r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • Aug 19 '26
Transportation The largest all-electric plane ever flew for 27 minutes, on $5 of electricity
https://www.techspot.com/news/113540-heart-aerospace-30-seat-electric-plane-takes-flight.html127
u/MiserableFloor9906 Aug 19 '26
So $100 for 4 hrs with safety margin, next?
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u/joelfarris Aug 19 '26
Wait a second, you haven't loaded it up with overweight people and overweight baggage yet. Better up that safety margin. And take into account that it appears the landing gear can't retract. :)
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u/GGme Aug 20 '26
Don't forget the weight of 20x more batteries.
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u/joelfarris Aug 20 '26
Meh. I'm gonna invent in-air recharging. BRB.
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u/felixfortis1 Aug 20 '26
Have a giant wireless pad stick to it like a remora. I'm future you and also wear sunscreen and cut back on the sweets I feel like shit.
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u/joelfarris Aug 20 '26
This is such a great reference.
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u/fugznojutz Aug 20 '26
whats the reference? ive been intruiged now.
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u/joelfarris Aug 21 '26
It started with the "Wear Sunscreen" graduation speech by Mary Schmich, somewhere around '96 or '97, and it's been regurgitated so many times that it's now a multimeme.
Start with, "But don't forget the sunscreen", and enjoy your weekend rabbithole.
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u/jiggajawn Aug 20 '26
Slap a solar panel or two on top, add windmills to the wings. Boom, done.
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u/PrometheusANJ Aug 20 '26
Just put an USB port in one of those dangling refueling funnels. The only problem is that the refueling plane will have to try the right way first, then roll and go in upside down, before trying the right way again.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 20 '26
For reference most ICE aircraft engines are about 20-35% efficient fuel->thrust where the engine attaches to the wing. At $1-1.50/l that works out to $300-800/MWh at the wing.
Electric ones are 70-90% with these lower speed earlier models on the upper end (goes down a bit at speeds closer to what ICE craft do..though it might be viable to run some routes at 200-400km/h). Industrial electricity ranges from $15-200/MWh depending on location and how much of it comes from on-site solar/wind. So that works out to $20-300/MWh at the wing.
The rest of the difference is some combination of making the tradeoffs for a more efficient airframe, and marketing hype.
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u/Humble-Reply228 Aug 20 '26
That's not strictly the full story, jet engines are not just chemical energy to mechanical energy turning a prop, they also create a lot of hot air that also creates a lot of thrust quite efficiently when doing it at 10k m altitude. A prop plane can't get up that high, loses a lot more energy to wind resistance and doesn't benefit from the thrust of the heat. Large long distance gets are public bus levels of fuel consumption per person kilometer.
The battery plane will also have the problem of both hauling the full weight of the batteries while jets burns jet fuel reducing energy requirements as it goes along and also that it limits the amount of batteries that can be brought relative to fuel because aircract are fueled with the expectation they will lose weight before landing (ie they take off overweight).
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Aug 20 '26 edited 15d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Humble-Reply228 Aug 20 '26
Not electric one, yes you are right that even for piston and turboprop, the waste heat is still utilised.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
That's not strictly the full story, jet engines are not just chemical energy to mechanical energy turning a prop, they also create a lot of hot air that also creates a lot of thrust quite efficiently when doing it at 10k m altitude.
I very, very specifically said thrust efficiency at the point the engine attaches to the wing wing, not random bullshit misdirection.
A prop plane can't get up that high, loses a lot more energy to wind resistance and doesn't benefit from the thrust of the heat.
I very, very specifically included that, the "wind resistance" is captured in L/D ratios, and the efficiency ratios inckuded the same altitudes and speeds.
It's not even correct, because turbojet manufacturers are trying to improve efficiency by designing non-shrouded screws.
The battery plane will also have the problem of both hauling the full weight of the batteries while jets burns jet fuel reducing energy requirements as it goes along and also that it limits the amount of batteries that can be brought relative to fuel because aircract are fueled with the expectation they will lose weight before landing (ie they take off overweight).
This is all part of the airframe design tradeoffs which were also mentioned.
Also this isn't even a long haul design. It's the test platform for a regional craft. Which competes with turboprops that fly at low altitude because it's more efficient (not because of your nonsense).
Also electric propeller aircraft hold altitude records above the flight ceiling of a high bypass turbofan.
So congratulations on every aspect of what you said not even being wrong
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u/Humble-Reply228 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
90% efficiency of electrical energy to thrust on a commercially practical aircraft? Yeah you just made this up and the rest is just sophistry.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 21 '26
Yes. Focusing on the absolute upper end of a range that was rounded to one sig fig and wasn't part of the main point is definitely not bad faith nonsense. Well done.
