broadly useful. [4] Strictly speaking, "high speed rail" means 125mph or higher and anything less is conventional speed. Rail just was already pretty fast even before Japan decided to make really fast trains.
waterTanuki 1mo ago
It's clearly marketed for remote communities with little to no connecting infrastructure. Think Alaskan wilderness or Hawaiian island hopping. This isn't for getting from LA to Denver for skiing.
- mgerdts 1mo ago
  But it may be for getting from Denver to Breckenridge or Winter Park. A flight to bypass Berthoud Pass in the winter seems quite attractive. More likely, this replaces the turboprop or commuter jet from Colorado Springs to Denver to catch the connecting fright to any other major airport.
- enquirewithin 1mo ago
  An aircraft like this can be used two or three times a day, while spending the rest of the time charging. A piston or turbine powered aircraft can run all day.
  - Toutouxc 1mo ago
    Even Ryanair turnarounds take like 30 minutes. A bit more than that and you can charge the plane comfortably. Fueling bigger planes is quite the ceremony.
  - IAmBroom 1mo ago
    Making the battery replaceable by heavy equipment would drop the turnaround time for these. The planes fly regular routes (mostly), and could store a few extra batteries at their regular destinations. Odd added benefit: the potential ability to jettison a huge part of the weight in extreme emergencies to increase flying time by the backup ICE system.
MobiusHorizons 1mo ago
I think you could make a case for that, especially when landing in water. Quite a few dense urban areas people might need to get to have water nearby suitable for landing seaplanes. I think you would end up creating communities further from the urban areas dedicated to this mode of transport. It’s definitely not a simple or guaranteed idea, but it is actually feasible politically and technically.
- 33MHz-i486 1mo ago
  seaplanes aren’t more broadly used because they don’t have a good safety profile.
alkonaut 1mo ago
I don't think it's the daily work commute being solved. More weekly meeting in Cleveland for someone who works in Chicago. Which today is a 5h one way drive and a hotel stay.

kmeisthax 1mo ago

USA's lacking rail commutes come down to the fact that America's leaders made the deliberate decision to destroy its own rail network and force people onto planes. The electric range of this aircraft is 125 miles[0], which is at the low end of the range where conventional intercity rail is time-competitive with the plane. A bullet train would absolutely smoke this. tl;dr I have a few qualms with this app[1]. Now, this thing might take off (pun intended) anyway, for one simple reason: a theoretically faster train does not compete with it if it doesn't exist. The midwest and west are chock full of towns whose rail connections were either abandoned or never existed in the first place, but have regional airports. This thing would be perfect to service feeder flights from hub airports to regionals or as a charter plane. That being said I wouldn't expect this to revolutionize air travel. You're still going to be packed into a sardine can and made to pay extra for the privilege of bringing a reasonable amount of toiletries with you. And all the long-haul flights are still going to be using fossil fuels because the energy density of batteries sucks. But still, I'd rather have this than 10 million AI companies. [0] 500 miles for hybrid operation on SAF, because the FAA would not certify a plane with such a small range [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

idiotsecant 1mo ago
I'm not sure the Midwest is the intended target, here. I think it's more suited to small, frequent trips like island hopping or trips to remote settlements.
- mgerdts 1mo ago
  It seems like a great option to get between MSN, MKE, or RFD and ORD. Maybe even an interesting connector between MDW and ORD. The key thing question is whether smaller more frequent flights eat up too much runway time to be economical.
QuantumNoodle 1mo ago
I'm rooting for electric planes not because I prefer them over rail but bc I share your disappointment and pessimism about American railway. I much rather take a train but when Amtrak NYC<->DC costs as more than a plane, leaves from the same destination, and takes hours longer then flying becomes preferable. There are many route similar to this. Only legup that Amtrak has is frequency. If planes become cheaper hopefully airlines will afford more of them and offer more frequent flights. I dream of a constant stream of aircraft flying between destinations. But never underestimate greed, airlines will probably reap the cut costs and charge customer the same as before :/

brnt 1mo ago

I don't think 30 pax airplanes are competing with 500 pax high speed trains. 125 mile range is also far from being suitable for all <2 hr flights. I don't think there are many sub 125 mile connections either. Love to see this work out. 100 pax and 500 mile (electricity) range minimum is where I see it having a (good!) chance for mainstream.

thrance 1mo ago

Realistically, you can't replace the entire global fleet on any reasonable timescale. And when climate change starts being such a problem that even politicians can't ignore it anymore, I think we'll have much bigger fish to fry than building electric planes. Flying is a luxury, after all. Now, I think this is very neat, but I doubt we'll ever set foot on an electric plane this century.