On 3/31/2023 3:04 AM, Hesham ElBakoury wrote:
Companies are lookinto building electric flights. For example, hundreds of
them are building *eVTOLs*: electric vertical take-off and landing
vehicles. It’s a horrible acronym for small aircraft that take off and land
like a helicopter and fly like a plane.
I do not know when we will have an electric plane that travel from San
Francisco or Europe to Japan?
In a fairly long time.
The current electric planes "in production" are typically low range, low
capacity -- from 1 seat to 4 seat. The next planes to come to market
will probably address the "short flight" market, a few hundred miles.
Further than that, and the weight of the batteries becomes prohibitive.
Europe to Japan would require some major advances in battery technology.
For long distance, "climate conscious" planes are much more likely to
burn some kind of green fuel like bio-diesel (or "bio kerosene") or
maybe hydrogen. We might see electric powered airships, modern version
of the Zeppelins, but these would be much slower than current airliners.
-- Christian Huitema
