Heart Aerospace Completes First Flight of Largest Electric Aircraft(www.heartaerospace.com)

39 pointsby chhaan hour ago7 comments

idontwantthisa minute ago
Electric regional air travel is something I’m really excited about.
chhaan hour ago
Also a short video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEudbAjschs
NitpickLawyer40 minutes ago
> It uses electric motors for zero-emission short hops up to 124 miles and backup reserve generators for an extended hybrid range up to 300–500 miles.
I was wondering how they're gonna deal with alternate airports and "fuel" reserves, but it seems they also have generators on board (supposedly used in case of emergency / unplanned detours).
- 25 minutes ago
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Aboutplants22 minutes ago
VTOL aircraft have the same distance capabilities and make more sense in a lot more scenarios than this, with way more flexibility. It’s obviously larger but I’m just not sure of potential advantages over other modes of transport currently available and in the near future
- wffurra few seconds ago
  Aren't VTOL aircraft significantly more complex and riskier to operate than fixed-wing prop aircraft? There's certainly many fewer moving parts and tricky transitions from hover to airfoil flight regime.
spongebobstoes16 minutes ago
could we relax the security around electric planes, because they don't carry as much highly explosive material?
that could make it much more convenient and appealing as a travel method
- hollow-moe12 minutes ago
  Nope, because we all know about the race to the bottom of all companies and the littlest crack or wiggle room will be used to save a penny and kill people.
vel0city26 minutes ago
At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win. I wonder why they don't push the idea of it being a hybrid more, as it seems to me a lot of useful routes are going to rely on the generators.
I'd love to see something that can do around 250mi. It would be nice to electrify transit in the Texas Triangle if we end up never being able to actually build useful HSR.
I wish them luck on continuing to try!
- mikeyouse19 minutes ago
  As someone who lives in the Great Lakes region - there are a ton of 100 mile flights that would take 4 hours to drive - often as the first leg in a two-flight trip. Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives, heavily dependent on road conditions all within the pure-electric range.
  - cucumber37328425 minutes ago
    >Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives
    See also: Boston and NYC to Cape Cod and the Hamptons.
    The electric/green angle helps with these kinds of routes too.
- nradov18 minutes ago
  The best use case might be short flights over water or other geographic obstacles where driving routes might be much longer or impossible. Like Kahului Airport to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport for example.
- ramesh312 minutes ago
  >"At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win."
  It's about feeding the existing network. Millions of people in the US live in places a 2+hr drive to the nearest major airport, but have plenty of smaller municipal fields nearby. Electric aviation could finally make it profitable and cheap enough to run those routes.
- kevin_thibedeau24 minutes ago
  Island hopping is the usual sales pitch for these planes.
capty99an hour ago
could someone explain to me how that $5 spend is lying to me. i know elec is cheap, but that cheap?
- twoodfin37 minutes ago
  They’re using wholesale prices. The entire flight was 27 minutes, peaked at a megawatt of power, and a wholesale megawatt-hour is $40-50 these days.
- heyitsmedotjayb32 minutes ago
  I tried to run a napkin calculation, and that 5$ figure must be quoted per seat (30 seats). And a 'first flight' might be very very short, like 15 minutes of flying or less.
- eliben38 minutes ago
  During certain hours of the day in California, electricity is essentially free due to solar overproduction, which sometimes causes negative wholesale prices.
  - cj34 minutes ago
    I've never quite understood negative electric/gas/oil prices.
    Are you literally paid for agreeing to receive the energy?
    eliben29 minutes ago
    Yes. Counterintuitive, but it make sense when you take all the factors into account (such that completely shutting down and then later restarting turbines may cost a generator more than paying someone to take power off their hands).
    robin_reala25 minutes ago
    Yep. Last August the total cost to charge my car for the month was -10SEK of about -$1.05 US, as my energy company was trying to put load into its batteries at the times when the grid most needed it.
    vlovich12329 minutes ago
    Yes, if you’re a battery in the system. Basically discourages generation because there’s too much supply. But this generally doesn’t trickle to consumers afaik.