Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throwawayboise 1807 days ago
Small tertiary airports often served by short regional flights don't have a lot of infrastructure. They have a couple of fuel trucks and a gate agent/security screener/baggage handler who might all be the same person.
1 comments

So instead of a fuel truck you have a battery swapper.

You'll have to ship the batteries somewhere they can charge/reprocess, but you also need to ship fuel, so it's a 1-to-1 tradeoff (you can ship the batteries by land).

Is it 1:1? There are a lot more KWh in a tanker truckload of jet fuel than in the same volume of batteries.
Not that much more (theoretically) - Al-air batteries could reach up to ~8kWh/kg, which is in the same range as jet fuel's 12ish. Aluminum is also denser than jet fuel, so per unit volume it could be even closer.