You can do small aircraft like this, no problem. The trouble is you can't scale it up, due to how quickly the power and energy demands go up. This thing is 560 kW and gets a range of 86 nmi; an A320 is around 40 000 kW and has a range of 3 500 nmi, while an A380 is around 80 000 kW and has a range of 8 500 nmi.<p>Going from this DHC-2 to the A380 requires an increase in energy storage by a factor of around 14 000x, while the max takeoff weight ratio between the two planes is only 250.<p>Airbus is developing a hybrid electric jet, the E-Fan X. They've done the math. When their CTO was asked about the possibility of an all-electric A320, the response was<p>"""<p>Assuming for a moment that we’d be able to rely on batteries 30 times as energy dense as that of today, an A320 would be able to fly with half of its payload for one-fifth of its current range, 500nm max. So, assuming a battery which today does not exist... It doesn’t work, purely electrical will not work.<p>"""
I've seen a lot of skeptics and nay-sayers talking about this project, but I feel like there is a fundamental mis-understanding of why this is significant.<p>No, it's not going to compete with jet airliners even in the remotely near future. High-bypass turbofan engines have enormous cost advantages over traditional piston engines. It's almost always more economical to use a turbofan engine to power aircraft in anything more than a short hop.<p>I see this being a classic case of something like Mainframes vs. PCs however. Most people don't equate flying with General Aviation because GA has traditionally been so cost prohibitive, much the same way that mainframes were so cost prohibitive in the 60's and 70's. There are a few airlines, like Harbour Air, and Mokulele, that currently offer a short haul flights (usually over water) where people are willing to pay a lot more money. There are benefits like frequency of flights, but the big ones for me are not having to queue up for security, and being able to bring liquids on board. My wife once brought a can of soup on board Mokulele. Try doing that on Hawaiian.<p>If this can bring down the cost of short haul flights, particularly those around 200-250 miles, it could be extremely appealing, especially when coupled with ride hailing. I would much rather take a 45 minute flight and get Lyft on the other side, than spend 3 hours sitting in a car stuck in traffic. GA can fly out of smaller terminals and smaller airports. San Carlos (SQL) to South Lake Tahoe is a 40ish minute flight in a GA aircraft, but can be 5+ hours in traffic on I-80.
Some perhaps useful context: Harbour air operates the worlds largest sea plane service, the majority of it between Vancouver (city) and Vancouver Island (mostly Victoria). They are a perfect test bed for this, as the in air time is about 15-20 min for most routes. (less 100km/60m ).<p>So while electric is a long way from long haul domestic routes, let alone international, I could see it taking over specific services like this fairly quickly, at least relatively speaking. I can see why they are experimenting with it.<p>Apparently they plan to have certification for this aircraft in the next 2 years, but early days yet.
I found this article by the CBC more informative then the one linked:
<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electric-seaplane-float-plane-test-flight-harbour-air-1.5390816" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electric-sea...</a><p>> "It's a prototype for sure," said McDougall, "but in every way it's a high-tech piece of equipment, which is kind of ironic considering the airframe that it's attached to is actually one year younger than me — 62 years old."<p>> McDougall's flight is the first exercise in what is expected to be a two-year process to get the e-plane certified for commercial use.<p>For some context Harbour Air is a scheduled floatplane airline operating primarily between Vancouver and Victoria in BC. Since there is no bridge connecting the capital Victoria to the largest city Vancouver, they offer short flights on seaplanes that connect downtown to downtown as an alternative to ferries or larger airplanes that arrive at the airports further outside of the downtown core of either city.<p>In this constrained context it seems like an electric airplane could work really well and provide fuel savings and a quieter ride. They also seem to have some ambition with these electric aircraft to provide other short range flights.<p>> MagniX CEO Roei Ganzarski said Dec. 10, 2019, will go down in history as the start of the electric aviation age, and believes the e-plane will eventually revolutionize how people travel by making short- to mid-range flights more economical than driving. "It means you can stop driving for three, five, seven hours to get to a destination because there's no other way to get there," he said. "It means you can fly in a small aircraft from a small airport to a small airport.... It's faster, cheaper and more convenient than any other method of travel, including going with a standard airline."