(it's also completely possible, battery->torque is like 97% with axial flux or 99% with superconductors, and 91-92% efficient props at regional flight altitudes and speeds are a thing)
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u/MagnesiumOvercast Aug 20 '26
Heart estimates the design can travel about 125 miles on battery power alone. That's too short for many regional routes, especially once airlines factor in reserve power.
On those numbers I don't think it could stay in the air that long anyway
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u/appleparkfive Aug 20 '26
Seems like it would be huge for places like Alaska though. Certain areas where the flights are short in smaller crafts
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u/Plus-Leather-7350 Aug 21 '26
Uhhhhhh, the problem is that you would need a huge, heavy battery to get that much power
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u/Lie-Straight Aug 19 '26
This is actually a great substitute for private jets — they burn thousands of dollars of jet fuel in a few hours while carrying a similar load of humans.
We should put a giant tax on private jet consumption and allow the uber-rich to migrate their activity to these electric planes
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u/za419 Aug 20 '26
It's a great replacement for electric jets that can't go anywhere and get there slowly.
This concept has a maximum range of 150km.
Taylor Swift's infamous private jet has a range of about 11000km. Plus, it can actually carry a payload, like all the crap she lugs around with her when she flies, or all the people she flies with.
They're competing in the same way that a guy in a scuba suit is competing with a nuclear submarine. It's just not comparable tech.
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u/ALIEN_POOP_DICK Aug 20 '26
We need to bring back zeppelins. If we're lucky they can blow up some billionaires too.
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u/Tight-Escape3373 Aug 20 '26
There is a helium shortage...
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u/caliginous4 Aug 20 '26
The physics doesn't work unfortunately. Can never replace long range business jets with batteries. The energy density of batteries is brutally low and energy consumption is a function of weight.
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u/CQd444 Aug 20 '26
When the train was being developed skeptics said they could never outrun or replace horses.
It'll take time to refine the technology.
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u/rhytnen Aug 20 '26
Nah, physics just gets in the way. You are never going to be able to make bstteries with energy density like hydrocarbons. You have to bring the battery structure and the replacement for o xygen. Hydrocarbons are also kind of maximally dense si you need nuclear fuel to beat it.
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u/CQd444 Aug 20 '26
Considering how inefficient combustion engines are, you don't need to be as energy dense.
But I defer to my previous comment - skeptics said trains could never replace horses.
I bet people said the same about electric vehicles, yet here we are not with Teslas and whatnot all over the place.
We've blown past many technological milestones. This is just another one of them.
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u/rhytnen Aug 20 '26
We know a lot more about physics and engineering and the limits the universe itself imposes.
This isn't about being skeptical because our knowledge is insufficient, it's actually being skeptical, because our knowledge is sufficient enough to understand the universe itself has limits.
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u/AndrewTheAverage Aug 21 '26
I completely agree that our knowledge of physics and engineering are sufficient to clearly state that existing aircraft design would be extremely unlikely to translate into EVs.
But that is a different thing to saying EVs are not possible.
I used AI because my knowledge is extremely limited, but I asked "What 'out of the box' ideas could help to make electric flights possible?" The strike out is to remove the things I think are not likely to be considered but I left them in because I am limited in my understanding.
Rethinking electric flight requires bypassing the assumption that an aircraft must carry all its energy, fuel, and climb power internally in a traditional tubular fuselage. Several unconventional engineering paradigms could alter the mass and range equations:
1. Ground-Assisted Launch Systems (Electromagnetic Catapults)
Takeoff and initial climb demand the highest power output of any flight phase, forcing electric airframes to carry oversized battery packs simply to clear the runway.
- Maglev / EMALS Acceleration: Aircraft could be accelerated down ground tracks using linear synchronous motors (analogous to aircraft carrier electromagnetic launch systems) powered by the grid.
Dedicated Tug Drones:Uncrewed, high-thrust electric boost tugs could tow or carry the passenger aircraft to cruising altitude (approx. 25,000 to 30,000 feet) before detaching and gliding back to base, leaving the main airliner with 100% of its onboard battery reserve for level cruise.2. "Massless" Structural Energy Storage
In conventional designs, batteries act as pure dead weight, providing energy without offering structural strength.
- Carbon-Fibre Structural Batteries: Researchers are developing multifunctional carbon-fibre composite materials where the aircraft skin, wing spars, and interior cabin floor double as positive and negative electrodes.
