Nice article, thanks for sharingDutch startup has plans for 90 passenger 500 mile battery-electric aircraft. Instead of electrifying a modern turboprop, they looked to the 707 and DC-8 narrow body jets. They were fuel guzzlers designed for long range, so they also needed to carry a high energy mass, about 50% of total mass.
It has a turbine generator for the "reserve fuel" function. Lighter than batteries and not zero emission, but only used for less than 1% of flights.
Dutch Startup Elysian Pursues Large Battery-Electric Airliner | Aviation Week Network
Subsidiary of Fokker owner Panta claims 90-seat aircraft is feasible on near-term battery technology.aviationweek.com
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Electric planes
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If you read through the article it doesn't sound that rosy. There are so many ifs and buts. Especially the assumption of 300 wh/kg batteries already exists today, makes me wonder if they are blowing hot air.Dutch startup has plans for 90 passenger 500 mile battery-electric aircraft. Instead of electrifying a modern turboprop, they looked to the 707 and DC-8 narrow body jets. They were fuel guzzlers designed for long range, so they also needed to carry a high energy mass, about 50% of total mass.
It has a turbine generator for the "reserve fuel" function. Lighter than batteries and not zero emission, but only used for less than 1% of flights.
Dutch Startup Elysian Pursues Large Battery-Electric Airliner | Aviation Week Network
Subsidiary of Fokker owner Panta claims 90-seat aircraft is feasible on near-term battery technology.
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Etna
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300 Wh/kg do exist today but they are very expensive (ten to twenty times more than automotive grade), which may be acceptable for this type of application.
I have closely studied their two technical publications and it's pretty good stuff actually. For a change, no laws of physics have been violated in the making of this aircraft.
However the economics of such a high takeoff weight aircraft may prove a bit challenging. It is incredibly heavy, nearly three times as heavy as a conventional propulsion aircraft.
As a result, there are no civilian turboshafts available that have the power levels suitable for their hybrid design, which pretty much relegates it to an academic exercise.
JetFalcon
Member
If there were electric planes I wouldn't mind living next to an airport.
But would that mean prices near airports will go up because it won't be seen as a bad thing?
I would consider living next to an airport like a good thing because you could just be 1 mile away from the airport and just go anywhere you want and get home faster. One less expense of finding a taxi / uber to airport. You could possibly bike or E-scooter to the airport and park for free. I used to rent an apartment next to John Wayne Airport and I never heard any noise. But I did later rent another house in Newport Beach back bay area and it was directly under the take off area for planes. The roommate that lived there said she is a pilot and pilots at John Wayne Airport are required to use less power to engines to make less noise.
But would that mean prices near airports will go up because it won't be seen as a bad thing?
I would consider living next to an airport like a good thing because you could just be 1 mile away from the airport and just go anywhere you want and get home faster. One less expense of finding a taxi / uber to airport. You could possibly bike or E-scooter to the airport and park for free. I used to rent an apartment next to John Wayne Airport and I never heard any noise. But I did later rent another house in Newport Beach back bay area and it was directly under the take off area for planes. The roommate that lived there said she is a pilot and pilots at John Wayne Airport are required to use less power to engines to make less noise.
shahryaran
Member
EVer Hopeful
Active Member
Or perhaps ... an electric aircraft that recharges the batteries on the way down
Like a regenerative braking process
Like a regenerative braking process
Not really. If one want's to fly faster than the winds (quite helpful to get anywhere or even station-keep), the huge displacement of an airship causes huge amounts of drag which requires a lot of thrust (energy) to counter. Generally, thinner wings do as well or better, even though they have to balance L/D (Lift/Drag) with their thrust.
MontyFloyd
Member
Dutch startup has plans for 90 passenger 500 mile battery-electric aircraft. Instead of electrifying a modern turboprop, they looked to the 707 and DC-8 narrow body jets. They were fuel guzzlers designed for long range, so they also needed to carry a high energy mass, about 50% of total mass.
It has a turbine generator for the "reserve fuel" function. Lighter than batteries and not zero emission, but only used for less than 1% of flights.
Dutch Startup Elysian Pursues Large Battery-Electric Airliner | Aviation Week Network
Subsidiary of Fokker owner Panta claims 90-seat aircraft is feasible on near-term battery technology.
Bad design, not commercially viable.
My counters to each point
1. While you can put some batteries in the wings, it will be impossible to put enough in there. Alternatively is a wing design to have big hatches for a larger area to put batteries in, which makes the wing heavier and reduces range. Round fuselage is not idea for square batteries.
2. Low wing also means smaller diameter propellers, which are less efficient (there is other concerns with propellers close to ground). Longer gear is a trivial amount of weight, actually.
3. They mention what I said in 2, and it is correct. They do not mention using contra-rotating propellers (on same shaft) that will increase efficiency and allow a higher RPM motor (which I think is more efficient also). The down side is more noise.
4. Gas turbine backup power, that is good, but of course add complexity
5. I see "But" and "or" there, does not look worked out. What about a stabalator? What about canard? Why T when conventional works just fine?
and the "Sizing Results"
only 11.8% (useful) payload. What is it to the "Reference turboprop" they refer to, and what would its payload be?
MontyFloyd
Member
My take:
The biggest issue with an BEP is internal volume for the large amount of batteries it will need. Current tube planes create challenges to make this work.
