Vermont-based Beta Technologies welcomed one of its electric Alia conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft back to Burlington Tuesday after completion of an ambitious cross-country trip. The plane spent more than a month barnstorming from coast to coast, landing at 82 airports in an effort to demonstrate its flexibility and ability to operate in a variety of environments.
The Vin Fiz pusher made the coast-to-coast trip with only 75 stops and it also required a large support crew to follow along via ground transportation. That was in 1911. Sorry if I do not see this flight over a hundred years later as either new or progress but nostalgic.
Well, it’s got more range that the Wright Flyer - I can give them that. As to the whole ground crew and 70odd flights, not to mention the cost - that sure is going to allow Utahans (is that how you would spell it??) to intermingle. After a hundred trips hauling tools, spares, chargers and what apparently was a huge bag of BS for politicians to feed on, the company of some nice ordinary folk would have been welcome.
Isn’t the point of this story that this electric aircraft required 82 stops in order cross the country? Fact: take any existing airframe today, replace the engine with the best electric motor, and the other weight savings with the best batteries, the result is one-twelfth the range at the same performance and useful load. That is not opinion, but physics. I have yet to hear an argument for electric aircraft besides, “They are cool”, and “They make people feel good.” This article and accompanying video are no exception.
Red.Jimbo and the rest of the group making negative replies. I can give you one very good argument why this is going to happen. It is called hourly cost of operations which should be less than 1/4 that to operate a turbine or piston powered aircraft. This is for energy and maintenance. It should also have enhanced safety in addition to be quieter and cleaner which will keep the airport neighbors happier. The Beta CTOL has a max range of 336 nm, so, a realistic all weather range is probably 200 to 250 nm. This will be quite useful for local commuter flights and local air freight.
On a recent flight from West Desert Airpark, which is a small airport for mostly experimental LSA aircraft west of Provo, Utah, I flew to Delta, Utah. I just happened to find the Beta ALIA CX300 on their trip back from California and was able to take a few pictures and speak to the pilot and the rest of the crew. After I showed a picture of the Beta aircraft to one of the West Desert managers, he told me that the State of Utah had already approached them on putting in a charging network for this and similar aircraft. Even if these aircraft were not cleaner and quieter, this would happen simply based on economics. I just wonder when the last internal combustion engine will be build.
A citation is very much needed for 1/4 the operating costs. Does that include battery replacement/overhaul costs? Is it 1/4 the energy and maintenance for an similar airframe or a similar payload (since battery electric will require much larger and heavier aircraft for the same payload)?
Even granting that your energy and maintenance costs are 1/4, you still have the capital cost of a much larger aircraft for a given payload and the cost of pilot/ground crew, which will be the same, and the reduced utility of less range and reliance on charging stations, which will effect resale value and therefore depreciation.
I’ll grant you noise. It may be safer due to less risk of engine failure, or maybe more dangerous due to battery risks. Certainly safety margins around range will be way more dangerous than piston or turbine. I would not want to be flying IFR in these things unless the alternates were clear and a million and there was no ice.
It would be fantastic if these things worked because there are so many advantages. But I don’t think the economics make anywhere close to sense until pack density gets above ~1200 wh/kg.
The 1/4 comes from numbers I have seen kicked around for some of the electric planes Anyway, I have a Chevrolet Bolt which gets about 4 miles/KWhr and I pay 11 cents a KWhr so that is a bit less than 3 cents/mi and there is no scheduled maintenance. In just over 100,000 miles, the only maintenance other than tires is that I have changed the rear wiper. If you got 25 miles/gal and paid $3.00 per gal, that would be 12 cents per mile with oil changes adding at least another cent/mile plus at least another cent or 2 for brakes, etc. Almost all my braking is regenerative so there is almost no wear on the brakes. Lyten has Lithium Sulfur batteries that have about twice the energy denisty as the current Lithium Nickle Manganese Cobalt (NMC) batteries and project that they will have about 3 times the energy density by 2030 but that will still be short of your desired 1200 wh/kg. I have seen that the theortical valve for Lithium Sulfur is 2600 wh/kg but we never get there but maybe they will achieve 1200 wh/kg.