[ramesh31]

>Until a significant change in battery density, electric planes aren't going to be a thing.

There's a big caveat there though. Current aircraft engines are extremely expensive to operate and maintain, regardless of fuel costs. Even a simple GA piston engine would cost more to operate than a small commercial EV aircraft's motors. Replacing turbines with electric motors will provide cost savings that actually make small commuter flights economical again. Kerosene and jet engines aren't going anywhere for the long haul flights. But the future for electric aviation is in the sub 300 mile regional commuter market, where it's faster than a train and has the simplicity of catching a bus.

See Eviation Alice for an example: https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a41453056/eviation-e...

Today's battery tech is just barely good enough at this point to start becoming useful for these kinds of flight profiles.

[bluGill]

Sub 300 miles the train should be faster door to door. Trains a better able to get into the middle of a city - airports both take a lot of space and are noisy so they get pushed to the edge of the city. Trains are also better able to integrate with a public transport system so they are easy to get to. Trains don't have the silly security lines (normally - though planes don't need them either). Trains also don't have large economic benefits from every seat full, so they can better handle someone making a last minute decision to go.

Note that I said should above. The reality is North America has terrible train service, and management (congress!) doesn't care: so airplanes end up better despite all reasons they are worse for short trips.

[majormajor]

It's hard for me to imagine (in the US) the government allowing an explosion in small commercial flights w/o TSA and all that rigamarole. If you get 10x, 100x the volume today, with a less upper-crust passenger base, the perceived security/terrorism risk probably starts getting talked about.

[JakeTheAndroid]

and there is already a massive shortage of ATC employees right now. At minimum this would need to be addressed and more than double the workforce of ATC. That's without accounting for any additional infra that might be needed to support a 10x or 100x in traffic.

[ramesh31]

>That's without accounting for any additional infra that might be needed to support a 10x or 100x in traffic.

The TSA requirement is nil for 10 person flights and these would be VFR only anyways. You would avoid a vast majority of the need for added ATC by operating between uncontrolled fields and relying on enhanced automation. The traditional airport model doesn't really apply when flights can be made so casually. Imagine a world where tiny runways that only service EVs are integrated into the city and you can hop between them as easily as catching a bus. Crosscountry travel would be also be possible via smaller hops, and cost less than a direct long haul jet liner ticket.

All of that is enabled by the orders of magnitude reduction in operating costs. EV Alice is claiming $200/hr to operate an aircraft that has the equivalent performance to a $1k+/hr turbine within the range limitation.

[JakeTheAndroid]

> Imagine a world where tiny runways that only service EVs are integrated into the city and you can hop between them as easily as catching a bus.

I mean, that sounds like a massive shift in infrastructure and city planning. I am not sure how efficient and affordable this would need to be to achieve that level of integration into daily society. Currently nothing, in the US at least, is setup to function this way. Whereas rail and roads are already deployed.

And again, this ignores any of the issues brought on by scale. If this is the way we want people traveling at a 10x or 100x rate, the airspace is going to be busier and likely will need some sort of coordination, whether ATC or some other mechanism.

[ToucanLoucan]

I struggle to conceive of a green future for aviation. I'm not saying we can't have planes, we absolutely should and for many applications they are the only answer: but high speed rail could offer a lot of what airlines currently do at significantly lower cost to both passengers and to the environment, and with less need for such extensive and radical safety features as are required for aircraft.

But just like, reading this comments about everything from batteries to from-ground power sources for ascent to dragging dead batteries after use... like, what if we just flew less? Yes for international travel that needs to happen at speed, a plane is basically the best option. But for... basically everything else, what if we just sacrificed some convenience to not be dumping industrial amounts of waste into the atmosphere?

I'm reminded of how much air quality improved almost worldwide when covid first hit and offices were shut down, offices that, I remind you, continued to function largely just fine after a period of adjustment to remote work. I'm obviously extremely for making all transportation tech more efficient, but an under-discussed element I feel in this is just... doing less shit? Moving fewer people when moving said people isn't really needed? Maybe not growing all the pineapple in one country and shipping it over to a different country to be packaged in plastic and then shipping those all over the world so everyone on the planet has ready access to pineapple, a ton of which is just going to go straight in the garbage because we don't actually need all that damn pineapple?

[hef19898]

Where do you confidently take the idea from, that electro motors for electric aircraft are cheaper to maintain than piston engines?