The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]

Aircraft design is very intricate. Change the CG, break the whole system.

Fuel is often placed in wings because adding/burning fuel from your center of lift means your CG doesn't significantly change through a flight and you spend less on pumping fuel within the aircraft. With batteries, you are looking at a constant mass from the beginning of the flight to the end... so you can place it anywhere. Electric motors are orders of magnitude lighter than jet engines. Also, you don't need to pump electrons against gravity so placing all of that weight lower has handling/performance advantages.

By using an airframe shape that is well known, they are reducing risk and appealing to existing pilots. By building it from the ground-up, they are taking advantage of differences between the tech.

eg: all of that weight in the fuselage instead of the wings means that rolling is going to be much more nimble. Yaw might be affected as well, depending on the placement/moment of the batteries.

It may be too hard to do a good retrofit. If you basically have to tear the entire plane apart and rebuild and recertify it to put batteries in the right places, maybe the costs aren’t worth it for potential customers.

I know many planes use their wings as fuel tanks but given the weight of batteries maybe that doesn’t work.

I agree it’s interesting. Not a small undertaking.

I think an interesting aspect is that on normal aircraft fuel tanks have to be near the center of lift to maintain weight and balance as fuel is burned off. When using batteries, this is not really a concern, and I would think might lead to some more interesting designs. To be sure, if there is space in the wing, awesome - the batteries can now also be used as ballast though too if required.

Probably because they intend to sell aircraft, not electric motors.

Judging by the seats, perhaps making it as light as possible. Existing airframes are relatively light but let's be honest, they aren't trying to save 500g here and there when they have massive jet engines to get everything airborne.

In the video he explains that the goal of the hybrid system is mainly to be used when for some unexpected reason the airplane cannot land at its original destination.

There are maybe some advantages to a hybrid system.

The higher reliability of electric.

Losing an turbine engine doesn't mean asymmetrical thrust. Plane still flies normally.

Losing an engine on takeoff you still have full power.

Electric motors spin up faster than turbines. Which means faster throttle response. Which you need when hit with a wind shear on landing.

Take off and landing under electric power means much less noise.

Efficiency, you can increase the number of props or fans to get a much higher bypass ratio. Worth noting the plane in the video has four props.

Really, a prototype airplane, the first of this size ever built with this novel propulsion system, had engineers involved in the design?

But maybe they’re aiming at short haul cargo. And either way, wouldn’t that really be one of the last things to do? Just proving the plane can even get in the air and stay there for a useful distance on electricity is more important than how comfortable it is.