Electrifying!

That Rolls-Royce designs looks like one of the racers in the Pixar movie "Planes"!

 

Yeah.
What the article fails to mention is that the battery pack needed to fly the Beaver for 4 minutes effectively made its' cargo capacity 0.

Pilot, batteries. That's it.

Don't be looking for em at your local island hopper airline anytime soon.

 

I like this approach...

 

Checked out the electrics this year at Oshkosh. There are a few LSA-type aircraft that can manage 40min-1hr flights with a 30 min reserve. Right now the sweet spot for electrics seems to be in motorgliders.

 

Trainers too...

 

Absolutely

 

I was there but missed my chance to look around much. We were flying every day so I didn’t get around much. Too bad because electrics are an interest of mine.

 

Wish I’d known - would have been happy to do an end of day debrief at the local Biergarten. NASA had an interesting seminar lecture on their work with electric aircraft. They went with a ‘blown’ wing (with a much shorter chord) and a set of 6 small lift motors. Beyond them, there were probably half a dozen manufacturers with electric offerings in more straightforward applications. Very interesting to see the technology evolving and chat with the reps - even 2 years ago things were a lot less well-developed.

NASA’s electric plane: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_X-57_Maxwell

 

Great link. Interesting design. They must be calculating a weight to thrust to power use ratio and have come up with more small motors being most efficient.

 

Exactly - they took a production wing and took something like 50% out of the chord to make it more efficient at cruise. Given the light weight of pancake motors, they realized that they could easily provide airflow over the wing at low speeds, then shut the motors down at cruise - where they’re using the bigger motors on the end of the wing. It’s an interesting approach.

Right now the big issue is the aircraft’s useful load is taken up by the battery - but that will hopefully change.

 

So after you fly 400 miles, you just sit around and watch it charge before your next flight? Or swappable batteries that you can fed ex to your destination the day before?

 

Electric aircraft, much more so than cars, will not be practical until the next (or next after) generation of battery tech. These are only at the 'Model T' stage.

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Did you see the range and top speed of this thing? Not sure why UA keeps putting these headlines out there. Supersonic minijet, electric helicopter and now this. None will happen. You could use up all the juice with an on the ground long taxi ATC delay.

 

Well, work is starting on a Made-in-AZ all electric primary trainer. That’s where the bang for the buck will come from. Global pilot training resources are tapped out. Covid gave the pipeline exactly zero rest. ERAU’s entering freshman class is 200 studs bigger than any previous class. They have no clue where the planes will come from to train these kids. Electrics can work well as trainers. Swappable batteries and dead simple systems are perfect for training work.

As an aside, I have 5 ramp spots at PRC if anyone wants to help train kids to fly by making their Cessna 172 available. Two of my birds are down for tornado damage so planes are needed. We may take a few years to get electrics airborne in the mission here.

 

The Rolls Royce Spirit of Innovation airframe design is not theirs. That's a Nemesis NXT they've modified for electric power. Similar to how Tesla took an existing Lotus Elise and modified it to become the first Tesla Roadster.

 

Some of the new commercial short haul transports are quoting 25 minutes for a full charge, using one charger per engine/battery pack.

 

BlackFly - ultralight (so don't compare it to a real plane )
https://www.opener.aero/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opener_BlackFly

Jump to 3:50 and 5:25




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The saying "we can do better" comes to mind

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About enough time to taxi out run the AC for the passengers, wait in line, take off, circle the airport and if you are really lucky you can get back to the gate without a tow.


What fun. I can't wait.

 

Pretty cool. How handy being over water. When the batteries go to full flambe mode you can just land and everyone can go for a swim.