Nice bit of research into various projects. I was a big fan of the Airbus E-fan 1 and was very disappointed that it all amounted to nothing - it would have been an ideal recreational fixed wing aircraft. Fortunately the BAE 146 once destined for E-fan X is now to be used by Wright Electric, who will use molten salt batteries (Li-S being the most likely) to achieve 1000Wh/kg. This should achieve range >>1000km before significant aerodynamic improvements. The Aurora Flight Sciences Pegasus PAV crash does also add credibility to the view that you can and do get total power failures on electric VTOL/STOL (that makes 3 such crashes to date). The only way to mitigate this mode of failure in VTOL is low disk loading with automatic autorotation entry..
Great channel! I enjoy every episode. The audio on this episode has some type of "Left - right image separation" issue. This is the first time I've watched your videos with headphones, so not sure if I've ever heard this type of audio noise before. I wanted to let you know, so you could check into it.
With current technology (pun intended) electric aviation is a small niche market and a dead end for widespread commercial use. The proposed hybrids are worse for the environment, both in emissions and the enormous resources needed to build them…they are nothing more than green washing and marketing hype. I’ve been involved in electric aviation for almost 20 years and in that time we’ve seen almost no advancement in battery technology. It’s always promised to be just around the corner though…
This is pie in the sky. The weight of a Tesla battery is roughly 1300 lbs. it holds the energy of 7.5 gallons of jet A. That much jet fuel weighs about 50lbs. I work on airliners. We regularly dispatch planes with 50,000 gallons of fuel primarily 777’s and 747’s that complete 15 hour trips. To have enough energy to complete a 15 hour flight would require a battery that weighs 1,300,000 lbs. the max takeoff weight of a 747-8 is 987,500 lbs. It would require over 2 million KWH just to fuel one plane for that flight. There are tens of thousands of flights daily of varying lengths and the infrastructure required to power all those flights of planes that will not even be able to get off the ground due to the sheer weight of the batteries is is ludicrous.
You really think batteries are the best that they are ever going to get? You're also making an apples to potatoes comparison. The entire point of electric aviation is to create new markets, not try to compete directly.
@@jtjames79 works the same on smaller scales as well. Aircraft are designed to be as light as possible. It takes a significant amount of energy to develop lift (induced drag) to and overcome airframe drag. If you need to haul around a fuel source that weighs roughly 26 times what an ICE engine requires then there will be a tremendous loss of useful load and range. There is no comparison of apples or potatoes. It is merely a look at physics and math and the fact that the batteries will simply be much too heavy for the amount of energy they can carry to make this an economic reality. This electrification of everything is simply moving the source of pollution to another place. Pollution occurs somewhere in the process whether it is from coal plants, nuclear, geothermal, dams, wind, solar. Mining rare earth materials, smelting steel for windmills, fiberglass for blades, concrete for thousands of wind turbine bases, 80 gallons of oil per windmill for lubrication that needs to be changed on a schedule, miles and miles of wiring to get the power from the dispersed windmills and solar installations to the grid, most Ning and. Petroleum needed to produce the wiring steel conduit and insulation since that infrastructure is mostly underground plus a bunch of other infrastructure that will be needed. Aviation allows people and cargo to get to far away places rapidly and inexpensively. While it may sound cool it won’t be if you have a battery fire at altitude that melts the wings off. The entire 787 fleet was grounded for an extended period because the had issues with the large LI batteries catching fire. The plane runs mostly on electricity for everything except propulsion and needs very large batteries. Sure battery technology will advance but it will need to be far more than incremental to overcome an order of magnitude. The economics won’t work in an industry that has razor thin margins. People are for the most part cost conscious and convenience oriented. Not many markets will support a platform that has very short range and sub par useful loads.
@@jtjames79 Half the fuel (figuratively speaking if not the actual percentage) of combustion aviation power plant is the surrounding air that also provides the lift - not weight to the aircraft. Unlike batteries where the entire weight must be overcome the entire flight. Because all of the chemical composition providing the energy must be contained the higher the energy density a battery has, the closer it approaches to being a bomb.
@@jtjames79 wow hard to argue with this answer. You have convinced me that unicorn flatulence is the future of aviation.I guess my 40 years plus in aviation has been destroyed by your simple and profound response. Have you considered being a presidential advisor on this?
