I don't really think electric aviation is going to be viable until we have quite the breakthroughs in battery technology - at least not in the relevant market segments. Hobbyists and light...
I don't really think electric aviation is going to be viable until we have quite the breakthroughs in battery technology - at least not in the relevant market segments. Hobbyists and light aircraft sure, but a commercial airliner just can't really be viable if you have to haul around a big, BIG battery (factor of 100x in mass). So unless we can get seriously higher energy densities (hydrogen fuel cell? redox flow batteries?) it's not really viable for the part of the market that has the most notable toll on the climate.
Never mind that smaller aircraft are usually in the lower parts of the atmosphere where their impact is substantially lower anyway.
For most of the world, that's probably true, but for Norway specifically (and other areas with challenging geography), battery-powered aircraft might be a good solution. Norway has a lot of...
For most of the world, that's probably true, but for Norway specifically (and other areas with challenging geography), battery-powered aircraft might be a good solution.
Norway has a lot of airports for a country our size, most of them with short runways and near population centres. Getting to an island or across a fjord might be just a 30-minute flight but a 5-hour drive (including the ferry). Battery-powered aircraft are (at least in theory) very well suited for such short flights.
Yeah, ok. There's a lot of challenges to be sorted out here still though. You again want a decent capacity, so you're going to have to go for the size of a bus, rather than a smart car, so...
Yeah, ok. There's a lot of challenges to be sorted out here still though. You again want a decent capacity, so you're going to have to go for the size of a bus, rather than a smart car, so enormous amounts of scaling required from the prototypes we're seeing here. Nevermind that you'd still have to get these things safe enough for approval.
I grant ye, though, that norway has a rather unique geography problem.
I don't really think electric aviation is going to be viable until we have quite the breakthroughs in battery technology - at least not in the relevant market segments. Hobbyists and light aircraft sure, but a commercial airliner just can't really be viable if you have to haul around a big, BIG battery (factor of 100x in mass). So unless we can get seriously higher energy densities (hydrogen fuel cell? redox flow batteries?) it's not really viable for the part of the market that has the most notable toll on the climate.
Never mind that smaller aircraft are usually in the lower parts of the atmosphere where their impact is substantially lower anyway.
For most of the world, that's probably true, but for Norway specifically (and other areas with challenging geography), battery-powered aircraft might be a good solution.
Norway has a lot of airports for a country our size, most of them with short runways and near population centres. Getting to an island or across a fjord might be just a 30-minute flight but a 5-hour drive (including the ferry). Battery-powered aircraft are (at least in theory) very well suited for such short flights.
Yeah, ok. There's a lot of challenges to be sorted out here still though. You again want a decent capacity, so you're going to have to go for the size of a bus, rather than a smart car, so enormous amounts of scaling required from the prototypes we're seeing here. Nevermind that you'd still have to get these things safe enough for approval.
I grant ye, though, that norway has a rather unique geography problem.