Originally Posted by
foxmoth
Electric aircraft are already in development, I know one of the guys involved and he was saying that battery technology is advancing today in the same way computers were 20 years ago, charging is already becoming much faster and I can see that you will fly your 4-500+ mile leg then by the time you have emptied your bladder and had a coffee the battery is fully charged for the next leg.
Unless you are very slow at the loo, it will be a longer wait than that.
Today, if I could monopolizs 4 charging bays it would take a little less than 2 hours for my car to recharge the electricity need to produce the thrust of 384 l of avgas (a full load including tips for the Bonanza). Not as quick as a loo break, but also, not impractically slow (a 2 hr charging break every 1000 nms). That is with currently widely deployed charging and battery technology.
The current problem, is that a plane with 4 x the battery weight as my car currently has would never get off the ground. However, at the rate battery capacity is improving, 10 years from now, I am pretty sure there will be production, fun, electric aircraft. They won't be self flying. But they will have envelop protection, automatic unusual attitude recovery (both already available in GA), probably auto land (based on some very impressive LPV performance) and logically, in a post ADSB world, collision avoidance and terrain avoidance systems.
The only bit that is a technology stretch is the battery capacity. Of course fuel cells might make up the gap (and might even use hydrocarbon liquids as their energy source).
The first thing I thought of when I moved to the electric car was, 'this would be fantastic as an airplane', as I silently accelerated behind the 400 horses up through my normal Vr speed.