An excellent example of the limits of innovation that large aerospace concerns posses. They are structured for incremental improvement of existing products and although they do produce test beds that show true innovative potential - they are utterly incapable of the enterprise level innovation necessary to bring them to market. RR has the same problem with its RB211 derivatives and both of the major civil airframe makers are clearly stuck in the tube & wing paradigms that have served them for the last 40 years. ... No surprise that the deep innovations: Distributed propulsion, lifting bodies, autonomous control ... emerged from NASA and small enterprise. Exploiting these requires an innovative business model in parallel with technological innovation.
@@ElectricAviation Actually, I disagree. Fuel cell/hydrogen are a waste of time and introduce more weight to the aircraft. I hope you stay focused on battery powered.
@@TomUlcak Liquid Hydrogen fueling existing slightly modified gas turbine engines is the future. You want to talk about adding weight? Really? Liquid Hydrogen will get burned off and disappear just like jet fuel does now. A gigantic battery is massive dead weight, the same weight is there for the entire flight.
@@HansCSchellenberg Can you really see oil (products from refinement: gas, diesel, jet fuel and hydrogen) continuing? Your argument against means you want nothing to change. The development of battery aircraft will continue. Just as BEVs are disrupting legacy auto, electric aircraft will do the same. Buckle up. Many of us are terrified of change instead of embracing a better future. A future where oil does not exist.
@@TomUlcak Read this carefully. Nuclear power plants can make hydrogen through electrolysis. Carbon free. Existing gas turbine engines can burn hydrogen with minor modifications. Burning hydrogen and atmospheric oxygen in a gas turbine engine results in water vapor and no CO2.
So out of some of the pathways, buy into the rising innovators, or introduce new and somewhat exotic hardware into existing platforms. I like to think a Burt Rutan type of innovator is yet to appear, that will meld careful efficiencies with startling design that for some reason the rest of us have overlooked. In the meantime, what is to my mind the less than optimal Blackfly in the ointment is taking advantage of the gap introduced by the Ukraine war that is sucking the oxygen from smaller operators like SAAB or the Russians. It just feels like we are around the year of 1910 in the automobile and aviation development, waiting for a glimpse of the postwar progress.
It is insane to carry the dead weight and drag from the main ducts in forward flight. Cartercopter showed how to do this right 20 years ago. We need a video to explain why it has not been copied. Patents perhaps?
What a smooth-brained idea. At least when your electric car inevitably goes up in flames you're not trapped above the clouds. Not to mention the time spent "fueling" these things between flights will be far too slow and the plane will need replacing after about 5 years 'cos the batteries will be knackered. I don't fly often but I would never consider getting on an electric plane.
znso4 (zinc sulfate) has a theoretical energy density of 433Wh/kg, use a steel can and carbon felt/cloth/rod at the center as the air electrode, its the usual industrial zinc plating/making cell, recharging breathes out oxygen, usage takes oxygen back in, h2so4 in the solution after recharging east away any zinc oxides that air oxygen oxidizes, in the water solution
of course if you dont include the recharging equipment on board, only the zinc, then you have fuel cell weight + zinc metal at full 1.3kWh/kg@@ElectricAviation
note that the "higher voltage" in recharging will go fully to electrodeposition of zinc and to charge zn/zno nano layer ultracapacitor at 1.9V and over, while the cell is at 1.1V in znso4 water/h2so4 electrolyte, h2so4 like lead acid will make the cell freeze resistant. if no heating then all the input energy goes to electroplating/charging in various ways, no matter if the papers say 50% efficiency in charging@@ElectricAviation
When it comes to electric design, discussions get mixed up. Electric airplanes often have revolutionary aerodynamic designs which make flight more economical. If such a design really is more economical, you can just as well put conventional propulsion in it to save fuel. If you compare electric propulsion one on one to classic propulsion USING THE SAME AIRFRAME, you will see that electric propulsion with it's batteries will always lose.
Liquid Hydrogen with existing slightly modified gas turbine engines is the future. You think a battery powered airplane is going to go from San Francisco to Singapore in 17 1/2 hours like and A350 currently can? Will never happen. Batteries are for toys.
With the current energy density of batteries electric aircraft have SEVERELY limited range/endurance and capacity. This is unlikely to change significantly EvER. Airbus made an E-VTOL but it flew for only 12 minutes !
I like Boeing's business model - it's compelling. Insuring a certain number of Aircraft are destined to crash in order to upsell the necessary sensors and safety mechanisms is actually brilliant. I believe it has provided substantial motivation for buyers to pay for the necessary upgrades. However, passengers rarely know whether any particular Boeing obtained the necessary upgrages to allow the passengers to live - so it's best to avoid all Boeing Aircraft, if you care about your life.
