The X1 aircraft is comparable in size to a small regional airliner and can achieve a maximum takeoff weight exceeding 25,000 pounds with the help of four wing-mounted electric motors. The battery-electric propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt of power during the maiden flight.
I see, the economics will soon take over!
Curious how much fuel would have cost for a comparable flight. Could this make short flights significantly cheaper than they are currently? Or open up the possibility of flying with many short hops in some cases.
@rimu@piefed.social pilots are expensive, and airplanes are also expensive to maintain- unless you skip the regular maintenance. This might be a little cheaper, but it still won’t enable short flights for anyone not already rich.
The electric engines are easier to maintain than jet engines. Far less parts, especially not having to deal with fuel pumps and all the safety issues around fuel storage. Not having to withstand the huge temperature differential between the engine combustion and the high altitude air probably helps too.
Pretty sure fuel is still a fairly big part of the cost of flying. I wonder how the maintenance compares on an electric plane engine compared to jets too.
Planes are already cheaper than other options for short distances anyway, going electric would be great for that.
If you skip the plane and go with a drone style you can drop all the complex hydraulics and just have a dead simple electric motor. A large version with a flying wing shape could work well.
@rimu@piefed.social @HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
Those are vastly less efficient than a wing. They are great for slow speed and pin point accuracy at short range, which rarely matters.
If it works you can have a range extender medium size drone at the start and finish for mid air refueling by cable.
@rimu@piefed.social @HerbGrower@slrpnk.net maybe, but that is complex logistics.
Yeah, that sounds incredibly complex compared to just landing and switching plane or recharging.
at this point, the obstacles to electrification are not technical, the obstacles are in the white house
And they smell terrible.
Shitstacles.
@betanumerus@lemmy.ca for short distances that would be better served by a train.
you can’t cover the ground with rails. air travel does have uses trains cannot meet.
@rimu@piefed.social I specified short distances. By the take you get to the airport an hour early the train has covered a fairly long distance. Nobody wants to live near an airport as airplanes are inherently noisy, but trains are quiet.
Have you lived next to a track where trains travel frequently? The noise is mostly ok, however the vibrations are not. I would not live closer than 1 km or so from the track, otherwise you feel the house vibrate every time a train passes. Good luck if the trains pass each hour, especially during the nights.
Airports are worse tho, I’ll give you that.
@rimu@piefed.social @betanumerus@lemmy.ca
That is very much a it depends. Freight trains are like that, as are passenger trains on steel bridges, or anything with a large diesel engine. However we know how to make tracks that are not like that. Concrete bridges dampen vibration well. Elective EMUs are also much quieter.
That is not an option for islands or sometimes a train has to go the long way around, due to large bodies of water. Korea - Japan or something like Greece - southern Italy are interesting flights for example.
This is true. Though some areas with harsh terrain will benefit from this
Only poors take trains
i still can’t afford a train cabin
@rimu@piefed.social @fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com
A train cabin is significantly cheaper than an airplane.
For me personally, not including the travel to Chicago, it would be 225USD for a less than 5 hour flight from Chicago to Seattle, while the smallest cabin (“roomette”) on an Amtrak would cost 1400USD and take over 46 hours. Even the coach is 280USD.
Edit: I’m seeing the bit about short trips now; I thought that the comment I was replying to was about travel in general. Chicago to Detroit would only be 35USD for ~6h on Amtrak coach (no cabin offered), flight price would be the same as Chicago-Seattle. Train would be cheaper in this case, though without a cabin.
@rimu@piefed.social @betanumerus@lemmy.ca @fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com compare Amtrak pulling your personal car vs owning a personal train.
Though Chicago to Seattle is a long distance trip where flying beats the train even with ideal service. If you were asking about going to indianapolis instead the train should be both cheaper and faster That it isn’t is a reflection on how bad Amtrak is not trains in general.
@fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com only in places with terrible trains. Rich people the world over take trains when they are good. A lot of the rich in places like NYC or Tokyo take trains. Of course the rich have options, some so show off with limos and the like, but when they want to blend in the train works.
In London people moan about public transport being awful, but plenty of rich people and celebrities take the train anyway. There was a newspaper article a few years ago about a court case that finished and both parties and their lawyers and the judge all ran into each other at the train station again.
