Comment by gpm
5 hours ago
Batteries are rapidly improving (on many metrics, but the relevant one here is increasing in energy density).
The range is apparently 125 miles electric, and 500 miles as a hybrid. That's not enough for Melbourne Sydney. Give it a couple doubling-times though (5 years total?) and it will be.
Meanwhile aircraft take forever to develop and there should be enough of a market in shorter hall flights to occupy a scaling company in the meantime anyways.
Canberra - Sydney is one of the busiest routes in Australia with Dash 8 and ATR turboprops on high rotation every day. I could see a small electric aircraft working pretty well there, modulo charging times.
> modulo charging times.
There's already an Australian electric trucking company trailing plug n'replace heavy battery packs (with a forklift).
That allows for fast turnover times while used batteries recharge at terminals.
Batteries aren't rapidly improving. Every single battery that has proposed higher energy density also has downsides in max discharge current. We may get at best like 10% improvement over what it is today.
That's max discharge current per cell though. You are going to have a lot of cells in a plane like this.
It’s taken thirty years for lithium batteries to double in energy density, and the rate of increase has tapered off recently.