I propose a flying wing easily has the internal volume, performance, strength, and plenty of real world data to verify.
Fact: you can walk in the wings of these aircraft.
(Would not be that hard to make some of batteries packs swap able for a little more mass.)
Northrop VB-35
The 8.5%-scale, remotely piloted X-48B
IOW, stop trying to fit a square plug in a round hole!
(just look at how Tesla reinvented the car to make BEV work! same with BEP!
The biggest issue with an BEP is internal volume for the large amount of batteries it will need. Current tube planes create challenges to make this work.
I propose a flying wing easily has the internal volume, performance, strength, and plenty of real world data to verify.
Fact: you can walk in the wings of these aircraft.
(Would not be that hard to make some of batteries packs swap able for a little more mass.)
Northrop VB-35
The 8.5%-scale, remotely piloted X-48B
IOW, stop trying to fit a square plug in a round hole!
(just look at how Tesla reinvented the car to make BEV work! same with BEP!
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MontyFloyd
Member
Indeed Starship certification was a bit of an issue, but was by no means the only cause of failure.
Why the Starship was such a disaster : Air Facts Journal
When one examines a failure of such monumental scale as the Beech Starship program, the inevitable question is, “Why did they do that?” As in almost every instance where things go badly wrong, it was a series of decisions made under shifting circumstances that led to the ultimate disaster.airfactsjournal.com
This summary may be relevant in todays world,
"But the Starship was a disaster for all of aviation in terms of lost opportunity. The billion bucks — closer to two billion in today’s dollars — that Raytheon spent going down the wrong technology paths could have been, and should have been, spent on an improved conventional turboprop. Today’s King Air 350 is a terrific airplane, and a best seller, but if that billion dollars had gone into building on the King Air instead of chasing a dream we would have an airplane now that is several inches larger in cabin section, more fuel efficient because of a newer wing design, and less costly to maintain because of modern system design and materials use.
I cringe still when the Starship is described by so many as high-tech, and futuristic. It was a failure in every respect. Raytheon shot for the moon and ended up with an exotic looking airplane that didn’t do anything as well as airplanes already there, and costing much less. And all of aviation was robbed of the really terrific airplane that a billion dollars could have created."
Another mostly composite aircraft was built before Starship, and failed to go into production, the Lear Fan. The major issue I read was FAA wanted much more data on the new composite design than expected (there are piles of tested parts at the old factory in Reno, NV. Raytheon encountered some of the same concerns, which hurt the end result. How much it impacted both I do not know exactly, but it did.
Flying wings are probably viable for cargo, bombers, and unmanned aircraft but a challenge for passengers. They're nice because they span-load the mass, reducing structural weight that is required in tube planes, to translate the mass from wingtips to the tube. This leaves more mass available for batteries.
However:
They bounce around a lot in turbulance, and, with most passenger seats being a long way from the windows, the air sickness bags will get a lot of use - on people's 1st and probably last flight onboard.
MontyFloyd
Member
That is a concern, but ways to reduce that could be possible. At least for cargo work this is viable and a step to profitable BEP
Except, if you look at it like the air does, the round tube with thing wings causes the least amount of drag.
X-48b is much wider, so causes more drag, and requires more energy to push the excess air out of the way.
EVer Hopeful
Active Member
Yes, but your fighter planes don't have to (or can't) carry a lot of payload or fuel volume while the passenger and cargo aircraft need to keep that large volume somewhere. Electric planes would also have to keep the battery volume and mass somewhere as well.
Remember, however, that an airplane design consists of a million compromises and folks can argue them forever.
Not only fighters are limited in frontal size. Airliners are sized to an optimum frontal plane themselves.
And it's not like we came up with a completely different idea... Even birds are shaped like this.
Yes, they ARE. Whether they SHOULD is a different question. Additionally, whether the CAN with battery propulsion is another different questions.
Remember that the airliner design was pretty much locked down with the Boeing 707/C135 jetliner project between Boeing and the US Air Force in about 1958. This design basically set a standard for aircraft design. All subsequent aircraft safety certifications have been based on this design. Most of the safety justifications for why that design is good were based on previous flight hours on similar designs (DC-3, Ford Tri-motor, Lockheed Constellation, etc) as well as analytical data and sample testing of materials (mostly aluminum). Those previous aircraft basically flew millions of revenue-generating flight hours without having had to go through significant certification.
Since then, getting a type certification on any aircraft that does not basically follow that design is going to be a huge challenge since it will be extremely expensive to fly enough flight hours to accumulate significant statistical data if they won't let you fly for revenue until you get your certification. This means that after about 1958, all new aircraft design improvements have been minor tweaks of that same 707 design.
Going to composite structure, fly-by-wire, winglets, 2-engines, etc have all been major challenges. When Beach/Scaled-Composites tried the canard approach for the Starship, it about broke both companies.
If the fuel mass fraction changes from Jet Fuel + Turbine to Battery + electric motor, what worked before may not continue to work. The devil is in the details, however deviating from the Standard will add huge additional expense as well.
The design with the lowest drag wins.
Show me any design with thick wings as part of the body which are successful.
I can show you some with no body - everything is in the wing.
The last ones came from searching electric as well! One holds the world record for the highest flying airplane in level, aerodynamic flight.
Then there are these:
Although one can argue how successful some of them were.
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