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by variaga
2379 days ago
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>Tesla currently is at around 260Wh/kg thus roughly ten times the amount of potential energy needed to get to 10.000m altitude. That's the energy - assuming 100% efficient conversion of battery power to altitude - to lift _only_ the battery to altitude (and then immediately fall back down). Actual engines are nowhere near that efficient and you'll presumably want to lift the rest of the airplane too. Then you have to keep using power to keep the plane aloft and land it safely. Your hypothetical 2000Wh/kg future batteries still have a specific energy less than 1/5 that of aviation fuel (Jet A = 11950Wh / kg). A 15-seater electric with 1000km range based on those magic (7.5x better than state-of-the-art) batteries would instantly upgrade to a 5000km range if you tore out the batteries and replaced them with a gas tank of equal weight. Batteries need a ~40x improvement in their specific energy density to make sense as an energy source for aircraft that depend on thrust for lift. Tragically, physics doesn't care that battery powered planes would be cool. |
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I don't know how I can say "no" strongly enough.
If you only need 500km of range, it does not matter a single bit that jet fuel would increase your range from 1000km to 5000km. (Or 100km/180km/5000km respectively, if you want to talk about more contemporary batteries.)
Two things matter. Is the range good enough? How much does it cost? Jet fuel should not even be considered when answering the first question.