To believe that all planes can be electrified is to have no understanding of physics, chemistry in energy density. If a battery could give the same range as a fuel, it would be a fuel.but batteries can only ever have about 1% of the range of fuels. Fuels also have a free 2 for 1 advantage in that the weight of the fuel goes to 0 when the plane lands, batteries never get lighter. Only small electric island hoppers make sense for small capacity 30min flights. Go learn some physics if you think otherwise.
My take from this is that boeing and airbus are misleading the market. They buy these promising companies, with the intention to dismantle them. History repeating: see big oil and tram company in California!! And many, many, many more.
If i will judge these VTOLS, none of them will pass for me, they're to much bulky, and very impractical for consumer use, their designs are already obsolete. ive already discovered new unique propulsion that the world never seen yet. ive already discovered new propulsion to make Dreadnoughts design and Air fortress possible and feasible.
Great info I didn’t know Boeing was buying their way in through Wisk and archer, might turn out to be a smart move they are not encumbered with all the old ways and vested interests on maintaining the status quo’s, legacy guys seem to struggle to pick up the new stuff and execute quickly, startups have to do or die 👍
I never heard of these compagnies before. It's interesting that you bring them up to the public eye. Seems there's electricity in the air.
Nice bit of research into various projects.
I was a big fan of the Airbus E-fan 1 and was very disappointed that it all amounted to nothing - it would have been an ideal recreational fixed wing aircraft. Fortunately the BAE 146 once destined for E-fan X is now to be used by Wright Electric, who will use molten salt batteries (Li-S being the most likely) to achieve 1000Wh/kg. This should achieve range >>1000km before significant aerodynamic improvements.
The Aurora Flight Sciences Pegasus PAV crash does also add credibility to the view that you can and do get total power failures on electric VTOL/STOL (that makes 3 such crashes to date). The only way to mitigate this mode of failure in VTOL is low disk loading with automatic autorotation entry..
Was just thinking of you today. Thank you for sharing!
👍💪✌
I appreciate that
I always look forward to new content. Excellent channel.
Many thanks for your work.
So nice of you
Great channel!
I enjoy every episode.
The audio on this episode has some type of "Left - right image separation" issue. This is the first time I've watched your videos with headphones, so not sure if I've ever heard this type of audio noise before. I wanted to let you know, so you could check into it.
OK. I did record the video the same way I usually do. I have a Rode NT mic. Thanks for the tip. I will look into it
With current technology (pun intended) electric aviation is a small niche market and a dead end for widespread commercial use. The proposed hybrids are worse for the environment, both in emissions and the enormous resources needed to build them…they are nothing more than green washing and marketing hype.
I’ve been involved in electric aviation for almost 20 years and in that time we’ve seen almost no advancement in battery technology. It’s always promised to be just around the corner though…
Fuel cells might give the breakthrough
This is pie in the sky. The weight of a Tesla battery is roughly 1300 lbs. it holds the energy of 7.5 gallons of jet A. That much jet fuel weighs about 50lbs. I work on airliners. We regularly dispatch planes with 50,000 gallons of fuel primarily 777’s and 747’s that complete 15 hour trips. To have enough energy to complete a 15 hour flight would require a battery that weighs 1,300,000 lbs. the max takeoff weight of a 747-8 is 987,500 lbs. It would require over 2 million KWH just to fuel one plane for that flight. There are tens of thousands of flights daily of varying lengths and the infrastructure required to power all those flights of planes that will not even be able to get off the ground due to the sheer weight of the batteries is is ludicrous.
You really think batteries are the best that they are ever going to get?
You're also making an apples to potatoes comparison.
The entire point of electric aviation is to create new markets, not try to compete directly.
@@jtjames79 works the same on smaller scales as well. Aircraft are designed to be as light as possible. It takes a significant amount of energy to develop lift (induced drag) to and overcome airframe drag. If you need to haul around a fuel source that weighs roughly 26 times what an ICE engine requires then there will be a tremendous loss of useful load and range.
There is no comparison of apples or potatoes. It is merely a look at physics and math and the fact that the batteries will simply be much too heavy for the amount of energy they can carry to make this an economic reality.
