90-seat Elysian airliner: 800-1,000-km range on batteries alone

New Atlas ^ | January 11, 2024 | By Loz Blain

[Red Badger]

Elysian says the world is vastly underestimating the capabilities of battery-electric airlinersElysian Aircraft

A Dutch startup says everyone's hugely underestimating the potential of battery-electric aircraft – that it's possible to build large battery-electric airliners covering distances most assume we'll need hydrogen for. Elysian plans to prove it.

The company doesn't believe it'll need some giant leap in batteries to do it, either; it says it can take 90 passengers some 800 km (497 miles) using a pack with 360 Wh/kg. Amprius, meanwhile, was shipping 450-Wh/kg cells back in 2022, and Chinese giant CATL launched a 500-Wh/kg "condensed" battery last year. Assuming some improvements, Elysian says it'll hit 1,000-km (621-mile) range figures, at which point the E9X aircraft could feasibly cover around 50% of all scheduled commercial flights.

It's quite a leap from the conventional thinking, which assumes that batteries are far too heavy to build airliners around, and really only suitable for small aircraft flying sub-400-km (250-mile) routes. Indeed, most of the action in clean aviation over the last several years has been in the gaseous hydrogen space, with liquid hydrogen a few years behind that and other solutions like ammonia popping up around the fringes.

[Moltke]

Not getting onto any plane built by a company which derives its name from the afterlife.

Must be another one of those Dutch assisted suicide schemes.

“Ladies and Gentlemen this is your captain speaking. My crew and I will now take to our parachutes. For the rest of you, don’t say you weren’t warned. Good-bye.”