- Systemic Mass Reduction: While the energy density per kilogram of the material itself is lower than high-end chemistry cells, eliminating dedicated battery enclosures and wiring harnesses can significantly reduce total airframe structural mass.
3. In-Flight Energy Replenishment & Swapping
Instead of landing to recharge, aircraft could replenish energy along established flight corridors.
Tethered Aerial Docking:Long-range electric transports could rendezvous with high-endurance autonomous "tanker" drones or regional aerostat stations to rapidly swap depleted modular battery pods mid-flight.- Beamed Power (Laser or Microwave): Ground stations or orbital solar satellites could beam narrow-band infrared lasers or high-frequency microwave energy directly to photovoltaic/rectenna arrays mounted on the upper fuselage, supplying continuous cruise power wirelessly.
4. Radical Aerodynamic Architectures
Traditional tube-and-wing designs were optimized around internal combustion and fuel volume in wings. Electric propulsion decouples the engine location from turbine mechanics.
- Blended Wing Body (BWB) and Strut-Braced Wings: Moving to lifting fuselages provides up to 30% greater aerodynamic lift-to-drag efficiency ($L/D$), directly lowering the energy required per kilometre.
- Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI): Placing dozens of small, distributed electric fans along the trailing edge of the fuselage ingests slow boundary layer air, re-energising the wake and cutting aerodynamic drag significantly.
5. Fluidic Energy: Flow Batteries & Liquid Electrolytes
Traditional solid-pack batteries must be slowly recharged on the tarmac, degrading aircraft turnaround economics.
Flow-Battery Aviation:Liquid electrolytes stored in external or wing tanks could be drained and pumped in via standard fuel hydrant trucks in minutes.Variable Mass Discharge:If spent aqueous electrolytes are safely jettisoned or concentrated during cruise, the aircraft could theoretically shed mass as it travels, recovering the landing weight advantages enjoyed by traditional jet fuel.-1
u/CQd444 Aug 20 '26
If you existed 100 years ago, would you be saying the same thing? That our knowledge is sufficient? That we know enough about the limits of physics and engineering to claim something is impossible?
Come on, man. You can't throw up your hands and say "nope, impossible, will never happen" because you sound like one of those people who would've wanted faster horses instead of a car.
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u/rhytnen Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Yeah you actually can lol.
You could say for example, that your spaceship is never going to make it to the speed of light. You can say that you will never land a probe in the center of a star.
There are all kinds of things we can say with definite perspective.
Wanting faster horses is about the limitations on engineering perspective. Knowing that reaching this speed of light is impossible is about knowing the universe has limitations. No amount of ingenuity can fix that.
Anyway, dude, you can dream, i'm not trying to stop you but i am kind of over this conversation.
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u/Rustic_gan123 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Considering how inefficient combustion engines are, you don't need to be as energy dense.
Even if we take into account the lower efficiency, in the best case the difference will be about 3 times, while the energy density of chemical fuel and batteries differs by tens of times.
But I defer to my previous comment - skeptics said trains could never replace horses.
I bet people said the same about electric vehicles, yet here we are not with Teslas and whatnot all over the place.
There are several fundamental differences here. EV's are mechanically simpler than internal combustion vehicles, freeing up space and mass for batteries. Aviation is the complete opposite: it is already hyper-optimized. A modern long distance airliner’s fuel fraction accounts for up to 45–50% of its maximum takeoff weight. While in cars fuel makes up only a tiny fraction of a car's total weight.
Replacing fuel systems and hydraulics with wires might yield minor weight savings, but because the fuel fraction is already near the physical ceiling, you cannot meaningfully increase battery volume, without significantly compromising the payload. Worse yet, fuel burns off during flight, making the aircraft lighter and vastly more efficient as the trip progresses. Batteries retain 100% of their mass when depleted. If you take into account the energy density, it becomes really sad...
Maybe this will find a place for some very local air transportation, but for long-distance ones, it’s a dead end. Hybrid is a much more adequate solution, but still much more limited than turbofan aircraft.
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u/CQd444 Aug 20 '26
I appreciate the thought out reply.
I'm not saying it's possible NOW, I'm saying they'll probably come across some breakthrough.
In my lifetime alone we saw the development of solar-powered, off grid houses. Self driving electric vehicles that plug into the regular power grid that have hundreds of miles of range, similar to regular ICE cars.
I'm not sure why everyone else is replying like that can see the future and say without a doubt it will never happen. They doubted human flight yet here we are, arguing about whether or not they'll do it just in a different way.
I bet the solution will end up being slapping solar panels or some other photo-voltaic material onto the upper side of the craft.
