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Comment by thehappypm | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really buy the main counter arguments here.

First, the current tech as stated in the article is short flights, like an hour. That’s actually a niche that’s already marketed—luxury flights to Martha’s Vineyard, Tahoe, Bar Harbor. People are already paying for these flights today.

Second, the heat issue. Batteries do suffer from cold weather but if it’s an hour flight, with the batteries dumping their full charge, between thermal heating and simply insulating your battery it can stay warm.

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There's not really a viable path from those short flights to longer ones though and the hype of the industry is driven in part around electrifying airliners.

And those short flights are a small fraction of airline emissions. I haven't run the numbers, but I don't think it can be more than a few percent. If a company or airline actually cared about reducing emissions from aviation they would look at using hydrogen like the Soviet Union did (I'm not talking about fuel cells, the jet engines used hydrogen as fuel).

The path to bigger airlines depends heavily on battery advances, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible, either. It just means the second market will be Philly to New York. Then New York to Boston. Maybe never across an ocean.

I think there is a handful of airports like London City Airport which could utilize electric to lower noise. Now viable destinations from there is good question. There is probably some others as well, but it's rather limited market.

Consider how much cheaper it might be. The airplane itself would have minimal operating costs —- electricity can be quite cheap, and an electric plane has far fewer moving parts

Shouldn't those short trajets be done by train instead? Any flight less than 2 hours should be a train IMO ( well except if it crosses a sea of course).

I think this is the key here: conceptually, there may be some cognitive shear around the word "plane." In the near-term VTOLs aren't going to be airliners or, for that matter, flying cars. Cessnas and helicopters, though...

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