This electrification of everything is simply moving the source of pollution to another place. Pollution occurs somewhere in the process whether it is from coal plants, nuclear, geothermal, dams, wind, solar. Mining rare earth materials, smelting steel for windmills, fiberglass for blades, concrete for thousands of wind turbine bases, 80 gallons of oil per windmill for lubrication that needs to be changed on a schedule, miles and miles of wiring to get the power from the dispersed windmills and solar installations to the grid, most Ning and. Petroleum needed to produce the wiring steel conduit and insulation since that infrastructure is mostly underground plus a bunch of other infrastructure that will be needed.
Aviation allows people and cargo to get to far away places rapidly and inexpensively. While it may sound cool it won’t be if you have a battery fire at altitude that melts the wings off. The entire 787 fleet was grounded for an extended period because the had issues with the large LI batteries catching fire. The plane runs mostly on electricity for everything except propulsion and needs very large batteries.
Sure battery technology will advance but it will need to be far more than incremental to overcome an order of magnitude. The economics won’t work in an industry that has razor thin margins. People are for the most part cost conscious and convenience oriented. Not many markets will support a platform that has very short range and sub par useful loads.
@@JeffreyLangfels Bla bla bla, wall of preachy text. You really like to hear yourself talk.
@@jtjames79 Half the fuel (figuratively speaking if not the actual percentage) of combustion aviation power plant is the surrounding air that also provides the lift - not weight to the aircraft. Unlike batteries where the entire weight must be overcome the entire flight. Because all of the chemical composition providing the energy must be contained the higher the energy density a battery has, the closer it approaches to being a bomb.
@@jtjames79 wow hard to argue with this answer. You have convinced me that unicorn flatulence is the future of aviation.I guess my 40 years plus in aviation has been destroyed by your simple and profound response. Have you considered being a presidential advisor on this?
An excellent example of the limits of innovation that large aerospace concerns posses. They are structured for incremental improvement of existing products and although they do produce test beds that show true innovative potential - they are utterly incapable of the enterprise level innovation necessary to bring them to market. RR has the same problem with its RB211 derivatives and both of the major civil airframe makers are clearly stuck in the tube & wing paradigms that have served them for the last 40 years. ... No surprise that the deep innovations: Distributed propulsion, lifting bodies, autonomous control ... emerged from NASA and small enterprise. Exploiting these requires an innovative business model in parallel with technological innovation.
Living in exciting times. We are witness to an energy and transport revolution.
Thank you for the videos. I think it would be nice to invest a little in a microphone.
Noted!
Very informative summary 👍🏼
Thank You, Sir 🙏🏼🖖🏻
Glad you liked it!
Very interesting channel. Good job, UA-cam Algorithm.
Thank you very much!
Thanks sir .
Very informative content.
Glad you liked it
Good video. Please look into improving your sound quality.
Sorry about the sound. I held the mic really close unfortunately
its has been a while since you did a video on Fuel Cell/ Hydrogen aviation. Any new developments on this?
Thanks for pointing out. Need to look into that once again
@@ElectricAviation Actually, I disagree. Fuel cell/hydrogen are a waste of time and introduce more weight to the aircraft. I hope you stay focused on battery powered.
@@TomUlcak Liquid Hydrogen fueling existing slightly modified gas turbine engines is the future. You want to talk about adding weight? Really? Liquid Hydrogen will get burned off and disappear just like jet fuel does now. A gigantic battery is massive dead weight, the same weight is there for the entire flight.
@@HansCSchellenberg Can you really see oil (products from refinement: gas, diesel, jet fuel and hydrogen) continuing? Your argument against means you want nothing to change. The development of battery aircraft will continue. Just as BEVs are disrupting legacy auto, electric aircraft will do the same. Buckle up. Many of us are terrified of change instead of embracing a better future. A future where oil does not exist.
@@TomUlcak Read this carefully. Nuclear power plants can make hydrogen through electrolysis. Carbon free. Existing gas turbine engines can burn hydrogen with minor modifications. Burning hydrogen and atmospheric oxygen in a gas turbine engine results in water vapor and no CO2.
So out of some of the pathways, buy into the rising innovators, or introduce new and somewhat exotic hardware into existing platforms.
I like to think a Burt Rutan type of innovator is yet to appear, that will meld careful efficiencies with startling design that for some reason the rest of us have overlooked.
In the meantime, what is to my mind the less than optimal Blackfly in the ointment is taking advantage of the gap introduced by the Ukraine war that is sucking the oxygen from smaller operators like SAAB or the Russians. It just feels like we are around the year of 1910 in the automobile and aviation development, waiting for a glimpse of the postwar progress.