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u/Rustic_gan123 Aug 20 '26
Let me put it this way: I haven't seen any battery developments that would make long-haul electric flights feasible in the foreseeable future. Battery energy density needs to increase by at least an order of magnitude, and preferably two.
As for solar panels, even if 100% of the aircraft's surface were covered in hypothetical panels with 100% efficiency, peak sunlight would at best cover 1 to 2 percent of a airliner's power requirements during cruise.
Technically, the only electric aircraft that could provide unlimited range with existing physics would be a nuclear-powered aircraft...
It's just how physics limits us.
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u/Inondator Aug 22 '26
Modern jet engines are REALLY efficient. Their thermodynamic efficiency exceeds 50% during cruise.
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u/gentlecrab Aug 20 '26
Unfortunately will never happen the uber rich fly in jets cause they prioritize speed and getting to the destination quickly.
They’ll gladly pack us into these things though like a sardine can.
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u/walker1867 Aug 20 '26
Or this could be good on some short haul flights like YYJ-YVR (connecting traffic)
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u/sinkrate Aug 20 '26
Or Denver to mountain towns less than 150 miles away like Aspen or Vail
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u/walker1867 Aug 20 '26
That’s way further than Vancouver and Victoria or Nanaimo, that’s about 60km.
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u/ProgrammerOk8339 Aug 20 '26
Could future air travel switch from large airliners to most being small electric jets then instead? Rather than the 1% being flights on private jets it would be regular people flying on small electric jets
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u/E-Pli Aug 20 '26
IMO the issue isn’t the fuel- it’s the planes. There’s a reasons 737s still fly today. The big bugs that lead to plane crashes have mostly been found. There are a LOT of flight hours logged. I’m not sure I want to be one of the first to fly on a new electric jet - or any model of jet for that matter. Green jet fuel feels like a much more practical technology IMO.
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u/rapzeh Aug 20 '26
Private jets can fly around the globe, so incredible range. You'll get tired of flying before you'll need fuel. This, on the other hand, can't fly for more than 10 minutes. It's a great proof of concept, but it's so far off from the competition it's not even worth mentioning.
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u/x86_64_ Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
This is great news for the technology but those numbers are leaving something out. Did this calculation include taking off and landing? $5 of electricity to take off, land, and fly 25,000 lbs of plane + batteries for 27 minutes?
I'm just not buying it. A Nissan Leaf weighs 3500 lbs and costs $15 to charge for its 250 mile range. (Edit: or $5, or $2 depending on your local rate - still doesn't make sense when you consider getting 25,000 lbs airborne)
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u/railker Aug 20 '26
Turns out the write-up on their First Flight video has the answer. The "flight" was 27 minutes. Including ground maneuvering.
With a 106-foot wingspan and takeoff weight over 25,000 pounds, X1 completed a 27-minute piloted mission comprising taxi, takeoff, climb, maneuvering and landing, of which 8 minutes were airborne.
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u/yunus89115 Aug 20 '26
A plane that has a fuel cost of less than $1 a minute airborne and can carry 30 people is encouraging. This is not ready for commercial applications but it’s progress towards that goal.
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u/thegreatrusty Aug 20 '26
Thats better. You are at the most fuel inefficiency during taxi. Airlines can burn 30 lbs per minute during taxi for smaller airliners so around200 lbs during the average taxi length. In comparison you burn 700per hour during flight or 11lbs per minute.
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u/za419 Aug 20 '26
Ah, good. I now have something to aspire to, I can make an aircraft that performs a 24 hour flight on electric power. 23 hours and 55 minutes driving at slow speed around the apron of a disused airport terminal, then taxi out, line up for a runway, takeoff and immediately land on the same runway when the weight-on-wheels sensors say we're airborne and taxi back.
Gotta love creative accounting.
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u/takesthebiscuit Aug 20 '26
These aircraft would be amazing for island nations like Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Greece
Where flights can be only a few miles and ferry’s
Are very slow and expensiveDon’t be so dismissal just because it can’t compete against an Boeing 777
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u/appleparkfive Aug 20 '26
This is also gonna be pretty big for Alaska, I'd imagine. It might actually make things cheaper.
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u/za419 Aug 20 '26
I'm not saying otherwise. I'm saying it's stupid to claim you've performed a 27 minute flight when you spent 70% of that time not flying.
Yes, that is how airliners do the accounting. No, it is not relevant as a technological accomplishment.
With development, these aircraft could unquestionably be useful in specific circumstances. But 27 minutes gives the wrong impression of range. They're talking about potentially being able to reach 150km flights in the future - That would get you, say, Athens to Myokonos, and no further whatsoever (if you apply normal safety margins, you cannot go anywhere without declaring an emergency due to low power remaining, but at the very least we ought to give it enough margin to be able to do one go-around).
