First electric passenger plane lands at JFK in milestone flight. Travels 110 km costing $8 in fuel.
First electric passenger plane lands at JFK in milestone flight
4 people, 70 miles in 35 minutes. Vertical takeoffs in the works. $8 in fuel costs. Are we finally getting close the what the Jetson’s envisioned 60 years ago?
They envisioned travelling on the Autobahn?
Those were Kraftwerk
No, that mostly just means the ultra wealthy get this and no one else. Maybe it'll be useful for some other stuff, like critical organ deliveries or something too, but I'm skeptical it does us any good. I'd also guess that being electric is only because it's quiter, so they can fly into places with noise ordnances or something too, but maybe that's too cynical.
Fuck fox news.
Do not use the fucking terrorists for a source under any circumstances.
110km = 68 miles (or about one hour of car travel on many US interstate highways)
Something something Americans will do anything but travel by train for short distances.
Edit: apparently y'all are unfamiliar with the meme, and as such taking my comment at 100% sincerity instead of the intended 38%. Also I'm an American myself, so the only intended disrespect was of the self-depreciating variety.
You ever tried to travel by train here? Long or short distance. The rail infrastructure isn't there
By design, not by requirement. It used to be there.
I haven't read this article yet, but I did recently read about electric planes. There are a shockingly large percentage of flights in the US (and probably the world) that are that short. Not a percentage of passengers, but percentage of flights. Lots of islands that don't have a routine ferry service, or small rural communities in places like Alaska that may be separated from the road system by a mountain range.
Those small communities couldn't support constant rail (or ferry) service, so small planes are actually the most economical way to serve them. Even places like Hawaii could use electric planes to good effect.
The first I read about them was for flights to Nantucket Island, which absolutely gets ferry service, but it's also where a lot of rich people have homes, and they are going to fly. https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/cape-air-to-buy-electric-planes
Well it did say it was a milestone flight, as well as 68 miles not necessarily meaning on a straight road you could drive 70mph on.
There are a lot of good arguments for rail or other means of transportation, but the travel volume vs the infrastructure required are vastly different in the US than in many parts of Europe/Asia. Think 'lots of medium distance low volume routes' that aren't economically feasible since there are existing routes. If you went through the effort of building a train route, you would have to charge so much per person to make it pay for itself that no one could afford it and they would take other methods.
I'm Europe, there seem to be enough 'short, high volume routes' that are economically feasible that considering adding other legs to them make sense, or they just already work.
There's plenty of places where an electric shorter range plane makes sense. Alaska and Australia come to mind immediately.
have you seen the state of their rail system? Americans might be dumb but they're not fucking stupid.
Me when converting Mile to KM :)
Me when converting KM to Mile >:(
Havent read the article yet, but I recall reading that with modern battery architecture electric planes were physically impossible. Is this plane not using lithium ion, or was I mistaken? It wasnt an issue of the tech not being ready yet, moreso that lithium ion simply could not achieve an energy density to weight ratio that was needed.
Edit: the article does not say.
Second edit: how far off are we from either not having power storage or only minimal power storage and then we just beam energy to the plane?
It’s absolutely not impossible. Airplanes are more efficient than drones, and efficiency grows with scale. Drones fly. Of course an airplane can do the same.
The problem is one of speed and range. The best form of propulsion we have for electric airplanes is the propeller, which has a lower top speed potential than a turbofan. The energy density of batteries is also lower.
Realistically, an electric airplane will have reduced range and speed compared to a modern jet.
I think it is more specifically electric planes as large as commercial airline passenger planes are impossible. It has a lot to do with battery mass to energy content ratio. Kerosine is about 46.4 MJ (megajoules) per kilogram. Lithium-air batteries, for example, only have about 6.12 MJ/kg.
So, that means you need 7 times as much battery (in mass) to have the same energy content of kerosine fuel. Naively, we can maybe say that means electric planes only have 1/6 of the range of an equivalent kerosine plane.[^]
Interestingly, lithium-air batteries theoretically have the largest possible energy density for any battery at 40.1 MJ/kg.
^ The calculations are really basic and probably only slightly reflect reality (since there are many other important factors. For example, Hydrogen has a lot more energy per kilogram than kerosine, but because it is much less dense, it has much less energy per m^3 than kerosine. This has made hydrogen gas very impractical for either internal-combustion engines, or planes), but I think it gives an idea of what the problem is.
There are a lot of other factors. For example, electric motors with propellers are far more efficient than turbofans
A propeller driven airplane will also be substantially slower than a turbofan one, allowing for unswept wings and better aerodynamic efficiency
In reality, battery powered passenger planes aren’t impossible but they will definitely have a shorter range and slower speed. They are realistically only suited for regional routes.
Havent read the article yet, but I recall reading that with modern battery architecture electric planes were physically impossible.
Something something bumblebees.
My dad was an apiarist, bee keeper, and educator.
One of may favourite bee anatomy facts is that the spots on their hind legs that collects pollen....is called Pollen Pants. Love it. Fucking amazing.
Assuming $8 for energy, let’s say $0.12/kWh you’re looking at 64kWH. That’s like 1kWh/mi, which is pretty fucking bad. There’s no way they’re scaling this up, because the battery has to weigh at least 1 Ton. So to double the distance you’d need to initially add double the battery, but that’s equivalent of adding 8 fat fucking Americanos to the payload, there by reducing the distance you can travel.
Meanwhile a Cessna Jet gets like 27/mi per gallon. So 2.5 gallons of fuel gets the same travel distance, and that only weighs like 20lbs.
Also, haven’t looked lately, but last I remembered, jet fuel was like $11/gal.
Kill it with fire!
-GOP
The journey to JFK airport lasted 45 minutes and included a pilot and four people, including Matt Koscal, President of Republic Airways, and Rob Wiesenthal, CEO of Blade Air Mobility.
It would be great if the article mentioned how it worked. Is this just Lithium Ion again? Or is it some new material e.g the whole airplane is made of a meta-material that turns the entire frame into a battery?
Well that's one place we can agree anyway, trial and error are very valuable tools, they just need to be weilded carefully and not considered an error too soon. That makes it risky though.
I know i come of as pessimistic, and by a lot of measures i am, but usually only in comparison to the dismissive or condescending attitudes many people seem to have on the subject. Just build trains, duh... They work here, just do it there!
The backlash to poorly thought it arguments are usually people doubling down on their argument in the other direction, so I'd prefer to temper optimism and encourage actual conversation. Even if i may have trouble with that second part :)
Non-shitty source: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2025/june/05/first-passengers-board-new-electric-aircraft
(No offense op)
Yes offense, op. Fuck fox news, without exception?