Startup Announces Plan for 150-Seat Battery-Powered Plane
electrek.coAlready discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13929950
" 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." - https://weflywright.com/blog/
I'm glad to see they have a contingency plan for not being fully electric.
Seems like this would be a step backward in efficiency. Direct mechanical drive is more efficient than double conversion at cruise speeds. Even the Gen1 volt connected engine to wheels at highway speed because it was more efficient, Gen2 they went to a more conventional hybrid design like a Prius with mechanical power splitting because its more efficient even at lower speeds.
Airplanes are even simpler using variable pitch props the ICE just runs at it most efficient rpm with no or minimal transmission and nearly zero mechanical losses.
Also a hybrid design is heavier than a direct mechanical and airplanes would seem to not benefit from hybrid advantages such as regenerative braking and 0 rpm torque.
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.
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 might 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 billions 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.
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.
I'm not clear on how this works out economically.
Gas turbines are more efficient than electric at high altitudes and long distances. So the regional hops are where this could make an impact.
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.
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.
You could swap batteries.
That does seem to be the current model for fast recharges. It's not out of the question, but these are going to be extremely big batteries and the planes, batteries, and auxiliary equipment need to be designed for it up front. The thing with planes is that design is extremely expensive and design costs are expected to be amortized over a long lifecycle, which means that a technical constraint today could end up being very costly if the constraint goes away in the near future.
Wright Electric likely knows all this and is working on it...a partnership with a low cost airline would surely inform them of what is needed for success. I'm just complaining that the article is not very substantive.
You are right. Weight distribution would be an important factor so you cannot just swap out a big block of battery on one end of the plane. Perhaps a long tube running down the plane. You push charged batteries in one end and pull discharged ones out the other. The track they run on connects them to the electrical system.
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.
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.
> 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
Yes and no. The major problem for electric planes (apart from the fact that the energy density of the best batteries is piss poor compared to Jet-A) is the weight does not decrease throughout the flight. This means you need more robust landing gear as the MTOW and MLW are essentially the same. More robust landing gear = more empty weight = less payload capacity = less paying meatbags/cargo.
There is also the issue of time to recharge. Short flights such as SFO-LAX that you mentioned would not require much in terms of refueling time (on the order of 20 minutes or so maximum). It would take a lot of good engineering to charge a plane this quickly.
Overall, I think all companies tend to underestimate the cost and time associated with designing a new airplane. Bombardier was billions over budget and years behind schedule for their C series.
Same for Airbus with the A350.
Same for Boeing with the 787.
tl;dr - Making planes is hard.
I wouldn't think you'd recharge the plane. Swapping the batteries out would be the answer to the quick turn around.
I find it very hard to believe that landing gear isn't fine with landing under full starting weight -- after all what if you need to land shortly after taking off for some reason? (return to leaving airport.) So I "plane" don't believe it's an issue.
Regarding fuel weight not decreasing - could hydrogen fuel cells be burned and the resulting (h2o, water vapor) simply be left as contrails?
Reference: https://www.quora.com/What-does-hydrogen-give-off-when-burne... "In a flame of pure hydrogen gas, burning in air, the hydrogen (H2) reacts with oxygen (O2) to form water (H2O) and releases heat."
First, that would be an emergency landing. Second, they would likely dump the fuel.
They wouldn't, necessarily, be able to dump fuel. Most modern short to mid-haul aircraft like all of the Boeing 737's and the Airbus 320 series don't have a fuel dump system. It's only long-range twin-jets that are likely to have a fuel dump system and in some cases that's actually depending on what the customer ordered.
> (a) A fuel jettisoning system must be installed on each airplane unless it is shown that the airplane meets the climb requirements of §§25.119 and 25.121(d) at maximum takeoff weight, less the actual or computed weight of fuel necessary for a 15-minute flight comprised of a takeoff, go-around, and landing at the airport of departure with the airplane configuration, speed, power, and thrust the same as that used in meeting the applicable takeoff, approach, and landing climb performance requirements of this part.
http://www.flightsimaviation.com/data/FARS/part_25-1001.html
This doesn't pass the smell test for me. The vertical velocity when it lands it not very great - if landing gear has no trouble supporting the plane during taxi off under full weight, I find it preposterous (and reckless) that it would be insufficient for landing. The idea that planes routinely dump fuel if they have to circle around and land immediately after take-off is absolutely ridiculous to me: if there is nothing wrong with a plane, highly combustible fuel is far safer inside than outside of it.
I found your suggestion so ridiculous I Googled "do planes dump fuel" and got this top answer
http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/29232/do-airplan...
"Do airplanes dump fuel before landing?"
For which Google picked the summary: "There have been many explanations given but ultimately the answer to your question is "No, aircraft do not dump fuel prior to landing unless it is absolutely necessary.""
Reading that page: as a rule fuel is not dumped!
You're not seeing the whole picture. Airliners don't routinely dump fuel during normal operations. However, if there's an emergency and the pilots decide to divert they will often dump fuel (if possible) or simply fly in circles to burn off enough to bring the airplane down to a safe landing weight. Safety isn't just a matter of preventing the landing gear from collapsing. A higher weight means a higher landing speed due to stall limits and thus a longer stopping distance and greater risk of brake failure or runway overrun.
But we're not actually talking about emergencies here at all, but rather "by-design" in which nothing is wrong. And a future design at that!
I hope you can see why I am skeptical that a future landing gear for electric airplanes would not be able to support the fully loaded landing weight, which is not reduced as the batteries are depleted.
The idea that landing gears just "can't" support all that weight seems silly to me. The solution can be as simple as having twelve wheels instead of six, or another set of shock absorbers, or something short of "well sorry, you'll never build a landing gear that lands safely at that weight. Can't be done."
Note that I focused on just the weight the landing gears support - your other observations can remain on-point. I just don't buy that particular argument, just about the landing gears.
I was specifically talking about an emergency situation. Planes don't do early landings when nothing is wrong.
The difference is fatigue. I'm sure the landing gear can support the full weight, but how many times?
The gear may be rated for 20 uses at full takeoff weight or 100,000 uses at empty weight.
Making planes is not hard. Making big, safe planes is very hard.
Almost sounds like rocket science
Nope. Power density is simply not there.
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.
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".