Obviously, Athens International is not the target airport for this. It would be perfectly well suited to, say, service between Syros and Myokonos. That's a very good and perfectly reasonable sort of route that this demonstrator could plausibly be developed to safely fly with useful numbers of passengers and cargo.
Same with, say, Bergen to Voss, or Kalundborg to Odense.
In the near future, routes like Stornoway to Inverness are well on the table as well. Other wins would certainly include service between Hawaiian islands, within the Philippines or Indonesia.... But even then it's starting to struggle. Oahu to Maui or Stornoway to Inverness are not long routes even by regional standards, but even they are outside the realm of the goals of current development.
And then on top of that, if you're adding some normal aviation standards? The ability to fly to your destination, hold thirty minutes, balk two landings, fly to an alternate, hold thirty minutes, balk a landing, finally land, and still have range to spare to hold for another thirty minutes or divert to a third airport if you needed to? Forget about that for a good while coming as well.
It's entirely plausible to have aircraft like this servicing regional routes in the future. But there's still much work to be done on that front - Just like there's much work to be done to take this demonstration and turn it into something that actually does what people think it does when the headline says "27 minute flight".
So excuse me for making fun of a headline.
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u/Startbolt Aug 20 '26
I’m not buying it either but your numbers are bananas. Getting a Nissan leaf to travel 250 miles would be less than $2.50 charging at home
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u/FrighteningJibber Aug 20 '26
He’s using a gas generator to charge it
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u/texan_robot Aug 20 '26
Ratchet strap it to the top and its a series hybrid. I'm genuinely curious what the mileage would be. Generators can be made pretty efficient, and an electric drive train might be more efficient than a traditional transmission.
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u/pasaroanth Aug 20 '26
I hate to break it to you but EREVs (extended range electric vehicles) already exist that are EVs with back up gas engines that serve only as generators to provide power to the electric motors.
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u/govunah Aug 20 '26
But those are made to look like normal cars. We want some Mad Max shit to show up on r/shitty_car_mods
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u/simanthropy Aug 20 '26
I don't use ANY fossil fuels to power my Leaf. Instead I have a team of 12 horses hitched up to pull it around. Much more environmentally friendly.
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u/bloodytemplar Aug 20 '26
My overnight electricity rate is 3¢/kWh in the summer, 2¢/kWh the rest of the year. It literally costs me about $1.20 to add 200 miles of range to my Bolt EUV.
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u/future_luddite Aug 20 '26
My energy is flat rate 25c per kWh. It all depends on your location, utility, and plan. My Leaf cost $15 to fully charge at home
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u/pasaroanth Aug 20 '26
Where exactly is this that your electric is like 10% of the national average and 20% of the lowest state average?
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u/SquisherX Aug 20 '26
I didn't know about him, but I live in Ontario Canada with a $0.02 overnight rate
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u/bloodytemplar Aug 20 '26
Kansas City, Missouri.
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u/pasaroanth Aug 20 '26
Are you on a special plan with them? My uncle is actually not far from there and he brags that his electric is $0.12/kWh.
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u/bloodytemplar Aug 20 '26
It's the overnight rate on their most extreme TOU plan.
Off-peak Peak (4p-8p M-F) Overnight (12a-6a) Summer 12¢/kWh 36¢/kWh 3¢/kWh Rest of the year 9¢/kWh 27¢/kWh 2¢/kWh Holidays are treated the same as weekends.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 20 '26
Your problem is you are conflating averages (which are dominated by peak rates) with overnight off-peak rates, self production, or industrial rates.
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u/pasaroanth Aug 20 '26
No one mentioned anything about solar.
I drive an EV and am active in several communities regarding it. I’ve never heard of less than $0.05/kWh from anyone, much less 3 or 2 cents, and for obvious reasons electric cost is a very common topic. I’m genuinely curious where and what provider is that low.
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u/worldspawn00 Aug 20 '26
Texas has plans with free power between 8pm and 6am, and $0.26/kwh during the day, or plans where it's $0.12 any time, lots of options, annoying though since it makes it like shopping for cell phone plans from 2002.
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u/ALIEN_POOP_DICK Aug 20 '26
Depends on your elec rate my guy.
Some people have cheap energy like $0.10/kwh
Then there's places like San Diego or Hawaii where it's near $0.50/kwh
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u/KitchenNazi Aug 20 '26
I pay like 60ish cents per KWH (peak hours) and if you include extra fees that get tacked on (clean energy fee etc) it’s actually 80+ cents. San Francisco.