Adding a little context: Harbour Air is a short-hop seaplane operator working out of downtown Vancouver. Most of their flights are ~ 100km across the Georgia Straight to Victoria and Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Trips are ~ 30 minutes IIRC. There is no bridge to this island and the alternative is a fairly large commute involving a ferry. It's quite convenient to have a direct connection between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria.<p>Fuel is quite pricey here, they might end up saving a couple hundred dollars per hour in fuel and engine upkeep costs.
Tangential; I took a Kenmore Air seaplane flight from Seattle (South Lake Union) to Victoria this summer, and it was absolutely amazing. I loved every second of it, and can't recommend it highly enough. 45 minutes flying time, so quick and convenient. We walked to and from hotels on both end.<p>When I lived in the northwest, it was trivial to drive+ferry to Victoria, even though it was very slow. I always thought the Clipper hydrofoil, let alone flying, were unfathomably expensive luxuries.<p>But as a tourist without a car and on a limited schedule, suddenly the Clipper (hydrofoil passenger-only ferry from downtown) and flying seem like reasonable options versus having to rent a car, pay for fuel, take a car ferry, drive a bunch on both ends, pay for parking, etc.<p>In the end, I think Kenmore cost less than 2x what the Clipper would have cost us. Not cheap, but absolutely worth it for a novel one-time experience. One passenger even remarked that the seaplane flight was cheaper than flying from Sea-Tac to Victoria airport, before even factoring in the fact that neither airport is near the major city you're coming from or going to.
Carbon neutral biofuel or fuel made via excess solar/wind should probably be the goal.<p>Fuel cells might be viable too and the regulated commercial nature of planes probably means that hydrogen's storage and pumping headaches wouldn't suffer the consumer problems.<p>But biofuels are probably the way to go for now.<p>There are probably hybrid airship designs with solar panels that could do lower cost shipping. All that extra surface area from the blimp can be covered in solar panels or those fancy solar paints.
I look at the Harbour Air planes out my office window!<p>Super neat project, although I agree with other commenters that "fully-electric commercial flight" is misleading.<p>If I walk down there and book a flight, I'm not going to be in an e-plane. It's still very much experimental.
I'm a big fan of renewable energy (solar, wind), electric cars and likely electric planes (not yet available, so hard to say). But my biggest concern is that all this will eventually lead to people decisions being affected by rather this hipe, than common sense (like with nuclear power, which is the greenest currently available peak/off-peak source of energy). Something similar can also happen, as with Saturn 5/Apollo, after some time we will lose the technology, because people retire, workshops are disassembled. We can loose technology of efficient piston and jet engines, nuclear reactors, ultrasonic flight, et al. This by itself is fine, batteries work fine obviously, though one can imagine conditions where it is not the case: Antarctica, Mars, Moon, space, etc. Just look at Juno space probe, which instead of small RTG uses huge solar arrays, which produce just few hundreds of watts on Jupiter orbit, while being capable or producing kilowatts on Earth one.
Off topic and stupid, but could an electric plane be outfitted with lightning rods and/or lightning rockets to attract lightning strikes in order to charge the batteries?
I'm pretty sure we beat you guys to the the first electric plane able to water land here in Norway[1], or google translate[2]. :P<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/elfly-med-avinor-sjefen-som-pilot-matte-nodlande-i-arendal-1.14660687" rel="nofollow">https://www.nrk.no/sorlandet/elfly-med-avinor-sjefen-som-pil...</a>
[2]: <a href="https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrk.no%2Fsorlandet%2Felfly-med-avinor-sjefen-som-pilot-matte-nodlande-i-arendal-1.14660687" rel="nofollow">https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...</a>
While the title may have it right, later in the article they state that this is the first electric aircraft... well they've been flying in WA for some time now<p><a href="https://particle.scitech.org.au/tech/aussie-first-electric-plane-takes-to-wa-skies/" rel="nofollow">https://particle.scitech.org.au/tech/aussie-first-electric-p...</a>
Still seems a bit far from replacing jet engines? This article was going on about fuel emissions in the entire aviation industry, this is just an electric propeller. Anyone know how far we are from electric jets? Is such a thing even possible?
I wonder if the limitations of electric flight will impact the infrastructure - big, dense networks of airports to support short range flights across the world.
sounds kinda weird. IC engine planes get more efficient with lower fuel (lower weight)whereas with Electric ones, you still have to carry the weight around with lower power.
The title is a little misleading:<p>This is not a commercial flight, currently the plane in question is licensed by the FAA as "experimental" specifically excluding commercial flights.<p>Still cool! I think electric might have a great future in short-hop flights.