New Alice Starts Taxi Testing

[BBerson]

That's 1.2 megawatt electric substation. How much does that cost?

Oh wait. For a 20 minute quick charge that's 3.2 megawatts substation for one airplane, I think.
How many airplanes are they charging at once?

 

[addaon]

Over 500 A water-cooled charging cables are standard, they end up thinner (but still hefty) — see the 250 kW Tesla chargers for an example.

Electric cars have cells that prioritize energy density over power density. That’s not yet an option for aircraft, and is always a tradeoff. In general the discharge and charge cycles of a cell are very symmetric — if you can discharge faster (lower internal resistance) you can also charge faster.

See previous analysis for best guesses on flight duration.

 

[Victor Bravo]

I am fully aware that there is probably a whole other set of problems to deal with, but after just reading about how much of a charging station would need to be built at every airport in the carrier's route system, and how long it might really take to recharge the batteries, and how many charge cycles the batteries may provide before replacement..... the idea of a swappable chemical fuel cell on a quick disconnect "bomb rack" under the airplane is starting to make a lot more sense to me. An environmentally reasonable fuel cell made out of seaweed and Cap'n Crunch and peanut butter may just be available before the magic battery.

 

[rv6ejguy]

I've been reading about multiple electric aircraft recently so I don't recall which airplane it was applicable to but they stated about 1/2 hour to charge per hour of flight. For short flights like most of these are actually capable of, that doesn't seem like it would affect typical commuter turn around times too much.

 

[Tiger Tim]

I've been reading about multiple electric aircraft recently so I don't recall which airplane it was applicable to but they stated about 1/2 hour to charge per hour of flight. For short flights like most of these are actually capable of, that doesn't seem like it would affect typical commuter turn around times too much.

To build a little on that:

Admittedly my work plane seats just shy of 200 but for that many it’s all we can do to get turned around at the gate in an hour and it’s generally unloading/grooming/loading that drives that time. When the plane is parked it’s typically hooked up to ground power so the action of plugging in right away is already there, we’d just need a beefier cable for that if we were to charge a whole airplane.

There are still problems IMO with making an electric airliner work, but I just want to point out that plugging it in isn’t one of them. Folks need to pick a different hill to die on.

 

[Victor Bravo]

The charging numbers that have been posted on this thread are up into the megawatts. Airliners and short haul commuters are usually based at regional/national size airports, where there are literally dozens (or here in LA hundreds) of aircraft operating at one time.

So it seems to me that the electric airline system would pretty much have to include a nuclear powerplant innstalled at any airport where there are X number of aircraft in operation. Otherwise everyone's lights would dim in the city surrounding the airport whenever an airplane needs to be charged.

I'm a big fan of nukes as one of the more viable solutions to our energy problem, so I don't mind the idea at all. But putting a nuke plant at an airport would become an expensive hill that a lot of environmentalists and politicians would try to die on.

 

[rv6ejguy]

That will be an issue anywhere where sufficient numbers of EVs of all types show up to charge. In the early days here, a handful of 10-19 seat aircraft like this won't tax the grid too much but that will soon change as most places have neither the generation nor transmission infrastructure in place to support widespread charging of of EVs. This is already happening in CA where only 3% of the cars are electric. When you start talking about 1MW/hr. + batteries, that becomes significant really fast.

 

[mcrae0104]

A taildragger? In a bizjet? Really?

I decided not to invest because I knew I couldn’t set down my cocktail before takeoff.

How many gasoline-powered airplanes have had fuel tank fires in flight?

One more than whatever number Pierre Salinger picks.

 

[rv6ejguy]

Looking at Flight Aware, it doesn't appear that Alice has made any more flights after the maiden flight nearly 6 weeks ago. That would be strange for a test aircraft unless something serious showed up on that first flight requiring extensive modification or that it was just a milestone flight required to unlock more seed money or increase company valuation.

 

[mcrae0104]

I like Alice but I’m waiting for the Trixie prototype before I invest.

 

[Voidhawk9]

Looking at Flight Aware, it doesn't appear that Alice has made any more flights after the maiden flight nearly 6 weeks ago. That would be strange for a test aircraft unless something serious showed up on that first flight requiring extensive modification or that it was just a milestone flight required to unlock more seed money or increase company valuation.

They're still charging the batteries back up.

 

[Kyle Boatright]

I like Alice but I’m waiting for the Trixie prototype before I invest.

I'm holding out for Mary Ann.

 

[Bill-Higdon]

I like Alice but I’m waiting for the Trixie prototype before I invest.

Just don't Forget her Husband. I here he launched her to the Moon