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Comment by DanielHB | Hacker News Reader

I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes. However I am still skeptical about the EVTOL form factor for mass scale transportation, at least on the short or medium term.

I think we are going to see a lot of fragmentation in modes of transport where we have jets going from international airports for long range, small electric planes in small airports for that 50-300km distance low-frequency destinations. And rail only for high-frequency destinations.

In fact I imagine that electric vs jet planes math will get so crazy that it might kill some international hubs that are too far inland, companies will want people off jets into electric propeller planes as fast as possible.

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> I have been thinking this for quite a while now, electric planes will kill a lot of rail routes

Why? If you have an existing rail network, trains are bound to be cheaper than planes and can get to more places (including convenient centrally-located stations in most major metro areas).

Plus, air travel is generally miserable unless you have a private / chartered plane. Crowds, long lines, security screenings, opaque and abusive pricing models, etc. This is not something we couldn't fix, but over the past 30 years, it's gotten a lot worse, not better; electric planes don't automatically change that. In contrast, rail travel in Europe is almost universally pleasant and hassle-free.

> In contrast, rail travel in Europe is almost universally pleasant and hassle-free.

Laughs hollowly in German.

I think electric planes will get far smaller and be more like intercity buses. And small airports with small runways in more central locations will start to appear.

If flying ever becomes efficient energy-wise, this may happen. However, right now, flying is very energy inefficient, so anything that doesn't need to be flown, is transported overland to save costs. A change of fuel won't change it, unless the underlying energy usage changes fundamentally.

Better batteries do not impact energy usage, only the means of energy delivery.

For high volume routes rail is best. For lower volume automated cars on the highway are more efficient than flying by enough that only the rich will fly - just like today. You can book a helicopter flight home today if you are willing to pay for all the fuel. However even at 1/10th the energy cost, a car will be vastly cheaper and so what most people will choose. We also will continue to use trucks to move freight for many of these trips, so the roads will exist either way.

There is one other issue with flying: it often isn't legal - for good reason - to fly and land where you want to be. For a 300km trip flying to an airport is fine (if there is one close - they are not evenly scattered around), but at 50km you may as well drive the whole way instead of transfer at the airport - unless you live very close to the airport (which you won't because of noise)

Rail will always be more efficient since you don't have to carry the load. I think places that never built passenger rail (Alberta has been toying with Edmonton to Calgary since they've existed) this will wipe out the need for them.

A lot of the weirdos are trying to force trains to be worse by carrying batteries. Almost everyone knows this is crazy, except some Americans with surprising influence.

Most trains are diesel-electric, so they already have batteries? For those unaware, in this type of engine the diesel engine is actually a generator which charges the batteries and then the electrical power is used to drive the train. It's actually more efficient for the torque needed.

Diesel-electric trains do not have traction batteries. And they don't even carry half of the reactants for their engines.

In the US, over 70% of commuter rail uses shared freight track and electric planes are not going to be moving freight.

Where have you heard of electric planes being so much more energy efficient than jets?

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