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Comment by vel0city | Hacker News Reader

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. I wonder why they don't push the idea of it being a hybrid more, as it seems to me a lot of useful routes are going to rely on the generators.

I'd love to see something that can do around 250mi. It would be nice to electrify transit in the Texas Triangle if we end up never being able to actually build useful HSR.

I wish them luck on continuing to try!

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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.

>Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives

See also: Boston and NYC to Cape Cod and the Hamptons.

The electric/green angle helps with these kinds of routes too.

There's regular DEN to COS flights by United, every hour on the hour. Sometimes can be faster than driving, would be a great one to replace. Also ORD to MKE. A lot of small routes that are about 100 miles that are equally inconvenient to drive.

ORD to MKE is a 60-90 minute drive depending on traffic. When you account for going through ORD security, boarding, taxiing at ORD, etc. I'm not so sure that it's a win for travel time. Depends on where you're starting from in the Chicago area, I suppose.

Your DEN to COS suggestion would probably be quite popular for skiers coming in that want to avoid renting a car and would enjoy the electric hop to avoid a 2hr drive.

The real winning route would be two airports separated by ~100miles that still have a 3+hr drive, or two small regional airports where security time is negligible (that's certainly NOT O'hare, in my experience at least lol) Flights leaving GRB to northern Michigan would be perfect for this though since the alternative is to drive around Lake Michigan.

ORD to MKE is a (mostly) silly flight if that's your whole trip.

ORD to MKE is reasonable as part of a X -> ORD -> MKE one stop; at least when I was using MKE, I'd always need a stop (Midwest was too expensive for me) and ORD was an option, although I think I always went through DFW or PHX.

>"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.

> Millions of people in the US live in places a 2+hr drive to the nearest major airport

If its >2 hour drive to the airport this plane probably isn't going to take you there on pure-electric power, that's my point. If you drive 65MPH for two hours, you've gone further than this thing can fly (on pure battery).

Ish. Cars are constrained by having to stay on roads (mostly). Planes can go "as the crow flies", although they're limited to airports. Long range electric helicopters is what's really gonna change the game.

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.

What happens when a large amount of these batteries get submerged in fresh or salt water?

They sink.

Nothing good, but if you have to ditch in the water then batteries are the least of your concerns.

They burn. But generally speaking, if the plane's structural integrity is degraded enough that the water gets into the battery casings, everyone onboard is probably already dead.

Depends. Everyone survived the famous ditch in the Hudson.

Would the famous ditch in the Hudson have broken the casings of the batteries?

Island hopping is the usual sales pitch for these planes.

Maybe from mainland to islands if there's enough range for the round-trip. Otherwise many islands are not going to have the electrical infrastructure to handle the charging demands.

I would not expect the charging demands to be that big a deal on a plane this small, at least. I would guess the battery is about the same size as a modern long range electric pickup. A garden variety 400 kW fast charger would probably be sufficient. Surely any island big enough for a proper airport could handle that.

I guess it depends. Some island airports aren't much more than a landing strip.

Plopping down solar panels and big batteries for an of-grid charger for these planes seems like a solvable problem.

Portland to Seattle is about 140 miles and has constant flights. Even if a small part of the flight uses fuel, that’s major cost savings.

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

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.

My guess is most of those are passengers from Milwaukee connecting in Chicago. You could take the train, but then you'd be in downtown Chicago, and have to take Uber or the El to O'Hare. That's a big hassle and takes a while.

San Francisco - Napa Valley

Booze Cruise aka "Winetasting" for the tech crowd

Fly sustainable, guzzle some fermented bio grapes, ...

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

Yeah, reading a bit more it does seem like this experimental version is to really test the battery electric components but the actual plane they're looking to put on sale seems to be sold as like a plug-in hybrid.

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

I agree these numbers are likely to improve. I'm purely thinking about this particular model at this particular time.

I'm mostly just wondering why they're making such a big point talking about this being a battery electric plane when the actual commercial variant they hope to sell will likely be mostly used like a plug-in hybrid (I'd imagine).

> The ES-30 is a conventional fixed-wing, 30-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner

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...

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