New York to Arkansas in 11+ hours
8 stops for “REFUELING” the batteries
Hmm…
And they want to shut down Aviation Fuels?
The George B. G100UL FAA debacle is no accident …it seems?

https://www.flyingmag.com/electric-airc ... ix-states/?

I feel the same way and agree with your hypothesis!

Electric airplanes can fill certain specific missions, but long range cross country flying is not one of them.

Mike C.

Agreed, right now at least. I’m learning not to never say never. But I’ll also highlight the 11 hour flight took…a week.

So what you are saying is that it is a 179 hour trip with 11 hours of flying time?

Not today...but electric planes will be a thing some day.

10 years ago if you said the big 3 auto manufacturers would be concerned with upstart Tesla, or if you would have said the Big 3 would be making EVs that go 400 miles, everyone would have laughed and said "no way".

But look today at the F-150 Lightning. Great truck. Or a Tesla Plaid that your Grandma drives normally, and you can borrow to smoke just about any muscle car/hyper car out there.

Electrically powered planes will be a thing someday in the near future. Did they even exist 5 years ago?

Let's not be a bunch of grouchy old farts who yell "get off my lawn". But instead look to the future for what will be.

Pretty neat time to be alive, IMHO.

Now, excuse me while I go out to the garage to work on my 1997 Powerstroke (with ultra low emmissions), so I can drive to the airport to fly hyper-efficient planes with PT-6s.

Cars don’t have to worry about useful load, planes do. Actually weight works to the advantage of ground transportation. The heavier the battery, the longer the range, the better the traction especially in snow. The Model X is like a four wheel drive truck in the snow. My wife loves it.

Unicorns and wishful thinking. Cradle to grave the carbon footprint of the “electric” future is higher and will cause more damage to the environment than what the general public thinks. In aviation it makes even less sense.

Why is it higher?

I’m at the airport about to go flying and don’t have time to pontificate on the subject, but will share a brief summary from Mark Mills of the Manhattan Institute who summarizes it better than I could:

Today’s plans to decarbonize global energy systems, which center on a massive expansion in the use of solar, wind, and battery technologies, need to better account for the high environmental and economic costs of materials and minerals.

The great twentieth-century physicist Richard Feynman once said that “it is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is.” But we do know one unequivocal fact: delivering useful energy services to society has always been about materials.

Today’s plans to decarbonize global energy systems center on a massive expansion in the use of solar, wind, and battery technologies, with the goal of these becoming the dominant means to power society. But scaling up these energy sources entails a radically heavier materials footprint than is associated with fossil fuels, paradoxical though it may seem. The unavoidable scale of materials demand will have significant impacts on commodities markets and prices, as well as on the environment. Most policy formulations fail to account for these implications.

The country is long overdue for thoughtful and realistic planning that honestly acknowledges the tradeoffs and consequences arising from the materials needed to accelerate what is being called the energy transition.

If interested - read this: https://issues.org/environmental-econom ... ies-mills/

Or just watch this…

[youtube]https://youtu.be/RqppRC37OgI[/youtube]

Nice article thanks. It all makes sense they it takes more energy and materials to build renewable energy equipment but I would have thought that I time the lines would cross.

My wife was an early adopter of electric cars and bought a Nissan leaf. It makes perfect sense that it takes more energy and materials to build a leaf compared to say a Nissan Sentra but I would think that the gas not burned would make it worth it long term.

Investing in research for GHG catalyst technology, cleaner IC engines, natural gas and nuclear will benefit society, and the environment more than destroying rainforests and digging up half the planet to build what will become toxic waste batteries and graphite filled worn solar panels.

This green hysteria is just starting, and what is being left behind to power those Teslas, Prius and Leafs is alarming. Next time someone tells you they feel good about driving their new EV, ask them if they realize this is happening to make their “dream” come true.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2015 ... e-on-earth

https://e360.yale.edu/features/boom_in_ ... oxic_risks

https://amp.dw.com/en/toxic-and-radioac ... a-57148185

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... n-battery/

Video got the definition/identification of rare earth elements wrong.

Back in the 1950s, people said we'd all have flying cars with the sort of misguided belief in inexorable progress. 70 years later, still waiting...

Unless there is some sort of truly dramatic change in battery tech, I mean 10 times the best we can do today, you're never going to produce an airplane of typical GA performance today.

The long term future of sustainable aviation is fuel derived from organic processes (SAF for example) with diesel or turbine engines that can burn it. We can't get away from carbon based fuels, but at least we can close the cycle to not add any more to the atmosphere.

Mike C.