Originally Posted by
tdracer
Baring a massive improvement in battery energy density vs. weight (I'm talking an order of magnitude), electric aircraft will never be viable for trips of more than a few hundred miles. Similarly, hydrogen has massive issues as an aircraft fuel - not the least of which is it has horrible energy density (even as a cryogenic liquid) meaning that for long range flight the fuel tank would be as large as the passenger compartment. Sure, it's light, but needing a huge, well insulated tank to carry it tends to offset that low fuel weight.
Then there is the complete lack of the necessary infrastructure for H2 has a fuel, plus the fact that creating H2 by electrolysis is horribly energy inefficient with current technology.
People tend to forget that, before becoming one of the world's richest people, Musk and Tesla came dangerously close to bankruptcy and financial ruin. The car business is hard. The commercial airline business is exponentially harder...
All this is very true. I've run the numbers several times re energy density and volume of liquid H2 vs liquid hydrocarbons and hydrogen just doesn't make sense. There are proponents of hydrogen fuel cells for aircraft, but that's even worse when you look at high energy demands for take off, etc. Battery electric aircraft have their own issues, including energy reserves and the fact that weight doesn't decrease with electric (fuel) consumption; you land with take off weight.