1st Electric Aircraft for Commerical Flight!

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Power: 750 hp
Turbo Beaver: 680 hp
Old Beavers had 450 hp
Guessing the wing is the same; more weight?
Keeping the CG in the same place must mean some batteries are near the firewall and an equal number aft.
 
Seven minutes, as demonstrated to date...

Pretty long leap in logic, not to mention engineering, to get from a seven minute hop in a Beaver to this claim:

" Roei Ganzarski, CEO of magniX, said the electric era of aviation was coming and that the transport industry was "ripe for a massive disruption."

"Now we are proving that low-cost, environmentally friendly, commercial electric air travel can be a reality in the very near future," he added."
 
Originally Posted by wwillson
Any idea what the range/duration is?
One article said 30 minutes in the air, with a required 30 minute reserve. (It was when they first starting building it, so maybe they acheived that.)

Great for seaplane short-haul duty. If the engine quits, lots of "runway" below you. Short routes near Seattle-Vancouver for people in too much of a hurry for a ferry boat. Good business model using this.

I'm looking for facts for later: battery weight, placement, total aircraft weight compared to a turbo beaver, etc.,
 
The main advantage of aviation fuel is the aircraft gets lighter as fuel is consumed.

With batteries, as they deplete the aircraft is still the same weight. Not good
 
Originally Posted by cjcride
The main advantage of aviation fuel is the aircraft gets lighter as fuel is consumed.

With batteries, as they deplete the aircraft is still the same weight. Not good


While that is an advantage- the main advantage of liquid fuel is power density.

A Tesla battery, at roughly 1,200 lbs has the energy of about 2.5 gallons of gasoline.

So, to replace the 50 gallons (330 lbs, or so) of aviation fuel in a 3,000lb airplane like a Beaver, you'll need about 25,000 lbs of battery...


We are a very long way from commercial electric air travel....unless that travel is only a few miles...
 
Another "spruce goose" with a much longer flight time. But I guess you have to try to start sometime/somewhere.
 
Saw the flight on news program.
Looked like pilot only in a modified PT-6 powered Beaver airframe.
No useful range, no useful payload.
 
Very nice, how did they over come the FAA not allowing the Lithium Ion battery's on a commercial plane? Do they have a bomb bay to store the battery in?
You know so if it catches fire then they can just drop them and either they will start a nice forest fire or just pollute the water they are flying over?
It is the same as jets jettisoning fuel to land in an emergency.
I just hope they don't put the battery's in the wings like a fuel tank, not good to have the wings burn off.
And are they for real they say the "Engine" maker is in Redmond WA? Since when did an electric motor become an engine? Makes you wonder when they don't get the simple things correct.
Maybe they can add solar cells on top the wings and a wind mill on the tail, and regen the main motor in a dive, so it could fly by climbing and diving.
Does this mean what was old is new again? The return to propeller driven planes?
 
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Approaching it from another angle ( don't mind the pun), a Tesla battery might hold 85 kWh of energy. The plane motor can put out 750 hp which they might use during takeoff. . This is 560 kW. If it flew at full power for 7 minutes, that would be 560 x 7/60 = 65 kWh. Almost done. Take Off ! The energy density as suggested earlier is just not enough. They need to stop this nonsense before all the greenies start spouting off about electric aeroplanes. Better yet. Load them up and take off towards Hawaii !
laugh.gif
 
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By the way, the normal payload of a Beaver is 2000 lbs, not even enough for two Tesla battery packs. Sure, remove the gas engine and maybe you can have a total of three battery packs. Not much upside. That's why the flight was seven minutes long.

Also, commercial sea plane flights are available from Vancouver BC to Seattle on gasoline powered planes. They take one hour of flight time.
 
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Hey that gives new meaning to a 5 minute take off limit.

There is a reason why there are no battery powered planes tearing up the Airshow circuit. We can (and have) build electric aviation stuff quickly. But when it does not work, the project gets sidelined.
 
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