Nice job, EV aircraft are going to be great for the noise levels
BREAKING... Jaguar iPace BURNS whilst charging at the gym. UNEDITED
Geoff Buys Cars
More on hydrogen drone please
It is insane to carry the dead weight and drag from the main ducts in forward flight. Cartercopter showed how to do this right 20 years ago. We need a video to explain why it has not been copied. Patents perhaps?
I hope boeing does more electric aircraft design in house. It seems like boeing has been in decline in recent years compared to the airbus designs.
What a smooth-brained idea. At least when your electric car inevitably goes up in flames you're not trapped above the clouds. Not to mention the time spent "fueling" these things between flights will be far too slow and the plane will need replacing after about 5 years 'cos the batteries will be knackered. I don't fly often but I would never consider getting on an electric plane.
Meanwhile jets are wrecking the entire planet - wake up sleepyhead!
znso4 (zinc sulfate) has a theoretical energy density of 433Wh/kg, use a steel can and carbon felt/cloth/rod at the center as the air electrode, its the usual industrial zinc plating/making cell, recharging breathes out oxygen, usage takes oxygen back in, h2so4 in the solution after recharging east away any zinc oxides that air oxygen oxidizes, in the water solution
Interesting!
of course if you dont include the recharging equipment on board, only the zinc, then you have fuel cell weight + zinc metal at full 1.3kWh/kg@@ElectricAviation
note that the "higher voltage" in recharging will go fully to electrodeposition of zinc and to charge zn/zno nano layer ultracapacitor at 1.9V and over, while the cell is at 1.1V in znso4 water/h2so4 electrolyte, h2so4 like lead acid will make the cell freeze resistant. if no heating then all the input energy goes to electroplating/charging in various ways, no matter if the papers say 50% efficiency in charging@@ElectricAviation
When it comes to electric design, discussions get mixed up. Electric airplanes often have revolutionary aerodynamic designs which make flight more economical. If such a design really is more economical, you can just as well put conventional propulsion in it to save fuel. If you compare electric propulsion one on one to classic propulsion USING THE SAME AIRFRAME, you will see that electric propulsion with it's batteries will always lose.
Liquid Hydrogen with existing slightly modified gas turbine engines is the future. You think a battery powered airplane is going to go from San Francisco to Singapore in 17 1/2 hours like and A350 currently can? Will never happen. Batteries are for toys.
With the current energy density of batteries electric aircraft have SEVERELY limited range/endurance and capacity. This is unlikely to change significantly EvER. Airbus made an E-VTOL but it flew for only 12 minutes !
I like Boeing's business model - it's compelling. Insuring a certain number of Aircraft are destined to crash in order to upsell the necessary sensors and safety mechanisms is actually brilliant. I believe it has provided substantial motivation for buyers to pay for the necessary upgrades. However, passengers rarely know whether any particular Boeing obtained the necessary upgrages to allow the passengers to live - so it's best to avoid all Boeing Aircraft, if you care about your life.
Help me
To believe that all planes can be electrified is to have no understanding of physics, chemistry in energy density. If a battery could give the same range as a fuel, it would be a fuel.but batteries can only ever have about 1% of the range of fuels. Fuels also have a free 2 for 1 advantage in that the weight of the fuel goes to 0 when the plane lands, batteries never get lighter. Only small electric island hoppers make sense for small capacity 30min flights. Go learn some physics if you think otherwise.
Why can’t India build an electric six seater airplane that is competitively priced?
My take from this is that boeing and airbus are misleading the market. They buy these promising companies, with the intention to dismantle them. History repeating: see big oil and tram company in California!! And many, many, many more.
Help
If i will judge these VTOLS, none of them will pass for me, they're to much bulky, and very impractical for consumer use, their designs are already obsolete. ive already discovered new unique propulsion that the world never seen yet. ive already discovered new propulsion to make Dreadnoughts design and Air fortress possible and feasible.
wait until you have a battery fire..... cant be put out...remember LUTON AIRPORT?
Luton Airport was a diesel car
@@ElectricAviation diesel hybrid
bullocks@@esecallum
@@martinwoollett8468 check it yourself.
Great info I didn’t know Boeing was buying their way in through Wisk and archer, might turn out to be a smart move they are not encumbered with all the old ways and vested interests on maintaining the status quo’s, legacy guys seem to struggle to pick up the new stuff and execute quickly, startups have to do or die 👍
Yeah its a good strategy