Hello Everyone and welcome back to 90ss, I’m Michael Tung and I will be your host for today. In today’s podcast, we are going to discuss the topic of electric airplanes. Many different modes of transportation are now starting to go electric. Most trains rely on the 3rd rail and electricity to operate, and some even use magnets like the Shanghai Maglev. Car brands are now saying that they are working to make their cars more environmentally friendly, like the Prius Hybrid, and eventually to Tesla and other companies like Volvo, vowing to go all electric by 2025. But, there has been little to no news from Airbus and Boeing to make all electric planes, despite other markets now shifting towards going all electric. From a market point of view, you’d expect for electric airplanes to do well: the Tesla Model 3 has now risen to #4 in some rankings in best car sales. If the automotive industry can make it, make can’t the aerospace industry. A big reason for the slow roll in electric airplanes is battery efficiency. Compared to fuel, it doesn’t make economic sense to add an electric battery to an airplane when gasoline is cheaper and lighter. If you add a battery to a plane, it adds significant weight to a plane, meaning more energy will be required to make the plane fly, meaning a larger even heavier battery to operate the plane. However, since the new battery is now really heavy, the new battery does not give enough energy to lift the plane off the ground. It is an endless viscous cycle that starts at the inefficient electric battery. Right now, airplane electric batteries are like computers from the early ’90s, bulky and unreliable. Eventually they will become small, lightweight and more efficient than fuel. This is when companies can start actually promoting electric planes to be used for commercial service. The only current airplane capable of performing commercial flights under 500 miles is Eviation’s Alice. Alice could provide the first stepping stone to a quiet, reliable, safe all-electric airplane.
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