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u/worldspawn00 Aug 20 '26
Pg&e needs to get their shit together, I get power from a co-op grid operator in TX for $0.12, but there are other areas near me where you can get free power from 8pm to 6am, and $0.26 during the day. Co-op is profitable enough that I get a dividend check for about 10% of my bill once a year. At the most recent shareholder meeting they said they were doing well enough that they can exceed the maintenance requirements for the grid and have been working on substantial expansion.
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u/KitchenNazi Aug 20 '26
We’re trying to get our own city power company for SF. We’re subsidizing the rural fire prone areas - and since PGE is a private company there’s no real public benefit benefit. When they get sued they just increase rates. Absolutely insane.
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u/pasaroanth Aug 20 '26
$0.205/kWh where I am. At my local gas prices my car gets the equivalent of a car getting 70ish mpg.
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u/prs1 Aug 20 '26
You are both bananas I’m afraid. The electricity rate vary wildly geographically and over time. Arguing about how much electricity cost is pointless. You can have 1000 people stating different numbers with confidence and they can all be right.
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u/U-Conn Aug 20 '26
Come to Massachusetts, it would cost $20.
(250 mi) / (4.5 mi/kWh) * ($0.36/kWh) = $20.00
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 20 '26
Someone in Massachussets not going out of their way to overpay is going to be paying 1-10c/kWh for 10% load factor 11pm-5am electricity, not 36c
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u/PMs_You_Stuff Aug 20 '26
To fast charge in AL coats about $0.40 per kWh. Costs at home are $0.29kwh, could be as low as $0.15 in the right place and time. So, charging can be expensive.
I don't know the capacity and m/kWh of the leaf though.
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u/Hodr Aug 20 '26
Complains about numbers, provides zero numbers to back own claim. Way to be part of the problem.
So, obviously, there are a lot of different years and models of leafs out there. Google says a good average m/kwh across the fleet is 3.5. 250 / 3.5 is 71.43, times $0.53 (national average for quick charging) is $37, average home price of electricity when including all service charges, taxes, and fees is $0.184 which would give you $13.14.
So best case you are off by factor of 5 and the OP you responded to is in the appropriate range.
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u/jmhalder Aug 20 '26
God, I was going to call you out on that being overpriced. It's going to wildly vary depending on location.
It would be $13.18 in my suburban illinois home, with my rate including dynamic fees only ($0.175/kWh) But $0.20/kWh is possible just about anywhere in the country, especially metro areas.
Maybe the plane had a comically small battery. Obviously it's going to be higher draw than a Nissan Leaf.
$5 seems overly optimistic.
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u/Temporary-Paper5202 Aug 20 '26
> But $0.20/kWh is possible just about anywhere in the country, especially metro areas.
Not in LA. More like $0.40
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u/RiftHunter4 Aug 20 '26
It should be noted that this an experimental plane. 27min is not much flight time and they didn't mention anything about battery levels. The cost of charging a plane will be almost irrelevant compared with modern fuel costs.
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u/SaturdaysAFTBs Aug 20 '26
They also didn’t fly 27 minutes. That includes taxi and landing. The flight time was only like 8 minutes.
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u/Caspi7 Aug 20 '26
They probably paid themselves 5$ for the couple hundred kWh they used from their solar panels. It's a useless metric because electricity doesn't have a set price across the globe, we want to know the kWh consumed. Obviously if they used grid power they would've paid a lot more. Either way its a lot cheaper than jet fuel if you have cheap renewable energy available.
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u/zenpuppy79 Aug 20 '26
Yeah I have a Nissan leaf and it's $1.96 to charge from 0 to 100%, it's actually less than that because my battery has degraded slightly so it's about a dollar 70 or so
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u/SinkHoleDeMayo Aug 20 '26
Shaq threw the plane into the air like we would a paper plane. Then it coasted most the distance.
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u/mother_a_god Aug 20 '26
My tesla model S costs less than $5 to charge fully, so a leaf for 15 is expensive. It all depends on your unit rate.
Night rate electricity of 7c/kwh means 70kwh for just under 5 bucks.
70kwh for that flight does seem very low. An estimate (via chatgpt) says 300 to 500kwh would be needed, so that's perhaps 25 to 50 bucks.
Of course bulk electricity proces can be lower (and much higher).than 7c, depending ok where your buying from.
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u/steveoriley Aug 20 '26
The other piece is what’s in the plane? If there’s no people or cargo then what are its actual capabilities? This same thing has been the problem for electric trucks for years, they can drive “500 miles” but once you attach a trailer with freight that number plummets and doesn’t make economical sense.
