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Electric Vehicles

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Dr. Keith said:
Plane arrives with battery at 60% and they want to have 80% before take off. Might that be doable in half an hour? That seems like a pretty good goal, at least.
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According to the Wikipedia page:
Each hour of flight time is expected to require a charging time of 30 minutes.

(Admittedly, this is a wikipedia entry for a plane that hasn't even flown yet, so its possible that the charging times could be wildly different if/when it goes into production.)

If the plane cruses at 250mph, a 30 minute charge would add 250miles of range. A 15 minute charge (such as what they might provide during a short 20 minute stopover) would add over 100 miles of range.
 
Ziggurat already addresses the charging with the obvious solution, which is to change the batteries in a few minutes and recharge out of the plane. Not that it matters much, there’s minimum times for deplaning and boarding that covers any battery swap times.

You can’t swap fuel tanks, so it’s really pretty minimal down time.
 
dirtywick said:
Ziggurat already addresses the charging with the obvious solution, which is to change the batteries in a few minutes and recharge out of the plane.
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Is replacing batteries quickly going to be feasible? Ziggurat addressed the ownership/"chain of custody" issues, but do we know planes can be designed in a way that makes frequent replacement feasible? Constantly replacing a large component of the plane is not obviously a simple thing. Weight/strength and other requirements might make easy replacement hard to design for.

As you say, we can't replace fuel tanks. If the batteries have to be just as integrated for similar reasons it might be just as difficult to change batteries.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
Is replacing batteries quickly going to be feasible? Ziggurat addressed the ownership/"chain of custody" issues, but do we know planes can be designed in a way that makes frequent replacement feasible? Constantly replacing a large component of the plane is not obviously a simple thing. Weight/strength and other requirements might make easy replacement hard to design for.

As you say, we can't replace fuel tanks. If the batteries have to be just as integrated for similar reasons it might be just as difficult to change batteries.
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The challenge will be convincing some government to mint the two-meter-diameter coin needed to release the catch and pry open the plastic cover of the battery compartment.
 
Of course we can't know just how they'll do it, but I could imagine that not all the batteries on the plane would need to be replaced on the same schedule. They could have a battery bank to run vital services like flight instruments and the like, and another to run the engines. With the right kind of connections, it might not be so hard to swap in the main power source while leaving a secondary power source connected, which would be charged in place less often.

I would imagine the voltage requirements for instrumentation and the like might b quite different from those for engines anyway, and separate batteries might make conversion less of a headache.
 
It's the batteries to run the engines that we're talking about now. Those other batteries you are talking about are already accounted for.
 
novaphile said:
One of the rules of flying, is that you can always convert height to speed, or speed to height.

I'm thinking that you could use auto-rotation of the prop/s to generate charge back into the battery when you want to descend or slow down.
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Planes in the air always need to apply some forward thrust; they slow down by applying less of it. So the effect on your energy budget is not even a potential net gain but a decrease in your net rate of loss.
 
Delvo said:
Planes in the air always need to apply some forward thrust; they slow down by applying less of it. So the effect on your energy budget is not even a potential net gain but a decrease in your net rate of loss.
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How do gliders avoid that requirement? I don't think there is such a requirement. Planes keep the engines running during descent in case they need them. Planes using regenerative braking will use less of something else, like flaps.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Is replacing batteries quickly going to be feasible? Ziggurat addressed the ownership/"chain of custody" issues, but do we know planes can be designed in a way that makes frequent replacement feasible? Constantly replacing a large component of the plane is not obviously a simple thing. Weight/strength and other requirements might make easy replacement hard to design for.

As you say, we can't replace fuel tanks. If the batteries have to be just as integrated for similar reasons it might be just as difficult to change batteries.
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I mean, why couldn’t they? Just quick disconnects and pick them out with a lift. I think it would be a simple process, batteries are easy to swap on other vehicles.
 
They aren't easy to swap on other vehicles. Read this thread. Swapping the battery on a Tesla can be two days in the shop.

If the batteries on a plane have to be in the wings for design reasons then do you want to fly in the plane that has it's wings entirely opened up three times a day?
 
Well I guess you could design a plane where the batteries are hard to get at as easily as you could a car. You could also design it to be really easy. It’s a big heavy box with a positive and negative terminal. It’s electricity. Unlike a giant vat of liquid you can put it wherever you want.
 
Lol you compared them to a car and your the one that wants to fill wings with batteries. I feel like I should be the one sighing
 
I didn't compare them to a car. Only place I mentioned cars was replying to your statement about "other vehicles". If you think it's simple, tell us where you can place batteries on plane that makes them easy to swap and satisfies all other design requirements a plane has.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
I didn't compare them to a car. Only place I mentioned cars was replying to your statement about "other vehicles". If you think it's simple, tell us where you can place batteries on plane that makes them easy to swap and satisfies all other design requirements a plane has.
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where the luggage is

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It's pretty likely the reason a Tesla battery takes a while to change is because it only needs to be done once a decade. If Elon Musk decided Tesla batteries needed to be swapped on a per trip basis the design would be changed and it would be easy. An iPhone battery takes a bunch of special tools and some time to change, an Android takes your fingers and a few seconds. If you want a plane with accessible batteries there's no reason it can't be engineered that way. It's electricity, you can get it to anywhere on the plane from anywhere on the plane.
 
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So you've just sacrificed the design requirement that planes carry luggage. And you haven't actually demonstrated they would be easy to swap or would satisfy weight/balance and other requirements.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
So you've just sacrificed the design requirement that planes carry luggage. And you haven't actually demonstrated they would be easy to swap or would satisfy weight/balance and other requirements.
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lol ok man you can have this one. If you don't think that can be done you can continue to think that.
 
dirtywick said:
If you want a plane with accessible batteries there's no reason it can't be engineered that way.
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I'd like to know this, not assume this. Just repeating it is possible in your opinion is not the least bit interesting. I'd like to understand it.
 
That is just too stupid. Cars aren't airplanes. Fuselages need integrity, they try to minimize openings in them. Applying that idea directly to a plane might have the entire bottom half of the plane being opened up on each turn around. If you're not willing to put some thought in to this why not stop posting??
 
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