Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft

You never get to hear what these planes sound like in these promo videos

Presumably the generators have fuel that can be depleted

You don't see megawatt-hours of energy in batteries as potentially dangerous?

Total energy is going to be comparable for aircraft with similar ranges, I don't think a lithium fire is any less unpleasant than a Jet-A fire for for anyone nearby.

Even if the batteries could be made entirely inert, the ability to deliver a plane sized slug of kinetic energy to a building of your choice retains most of the danger.

Even if that could be avoided, a plane must remain operational enough throughout all flights to avoid falling out of the sky.

It would take a large bomb to take out a whole bus load of passengers, a very small one to put safety critical systems of a plane out of action.

As much as I would appreciate this happening, I don't think electric planes are going to make it happen.

Jet fuel, like diesel are not flammable, let alone explosive. They are combustible.

Gasoline on the other hand …

They cary the same amount of energy

Interesting thought, but I'm not sure the (admittedly flammable & explosive) fuel load is the main threat posed by a hijacked aircraft — the large mass at velocity can still to major damage and casualties wherever it is crashed.

Plus, depending on the battery chemistry, that material could also create a serious fire; it is a lot of stored energy either way.

So, I would not wait for it

Nope, because we all know about the race to the bottom of all companies and the littlest crack or wiggle room will be used to save a penny and kill people.

As someone who lives in the Great Lakes region - there are a ton of 100 mile flights that would take 4 hours to drive - often as the first leg in a two-flight trip. Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives, heavily dependent on road conditions all within the pure-electric range.

The best use case might be short flights over water or other geographic obstacles where driving routes might be much longer or impossible. Like Kahului Airport to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport for example.

There are like 10,000 flights between Milwaukee and Chicago every year. Personally I would take the train, but a lot of people do not.

Island hopping is the usual sales pitch for these planes.

Remember the days when people laughed at the range and charge times of first-gen electric vehicles?

GE along with BETA, NASA, and Boeing showcased a hybrid aircraft at the Farnborough airshow last month that's worth checking out!

https://investors.beta.team/news-events/press-releases/detai...

Appx 5% of us domestic flights, 1200 per day.

>"At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win."

It's about feeding the existing network. Millions of people in the US live in places a 2+hr drive to the nearest major airport, but have plenty of smaller municipal fields nearby. Electric aviation could finally make it profitable and cheap enough to run those routes. It also opens the door to true commuter aviation becoming a thing, when you can offer short flights for the cost comparable to a train ticket, and operate out of small fields with small planes multiple times a day and no need for the whole TSA experience.

They want to push the 'all electric range' angle, but the people who buy it know what it can do.

New York State is funding Plattsburgh as an electric aviation R&D hub, and actually gave BETA $20M in a grant.

I'd prefer a train but since I live in Iceland this would be perfect.

Your user handle complements the message perfectly

For short haul they make sense at high fuel prices.

And for medium haul they make sense if you can get beamed power working.

> Electric aircraft makes no economic sense

You better start working on them now if you want them to be ready when they'll make economical sense, which might be in a not so distant future

$5 does not make sense, and there must be some qualifer on that we're missing.

Napkin math:

(27 minute flight) * (25000 lbm TOGW) * (Earth gravity) / (~10 average L/D) * (160 KTAS average) / (70% propulsive efficiency) / (97% coulombic efficiency) * ($50/MWh) = $30

(Add residual kinetic energy upon landing too)

Side note: Heart also has a weight issue here they'll need to overcome if they want to certify under FAR Part 23 (as their 19-pax spec implies); TOGW limit for that is 19,000 lbm.

They’re using wholesale prices. The entire flight was 27 minutes, peaked at a megawatt of power, and a wholesale megawatt-hour is $40-50 these days.

I tried to run a napkin calculation, and that 5$ figure must be quoted per seat (30 seats). And a 'first flight' might be very very short, like 15 minutes of flying or less.

During certain hours of the day in California, electricity is essentially free due to solar overproduction, which sometimes causes negative wholesale prices.

I'm not so sure. I haven't seen a true regional airline class VTOL yet, mostly just demonstrators that carry a few people, at that. The fact that it's larger is actually very important, the economics of a regional jet replacement make far more sense than that of an air taxi. I also doubt the similar range claim, lifting an airframe directly into the air without wings is far, far less efficient than just taking off with the benefit of lift. They're also way more complex and would require additional training for pilots.

Further, noise restrictions will probably limit VTOL's to airports, never underestimate the NIMBY's. Note that demo videos of eVTOL's almost always have background music rather than ambient sound.

VTOL will not have the same distance capability because the 'vertical' flgiht is the most energy intesive. It's why there's designs like the Beta which transition from VTOL to fixed wing forward flight as soon as they can.

VTOL have other advantages of course in terms of operational flexibility, but where there's existing airfields, fixed electric would be more efficient

Also, at the size/scale of this aircraft (thirty passengers) any type of VTOL wouldd be even less practical

Aren't VTOL aircraft significantly more complex and riskier to operate than fixed-wing prop aircraft? There's certainly many fewer moving parts and tricky transitions from hover to airfoil flight regime.

I guess it's the largest by its useful load.

>"Largest" is just straight-up a false claim.

Largest in terms of takeoff weight. Wingspan is a pretty meaningless metric for "largest aircraft". By that logic the planes you linked are larger than a 737.