Heart aerospace completes first flight of largest electric aircraft

27 mins endurance (?) for $5 of power. Not bad. I rent a 172 and have been paying a $5/h fuel surcharge for the past few months due war in Iran - but at UK avgas prices 27 mins in my plane would be $55ish. Haven’t looked into the details but kind of crazy impact on economics of aviation if this size plane (10x 172 MTOW) can actually do useful short haul

Lots of places have water or mountains preventing car or train travel or making it go the long way around. Ferries are slow. Those would be natural applications for this. Tallinn-Helsinki city pair for example.

I wonder, if this can get approved or certified somehow now, if then modifications and improvements are relatively easy, as long as many aspects like the pilot interface stays the same. Battery technology improves constantly after all.

As an example, going from the current 200 km range to 400 could make it very useful in numerous regions certainly.

> It uses electric motors for zero-emission short hops up to 124 miles and backup reserve generators for an extended hybrid range up to 300–500 miles.

I was wondering how they're gonna deal with alternate airports and "fuel" reserves, but it seems they also have generators on board (supposedly used in case of emergency / unplanned detours).

Also a short video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEudbAjschs

Does anyone know if there is a theoretical limit for how energy dense a battery could be?

I wonder if there is a possible future where some sort of commercial long haul flights could be done by a fully electric plane. I've never gotten a great answer on this, and maybe we don't have an answer for certain since battery chemistry is some sense is still early days

Air transport in general, not just this airplane, could benefit from a catapult or winch takeoff at airports. It could be electric, it would reduce the most energy-demanding part of flight and make takeoff safer.

They could also use electric tugs to and from the runway, not just at the terminal.

GOOD POINT by my wife. Is there a super high density battery they could use just to have available to count for reserves even if it’s one time use. Just plan never to use it in normal flight.

> Powered entirely by batteries, X1 used approximately $5 worth of electricity during its first flight

It's fun to look at the arithmetic behind this to pull out the assumptions. To lift a 25000 lb mass 1100 ft in the air requires just over 10kWh, but that's assuming no air resistance or friction, so let's triple the energy needed to 30 KWh.

Let's add another 10 kWh for forward distance covered (assuming it was mostly gliding). Then let's pad it up to 50kWh for anything else. If they say that was $5 in electricity that implies an electricity price of $0.10/kWh, which is possible with utility scale solar.

I'd guess the actual flight time was only 10 of the 27 minutes, 30 kWh used over 10 minutes is 300kW of peak power.

300kW seems very low compared to equivalent jet powered planes, which output an order of magnitude more power for a 30 seater plane. Even if the electric drivetrain is far more efficient than a jet engine it stretches credulity.

Which of my numbers is off?

It’s funny they tell you the weight at takeoff. That’s uh not changing.

At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win. I wonder why they don't push the idea of it being a hybrid more, as it seems to me a lot of useful routes are going to rely on the generators.

I'd love to see something that can do around 250mi. It would be nice to electrify transit in the Texas Triangle if we end up never being able to actually build useful HSR.

I wish them luck on continuing to try!

could we relax the security around electric planes, because they don't carry as much highly explosive material?

that could make it much more convenient and appealing as a travel method

beta also seems to do their flight testing in plattsburgh, ny, anyone know why?

Electric regional air travel is something I’m really excited about.

Electric aircraft makes no economic sense, but I'd want to see them flying one day nonetheless.

could someone explain to me how that $5 spend is lying to me. i know elec is cheap, but that cheap?

VTOL aircraft have the same distance capabilities and make more sense in a lot more scenarios than this, with way more flexibility. It’s obviously larger but I’m just not sure of potential advantages over other modes of transport currently available and in the near future

> Largest Electric Aircraft

"Largest" is just straight-up a false claim. [Solar Impulse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse) and [Helios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment_Helios_Prototype...) were electric and had over double the wingspan, just to name a few of the ~dozen examples.

Heart's engineers should be proud of this genuinely impressive accomplishment, but they need to rein in whoever is writing their PR pieces.