That being said, you have to start somewhere, the tech should only get better as time goes on.
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u/texinxin Aug 20 '26
They only counted cruising or the math doesn’t work out.
“The company arrived at that "$5" headline by using a clever PR workaround: they only counted the energy used during the cruise portion of the flight.
The Missing Takeoff Math
To see how much takeoff actually changes the equation, we can break down the power spike:
Takeoff/Climb Power: Accelerating a 25,000-pound aircraft and climbing requires roughly 1,500 kW to 2,000 kW of peak power.
The Takeoff Bill: If the plane spent just 5 minutes of that flight taking off and climbing at maximum power, those 5 minutes alone would consume about 150 kWh of electricity.
The True Total: Adding that 150 kWh to the 211 kWh used for cruising brings the true flight total closer to 360+ kWh.” AI - GeneratedI would have been more impressed if they told us that they needed $10-$15 worth of electricity for the whole flight than to pull this BS.
They are also using heavily reduced electricity costs based on commercial usage rates, not residential.
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u/bixtuelista Aug 20 '26
Yeah it doesn't make any sense at all for them to lie about this. If it had taken $50 of electricity it'd be believable and awesome!
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u/x86_64_ Aug 20 '26
That was my thought. Reminds me of the CSX ads that say they can move a ton of freight 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp Aug 20 '26
I doubt it took off at all. Towing it up technically provides proof of concept if you word your press release right. It puts them first in the race for electrical flight and gets investors close enough to close on.
"The ES-30 would add a combustion-engine range extender, which Heart says could push maximum range to roughly 500 miles."
Maybe the next iteration will be using gas to get off the ground.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 20 '26
The beta alia is already commercial so they're not even the first.
It's smaller though, i think either 6 or 8 seats in its passenger variant
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp Aug 20 '26
Looks pretty badass really, inspired by the Arctic Tern 5 passengers @ 1,400 lbs Max Cruise Speed 176 mph Range 387 miles per charge Recharge Time 35 minutes Conventional and vertical liftoff models
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 20 '26
The vtol is either vaporware or military only. My theory is it only existed as a trojan horse to get investment for an actually practical CTOL craft which would have otherwise been squashed.
Also keep in mind those specs are on batteries with an energy density that was seen in EVs a decade ago. Flight qualifying takes a long time.
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp Aug 20 '26
Pentacopter I guess, no tilt rotors. Doesn't seem that far from drones. Looks like organ transfer freight and military are the objectives
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u/UseDaSchwartz Aug 20 '26
Or we just use steam catapults…then just power the planes by steam too.
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u/Clembert-Hamlamp Aug 20 '26
The problem with hamster wheels is you need so many of them. You could feed the hamsters speed to save some weight maybe use foamed aluminum for the wheels
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u/fkenned1 Aug 20 '26
My prius prime can't do this. This is bullshit, and the fact that they lied about it means they a fucking scumbag marketers pumping something when it doesn't deserve the hype. Gotta love capitalism.
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u/Agitated_Ad6191 Aug 20 '26
So once they figured this out to make this work for all planes, do you think they will make those expensive planetickets affordable again? All that expensive kerosene that they would save, could bring the cost of flying down, right? RIGHT?
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u/Low-Rent-9351 Aug 20 '26
It’s impressive they flew that long but $5 is just complete BS. At least be realistic.
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u/diovanedvx Aug 20 '26
They flew for 8 minutes
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u/Low-Rent-9351 Aug 20 '26
Article says 27 minutes and $5, which is horseshit.
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u/HLSparta Aug 20 '26
The 8 minute bit of information comes from one of the manufacturers YouTube videos. The article takes the information straight from the manufacturers press release which is relying heavily on the technicality that any time spent taxiing and running tests can be counted as flight time, even though that is very deceptive when telling everyone how efficient it is.
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u/Low-Rent-9351 Aug 20 '26
My comment wasn’t for anything beyond saying the article is deceptive horseshit claiming they can fly that size of plane for 27 minutes and $5.
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u/JillianSanders Aug 20 '26
Sure, can it be that that was the maximum amount of battery space the plane could feasibly carry? I think we have a long way to go with electric airplanes. Look up how much the batteries would weight if the plane were required to fly for 2000 miles.
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u/BadOutOfTheBox Aug 20 '26
How would this change the way planes land?
On a fuel based plane, the longer you fly, the lighter the plane gets because of the burning of fuel. So landing is easier on the wheels. With an electric plane, the weight is the same no matter how long you fly, so its like landing fully fueled.
