The X1 aircraft is comparable in size to a small regional airliner and can achieve a maximum takeoff weight exceeding 25,000 pounds with the help of four wing-mounted electric motors. The battery-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power during the maiden flight.
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at this point, the obstacles to electrification are not technical, the obstacles are in the white house
And they smell terrible.
Shitstacles.
@betanumerus@lemmy.ca for short distances that would be better served by a train.
That is not an option for islands or sometimes a train has to go the long way around, due to large bodies of water. Korea - Japan or something like Greece - southern Italy are interesting flights for example.
you can’t cover the ground with rails. air travel does have uses trains cannot meet.
@rimu@piefed.social I specified short distances. By the take you get to the airport an hour early the train has covered a fairly long distance. Nobody wants to live near an airport as airplanes are inherently noisy, but trains are quiet.
With small airplanes, you get to choose departure time. Electric airplanes can make this affordable to more people.
@rimu@piefed.social Only if you personally own the airplane and either are the pilot, or can afford to pay the pilot. Most pilots are not sole owners their airplane and only get to choose departure time if there is one available when they want to go (there are many ways to rent or be part owners of an airplane.)
There are commercial small airplane services with various business models. All the affordable ones are just small airlines: they run scheduled flights and you book a seat (which sell out) in advance for when the run happens.
I don’t think most people will ever find small airplanes affordable. I’m paying $600/month (plus insurance and taxes) for the privilege of having a car that I can use on demand - even though I normally ride my bike, this is the price I need to pay to ensure I can get to some of the more distant places in my city. I do not have a runway in my backyard so having an airplane doesn’t save me from having to also have that car payment to get to the airport (even if I did have a runway, most of my friends do not). Which is to say assuming they can get the cost of a used airplane down to a used car it still is a large expense that I doubt most people could afford.
Electric aircrafts can be cheaper to run, and therefore available to more people. This relationship is quite simple and straightforward.
Sure they can be cheaper. However they are still going to be expensive. I doubt they will ever get to car costs. (A 50 year old Cesna will still sell for more than $50k). Cheaper fuel is useful, but fuel and maintenance is only a small part of the cost of owning an airplane. You still need airports and pilots - both of which are somewhat costly. Farmers can land in a field - but most of us don’t have that much space. Even the rich tend to not have that much space around their mansions (they might around the second house in the country). You can get a pilots license, but it is a lot of training and most people won’t.
So pedantically you are correct. A few people who want a regular airplane but are just far enough out on the margins will be able to afford this. A few routes that commercial airlines can’t quiet cover now become viable. However for the vast majority I don’t see this as making any difference.
Have you lived next to a track where trains travel frequently? The noise is mostly ok, however the vibrations are not. I would not live closer than 1 km or so from the track, otherwise you feel the house vibrate every time a train passes. Good luck if the trains pass each hour, especially during the nights.
Airports are worse tho, I’ll give you that.
It the make a small airport electrics only, the airport can be right inside the city.
I have spent my entire childhood in a house at a mere 125m away from the train tracks, with trains passing 8 times per hour (excl. freight which also passes every now and then). You could faintly hear them if you were in the garden, but never in a bothersome way. I have not once felt anything vibrate from a passing train. Maybe this is different for poorly built houses? But it really shouldn’t be an issue.
Could be that the house or ground type is different. I also lived there for only a few months, which could be too short to get used to it. Would not choose to live close to frequently used tracks again though.
I would think that house was from the cheaper end though, which could explain things.
@rimu@piefed.social @betanumerus@lemmy.ca
That is very much a it depends. Freight trains are like that, as are passenger trains on steel bridges, or anything with a large diesel engine. However we know how to make tracks that are not like that. Concrete bridges dampen vibration well. Elective EMUs are also much quieter.
This is true. Though some areas with harsh terrain will benefit from this
Only poors take trains
no, the poors drive cars and sit in traffic for hours, it’s why they’re poor.
@fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com only in places with terrible trains. Rich people the world over take trains when they are good. A lot of the rich in places like NYC or Tokyo take trains. Of course the rich have options, some so show off with limos and the like, but when they want to blend in the train works.
In London people moan about public transport being awful, but plenty of rich people and celebrities take the train anyway. There was a newspaper article a few years ago about a court case that finished and both parties and their lawyers and the judge all ran into each other at the train station again.
i still can’t afford a train cabin
@rimu@piefed.social @fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com
A train cabin is significantly cheaper than an airplane.
For me personally, not including the travel to Chicago, it would be 225USD for a less than 5 hour flight from Chicago to Seattle, while the smallest cabin (“roomette”) on an Amtrak would cost 1400USD and take over 46 hours. Even the coach is 280USD.
Edit: I’m seeing the bit about short trips now; I thought that the comment I was replying to was about travel in general. Chicago to Detroit would only be 35USD for ~6h on Amtrak coach (no cabin offered), flight price would be the same as Chicago-Seattle. Train would be cheaper in this case, though without a cabin.
It only has a 125 mile range. The obstacle is people not reading the article.
This plane has a max range of 125 miles. What’s the point. It’s faster and easier to drive 2 hours in an EV. You spend more than 2 hours just fucking around the airport.
Batteries get better all the time. In 10 years things could be quite different.
When there is a road to where you are planning to go. But islands or remote areas exist.
But in principle, I agree with you. With such a short range, it will probably not be sold by the millions ;)
Curious how much fuel would have cost for a comparable flight. Could this make short flights significantly cheaper than they are currently? Or open up the possibility of flying with many short hops in some cases.
A 4-seat Cessna 172 burns 8 gallons of 100LL fuel per hour, so 4 gallons in 30 minutes. That fuel costs $7 per gallon at best. 4 gallons times $7 means it costs $28 for 30 minutes. That’s roughly $1 per minute for the lightest aircrafts.
Some fuels are cheaper but they also get burned at a higher rate, so exact numbers depend on many variables.
@rimu@piefed.social pilots are expensive, and airplanes are also expensive to maintain- unless you skip the regular maintenance. This might be a little cheaper, but it still won’t enable short flights for anyone not already rich.
The electric engines are easier to maintain than jet engines. Far less parts, especially not having to deal with fuel pumps and all the safety issues around fuel storage. Not having to withstand the huge temperature differential between the fuel combusion and the high altitude air probably helps too.
Pretty sure fuel is still a fairly big part of the cost of flying. I wonder how the maintenance compares on an electric plane engine compared to jets too.
Planes are already cheaper than other options for short distances anyway, going electric would be great for that.
If you skip the plane and go with a drone style you can drop all the complex hydraulics and just have a dead simple electric motor. A large version with a flying wing shape could work well.
@rimu@piefed.social @HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
Those are vastly less efficient than a wing. They are great for slow speed and pin point accuracy at short range, which rarely matters.
If it works you can have a range extender medium size drone at the start and finish for mid air refueling by cable.
@rimu@piefed.social @HerbGrower@slrpnk.net maybe, but that is complex logistics.
Yeah, that sounds incredibly complex compared to just landing and switching plane or recharging.
I see, the economics will soon take over!
