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First test flight of largest all-electric aircraft used just $5 of electricity (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 46 points 2 months ago (28 children)

This article is idiotic.

$5 cost. 25,000 pounds. BUT OVER WHAT FUCKING DISTANCE?

$5 gets me 23 miles in my Delica. It gets me 100 miles on my motorcycle. It gets me 30 miles in my Porsche 914. But the article says nothing about distance.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago

    I'm guessing it mostly flew in circles, since it's a test flight that happened "at Plattsburgh International Airport" instead of between two locations. 27 minute flight, whatever that's worth.

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  • [–] 47 points 2 months ago (14 children)

    Literally the first sentence:

    The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity.

    Can your Porsche 914 fly for half an hour on $5 of fuel ?

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  • [–] 56 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    Off a cliff yeah

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  • [–] 23 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    It would have to be a very high cliff.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Anyone know the terminal velocity of a falling Porsche 914? lol

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.

    Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    If humans can hang glide I don't see why we couldn't use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It's a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.

    Seems horribly dangerous but not impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Is there a lift vs drag problem that precludes making a glider with such a heavy payload? It might not be as simple as bigger wings to support the heavier weight.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    I can fly a glider for half an hour for $0 in fuel or electricity

    In the right conditions I can fly a Cessna 150 for $5 in fuel. Just have to shop around the whole country for cheapest fuel and best flight cknditions. So exactly like they did

    These guys have the cheapest electricity in the country considering they advertise 1MW power output that apparently only ends up coating $5 over 27 minutes

    EVs make a lot of sense. This plane does not, nor does any currently proposed design for an all-electric plane

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    My 1975 was tuned for distance. When I drove it from Key Largo to Seattle, it did 35mpg average over the 3500 miles I drove. That car was lost in an accident, sadly.

    25 miles per gallon. 30 minutes would be 12.5 miles on half a gallon.

    My current one does about 25-30 mpg. It weighs 1950 pounds. So, yes. It can comfortably do half an hour on one gallon or so and have fuel left to get me to a refill.

    They have flat 4 two liter VW engines. Extremely efficient if tuned correctly. One top of that, there is a direct 1 to 1 drop-in electric kit for these. When my current engine dies, I have an electric kit I'll put into it to make it an 914E.

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  • [–] -5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Point to me in your quote where it talks about distance.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    LOL.

    "ErRrR pOiNt tO Me iN yOuR..,."

    Let me spell it out for you.

    The achievement being reported is that the plane performed a 30 minute flight. The implied details being that it took off, flew around in circles, and landed again at the same air port.

    The distance the plane traveled is not the achievement and it's not relevant.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 months ago*

    Heart aerospace's website indicates the X1 demonstrator has a 140kt "VNE" - never exceed - speed. So it's probably safe to assume cruise speed would be closer to 100kt, and $5 of electricity used in half an hour might equate to around 50nm straight line distance.

    It's pretty impressive for a plane roughly equivalent in size to a 30-seat turboprop airliner like the EMB 120

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Why would you leave behind a perfectly nice airstrip when your goal is testing a new aircraft? One step at a time, Speedy. Aircraft distance depends on altitude and winds. Not the goal of this flight to break this kind of record. Easier things like time come first. Only then can they calculate how far they can go. Aircrafts can't park on the shoulder like your 2D vehicles do.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    23 miles lol. For $5 I get about 125miles in my Atto3

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    That seems like really bad efficiency, or really expensive power. I used to have a Nissan Leaf that would do over 5 miles to the kW. Even with rather substantial battery degradation, I could get 80 miles to a charge, and a full charge would run me about $1.25 at the local utility rates.

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