[thescriptkiddie]

Electric passenger aircraft are not and will never be viable, but I would sure like to see super lightweight electric sustainer motors for gliders. Paired with regenerative braking and/or solar cells on the wings you could probably keep a glider in the air indefinitely.

[mliben]

Ampaire (among others) is already making great strides in general aviation. With significant improvements in specific energy (see QuantumScape, HyPoint) and specific power improvements (what we are working on) coming in the next few years, shorter flight routes that were previously not profitable will become profitable (300-500 mile range, > 10s of passengers)- and that’s only the first step. Maintenance cost reduction and of course fuel cost reduction create a very good business case.

[thescriptkiddie]

To clarify my stance, building an electric version of a dash 8 (for example) is totally possible, but range would be limited and I doubt it would be cost competitive with high speed rail. There may be a niche for planes like that servicing rural airports and chartered flights for the wealthy, but you're never going to fly transatlantic routes.

[gwerbret]

> Electric passenger aircraft are not and will never be viable

Why not? "Never" is a very significant word, but if you have sound reasons for using the word here, I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on the matter.

[thescriptkiddie]

Maybe not never ever, but not within our lifetimes. Not without some massive unforeseen breakthrough in battery technology or life extension. Electrifying a large long-haul commercial passenger aircraft like a 737 would require batteries with a specific energy at least two orders of magnitude better than current state of the art. For reference, actual batteries have improved less than one order of magnitude in the past century.

Really the closest thing that seems plausible would be a hybrid design using small batteries to provide peak power for takeoff and fuel cells to provide the bulk of the energy. But I'm not confident that would actually be significantly better than manufacturing synthetic fuels with renewable energy and burning them in traditional jet engines.