What an electric plane might look like, according to EasyJet.
Hope it's got a long extension cord and jumper cables.................
Posted on 09/28/2017 6:23:11 AM PDT by Red Badger
The auto industry is going electric. Is aviation next?
Major European carrier EasyJet announced Wednesday that it is teaming up with U.S. startup Wright Electric to build an all-electric airliner.
The aircraft they have in mind would handle short routes of 335 miles or less -- think New York to Boston or London to Paris.
EasyJet, a budget airline that specializes in shorter flights, said the new aircraft would cover 20% of its passenger journeys.
The airline said it has been working closely with Wright Electric this year and it hopes to have an electric commercial aircraft flying in the next decade.
"We can envisage a future without jet fuel and we are excited to be part of it. It is now more a matter of when not if a short haul electric plane will fly," said EasyJet CEO Carolyn McCall.
Wright Electric was founded in 2016 by a team of battery chemists, aerospace engineers and electric vehicle experts from NASA, Boeing (BA) and Cessna.
It received funding from Harvard University and startup incubator Y Combinator, which helped fund Dropbox, Reddit and Airbnb. EasyJet did not reveal the financial terms of its partnership with the startup.
Jeffrey Engler, the chief executive of Wright Electric, said that working with EasyJet is "a powerful validation of our technology approach."
EasyJet said the startup has already demonstrated its first two-seater plane, showing it can make the technology work on a smaller scale.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
What an electric plane might look like, according to EasyJet.
Hope it's got a long extension cord and jumper cables.................
The Electric Airplane.........Would ,make a great name for a Rock Band!...................
Flies once...recharges for 36-48 hours.
What will the recharge time be?
CNN will believe anything that matches with the DNC talking points.
Where are the solar panels and windmills?
Well, we don’t REALLY want the peasants to be able to move freely about and do so in a timely manner, now do we? That sort of mobility is only for the oligarchs.
The battery will be approximately 500 feet x 500 feet. No problem. s/
Probably just swap batteries?
I’ll take the conventional route, thanks..
I’m familiar with Wright Electric, their initial foray into business was with Wrightspeed. Their business model began with garbage trucks and has been successful. It’s by now field tested technology that works quite well for that purpose. Pricey, but by the time fuel and maintenance costs are calculated it pays out in about four years as I recall. They should be branching out into other large vehicles, transfer trucks, buses and RV’s rather than electric jets, in my opinion at least. I suppose with sufficient R&D funding they can do both.
I just don’t see how they’re going to get the thrust they need while still keeping the plane light (batteries are heavy!) and they’ll have a terrible turn around time because of long recharging. I don’t think they’ll have an actual plane within a decade.
My first boat had a bar of soap for a motor and would go s-l-o-w-l-y across the tub.
Doesn’t scale up in the real world.
How will a cord reach that long?
Will they have spools of electric cords in the plane that unroll as its flying?
Then there are retractable windmills that open in flight and the slipstream powers them, and they in turn power the electric motors, kind of like the emergency wind-driven generators on the A-6.
An endless supply of electric energy!
Heh...
The plane is a flying battery.
But would only have room for 4 passengers!..................No carry-ons..............
Tesla went with energy density but the need to cool the batteries as well as a possibility of explosion came with than energy density.
There is a somewhat less energy dense lithium battery with no such cooling needs or risk of explosion, however, that is making tremendous inroads in certain areas. That would be LiFePo4, lithium iron phosphate.
I’m not aware of any OEM manufacturers using LiFePo4 yet outside of electric bicycles, but it’s very popular for custom-built electric vehicles as well as retrofit into RV’s that have been converted to solar.
Dear CNN,
You are describing a ducted fan, and not a jet.
Perpetual motion!
Better have a secure latch on the battery box.
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