Ooooo. Here ya go. Check out this company that presented there. You all should love this one. Or us un-geek types should. Level the playing field a little. https://algoriz.com/
Although these guy's are hopelessly naive the fire part isn't really a legitimate thing to ding them on. I mean in all fairness, jet fuel/diesel/heating oil are pretty flammable as well and catch fire pretty regularly both in the air and on the ground. It's just not as sensationalistic, at least until it takes down a 747 when the center fuel tank pumps short. If anything a lithium ion powered aircraft would be substantially safer in the otherwise survivable hard/crash landings where it would take a couple minutes for the shorts to end up in an unsurvivable fire while jet fuel mists and explodes from a spark before the plane even comes to rest.
Sure, cars occasionally catch on fire due to a gasoline leak. Diesel is a bit safer, it does not burn as fast. The concern about battery packs is that they can spontaneously explode without requiring any impact. That's why electric cars require complicated cooling systems to keep the pack from overheating. Fuel tanks don't spontaneously explode regardless of the rate at which fuel (energy) is being consumed / withdrawn from them. Also, I'm not sure it would take a couple minutes for the shorts to end up in an survivable fire. Those batteries store a lot of energy and when it's quickly released, it can be awesome.
That was a missile strike!!! The problem with batteries is that they become dead weight once they are drained. Airplane manufacturers will battle to save even a few pounds on an airplane as they have to keep that weight afloat in the air the entire duration of a flight.
Absolutely (on the weight part!), the opposite of jet fuel where the plane gets lighter as it flies. One of many things the founders miss can be seen in their statement "when batteries get a lot better" For now "better" mostly means cheaper and to some extent denser. While weight is a concern, it's tertiary and not where we're seeing huge gains. I wouldn't be surprised to see batteries 90% cheaper in 15 years. I would be surprised to see them 98.4% lighter, which is what they'd have to be to match the energy density of Jet-A. And then you've still got to carry the expended weight around the whole flight rather than an average of half, so now they've got to be 99.2% lighter than they are today!
Plus I don't see how it can mimic a jet engine as a jet engine turbine effectively ignites highly compressed air with fuel to create thrust. It would have to be some kind of piston engine which has other limitations.
They appear to have some kind of in-wing ducted fan which presumably would run off electric motors. One rule of any bleeding edge technology is to minimize the "first of it's kind" stuff to only that which is absolutely necessary. That would call for an electric motor driven prop plane, like a Dash-8, not some crazy internal fan setup. However a Dash-8 isn't sexy and exciting looking, so they go with an even more unrealistic additional technology.
This whole thing smells like vaporware. Look at their website. It reads more like a burgeoning social media platform designed from a WeWork cubicle.
I am far from an expert on planes. Hell I've never even flown in one, but I was wondering -- are there any large weight savings from going electric that would partially offset the increase in weight from the batteries? Certainly the battery itself is a massive weight, but are there any significant (in weight) savings from components that would be unnecessary in an electric plane? I'd imagine the jet engines themselves are rather heavy, but I haven't a clue what the weight of an electric engine would be to deliver similar performance (could it be less?). There may be other components as well (ex an electric car doesn't need a transmission). Another key aspect to this is that traditionally battery technology has been focused on making it cheaper, denser, faster to charge, this kind of thing. Perhaps there's a less focused on battery technology that is horrible for speed of charge and energy density, but is rather good on weight. What about hydrogen rather than batteries for the energy storage? Just some things this thread made me think about.