A historic electric airplane flight landed at JFK with passengers, marking a milestone as Beta Technologies demonstrates the practicality and efficiency of electric air travel.
Another issue is batteries don’t change (significantly) in mass during flight. Most airliners have greater takeoff weight than landing weight, because after flying a jet for a few hours you’re going to burn many tons of fuel. Batteries don’t do that, so you’d have to have an airplane capable of landing at it’s MTOW.
Also planes tend to increase their cruising altitude as weight decreases, it’s more efficient due to the lower air resistance. Electric motors would be more efficient across a wider range of conditions than turbo fans though.
That’s all moot though, because you must don’t have the energy density for long haul flights in batteries. They’re trying to make air taxis happen again. They were talking up air taxis before 9/11, and they never really happened. And back then they were talking about using existing aircraft driven by conventional gasoline or jet fuel. Now we’re talking about new airframes with battery electric power.
Another issue is batteries don’t change (significantly) in mass during flight. Most airliners have greater takeoff weight than landing weight, because after flying a jet for a few hours you’re going to burn many tons of fuel. Batteries don’t do that, so you’d have to have an airplane capable of landing at it’s MTOW.
Also planes tend to increase their cruising altitude as weight decreases, it’s more efficient due to the lower air resistance. Electric motors would be more efficient across a wider range of conditions than turbo fans though.
That’s all moot though, because you must don’t have the energy density for long haul flights in batteries. They’re trying to make air taxis happen again. They were talking up air taxis before 9/11, and they never really happened. And back then they were talking about using existing aircraft driven by conventional gasoline or jet fuel. Now we’re talking about new airframes with battery electric power.
Could you imagine the fucking noise? Air taxis should never happen.