[edraferi]

The article says Lithium Ion batteries deliver 1/15 the power per pound of traditional aviation fuel. That leaves a lot of room for improvement...

[sojournerc]

They also don't get lighter as they lose energy, which is key to large passenger jet operations. Large plants often take off heavier than the plane is rated to land normally expecting to burn that weight in flight.

[llukas]

We built fuel burning planes for last 100+ years. They're optimized to take advantage of burning fuel, it doesn't mean it is only option.

[NikolaeVarius]

What kind of HN comment is this?

They're optimized for energy efficiency? Yes? What does this gotcha response even mean?

[llukas]

All parts of plane are optimized to work with jet engine.

For plane designed from ground up as electric fact that jets land lighter than take off is not relevant.

It is only relevant if you want to retrofit electric engine on jet engine optimized chassis - which is not only possible way.

Bit more info on how thought process goes: https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-i-designed-...

[mannykannot]

Batteries have a much lower specific energy that hydrocarbon fuels to start with, and then that fact that the aircraft weight does not decrease over the duration of the flight is one more disadvantage (currently a second-order issue, given the first difference.)

These are constraints that can be designed around, and you have more freedom to do so when designing from scratch, but doing so is not a optimization, it is a straightforward trade-off between weight and duration. There's no optimal hump on that line.

[FabHK]

It’s more 1/50. (It’s 1/15 effectively after accounting for the fact that electric engines waste far less energy than internal combustion engines).