" If batteries don’t get dramatically better in the next decade, we design our plane as a hybrid with electric motors, like a Volt. It still has great cost savings as compared to today’s planes, and it doesn’t require massive battery advances.
If batteries do get a lot better in the next decade, our plane is fully-electric and has fantastic cost savings. See chart #2 below; a near-future jump to a chemistry like Li-Metal doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility." - <a href="https://weflywright.com/blog/" rel="nofollow">https://weflywright.com/blog/</a><p>I'm glad to see they have a contingency plan for not being fully electric.
Aviation as a field is littered with dozens (hundreds?) of startups that have blown through millions and decades trying to build certified aircraft and going bankrupt in the process.<p>Not the first to say this, but there is zero chance that this startup designs and builds a certified electric airliner in the next decade. I highly doubt we'll have these in 20 years. In ten years, we <i>might</i> have battery technology where it starts to make sense, but the most experienced builders of large aircraft in the world generally spend at least a decade and <i>billions</i> of dollars developing new planes. And this will be with completely untested technologies, new safety procedures, engines, etc. Boeing spent $32 billion bringing the 787 to market. On the smaller end, Bombardier spent ~$5 billion on the C series, which looks comparable to this, and I'd expect costs on this to be MUCH higher since it's a lot of new and untested tech, instead of iterating on decades of prior experience.<p>This is either appallingly naive on the part of this team and / or their investors, or this is an acquisition play. I doubt the latter makes sense, and I wonder if this is just VCs not having any knowledge of the field or how unrealistic this is.
The plane does look sexy.<p>I'm not clear on how this works out economically.<p>Gas turbines are more efficient than electric at high altitudes and long distances. So the regional hops are where this could make an impact.<p>IMO regional hop planes are less efficient at moving cargo than trains (or hyperloops). America just doesn't like high speed trains for some reason.<p>Between trains and jet turbine planes, I'm not seeing where electric passenger planes like this make a huge image.
I get it, fuel costs are huge for airlines. But fuel costs are still small beans compared to capital utilization. I hope they have a feasible plan for recharging and getting back in the air without significant delays. That is a very significant amount of energy to shove into a plane in such a timeframe. If recharge times are anywhere close to an hour, this idea is DOA.
This is so clearly a great opportunity for electric tech - Airplanes can be used on fixed trips of known distance, and shooting for the 150 passenger size seems ideal for the limitations that electric would entail.<p>Think SF-LA, there are probably 1000 flights / week between these two areas, and some of those could be handled by a plane like this.
How safe is this? Having more efficient batteries seems to imply more risks of spontaneous exposions, as we've seen in various phones, cars, and computers.<p>And what about the lifetime?
On the face of it, it's a very scary proposal. The energy density of hydrocarbon fuels is high, and they are well understood. A comparable battery, on the other hand - it sounds like a fire hazard the size of a planeload of Samsung phones.
I bet six months until they pivot to some meaningless garbage and put out a press release claiming that whatever shiny new toy they're peddling is "changing the world".