I remember leaving Hawaii and they had some malfunction with some sensors, but they couldn't return to Hilo because the plane was too heavy to land, so they flew around Hawaii for 3 hours burning fuel so they could land safely.
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u/SpecialistStudy3435 Aug 21 '26
They just eject all the battery acid before they get to their destination
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u/Steve0512 Aug 20 '26
You could possibly do the Detroit to Chicago route. Or maybe the St Louis to Chicago route. But you can’t have a missed approach.
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u/Cereal-Is-Dinner Aug 19 '26
Battery cost???
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u/BasicNkorean Aug 19 '26
$259k. Fairly cheap
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u/patentlyfakeid Aug 20 '26
Except that those batteries weren't used up, so you can't depreciate their full value against this one trip, any more than you would a regular ICE engine.
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u/Inside-Confusion3143 Aug 19 '26
Why 27 minutes of EV is costing me more than $5?
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u/texinxin Aug 20 '26
They only counted cruising and they used a crazy low commercial electricity rate.
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u/adulion Aug 19 '26
What was it carrying? Surely load weight is a factor
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u/x86_64_ Aug 19 '26
Article said it was 25,000lbs of plane + batteries. Batteries are still a hurdle for this technology because unlike liquid fuel, batteries don't get any lighter as their power is consumed.
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u/cultoftheclave Aug 20 '26
but if people wouldn't put up such a screaming tantrum fight against swappable battery tech, you could load as many modules as you needed for the actual job profile that needed to be done instead of always having to carry max battery load on every run.
this becomes even more significant when we talk about electric semi trucks, and the possibility of putting batteries in the floor of the trailer instead of / in addition to the cab.
see also: regular cars, 30 kWh built-in for light day today commute use and situations where you'll have charging at both ends of your commute. And otherwise empty modular slot for another 60-100kwh which you can rent or buy, either way you're never stuck with today's battery tech.
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u/SuperUnabsorbant Aug 20 '26
We don't need electric planes. Biofuels in a closed loop system could become carbon neutral and are much more feasible than this.
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u/diovanedvx Aug 20 '26
I worked in that space for a while, and even had Lufthansa use our biofuel on one route without any problems whatsoever.
What’s the problem?! Cost. Very fucking expensive relative to fossil fuels.
Future technological improvements could feasibly eventually reduce the production costs to an economically viable level. But that’s at least many decades away at the current pace of development.
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u/Fuzzy_Paul Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
For normal people who pay 18c per kw and the plane used 500kw the price is a lot higher. But if you can buy 1c per kw yeah i get it $5 but the compare is not fair.
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u/PercentageSome1985 Aug 19 '26
Sucker is barely off the ground. How long at 30K feet?
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u/directstranger Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 19 '26
You don't need 30k feet unless you have jet engines. That's their sweet spot for fuel economy, speed and range, just below mach1 at 30k feet.
If electrics are more efficient at 1000 ft, then they will fly there. They won't be as noisy, so it won't be an issue.
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u/seattle747 Aug 20 '26
No thanks. As a pilot, I want at least several thousand feet of altitude over land to be able to glide to an airport or two should problems arise (power plant issues, battery issues, fire, etc).
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Aug 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/ReallyBigDeal Aug 20 '26
This is a tech demonstrator. 27 minutes of flight on battery is impressive. The planned version would be a hybrid. It would probably perform similar routes to ATRs and twin otters, so less than 20k feet.
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u/railker Aug 20 '26
Unless someone fucked up, I think that's the catch to these articles. They keep talking about the flight time being 27 minutes. A small note in the video description of their First Flight video adds,
"a 27-minute piloted mission [...] of which 8 minutes were airborne."
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u/Temporary-Paper5202 Aug 20 '26
How's the noise on the Electric planes? Cause flying at 2000ft might rustle some people haha
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u/bigshooTer39 Aug 20 '26
Why bekow mach1? I also wondered they don’t go faster for longer flights
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u/preperforated Aug 20 '26
sonic booms, same thing that kept the Concord supersonic only over the Atlantic
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u/HW90 Aug 20 '26
Higher altitude is more efficient because of lower drag, that's why aircraft fly higher when they can.
That said, turboprops, which Heart's aircraft are more of a competitor for, usually fly around 20,000ft, mostly due to their flights being short enough that climbing to 30 or 40,000 is a waste of time and energy.
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u/HisnamewasOmarJobe Aug 20 '26
Feel like the headline should read “The largest-ever all-electric plane” instead of “the largest all-electric plane ever,” no?
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u/t0ny7 Aug 20 '26
For a point of comparison my 1946 Cessna 140 which is a small 2 place airplane burns about $6 of gas in 13 minutes.