Eviation’s Alice is an all-electric, nine-person aircraft

Re:Eviation’s Alice is an all-electric, nine-person aircraft by gvb on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @09:31PM (#18614883)

Good question. The Model 3 battery[1] weighs 478 kg so 9x = ~4,300kg. 11 people on board is another 1,000kg (not including the golf clubs). MTOW[2] is 6,350kg so the airframe needs to weigh in at ~1,000kg.

I'm sure they can make a battery lighter than a Model 3 battery (optimized for weight rather than cost), but how much lighter???

Unlike liquid fueled aircraft, you won't be able to trade off fuel weight for passenger weight to stay under MTOW.

[1] https://evannex.com/blogs/news/tesla-s-battery-pack-is-both-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_takeoff_weight

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Re:Eviation’s Alice is an all-electric, nine-person aircraft by bronco21016 on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @09:43PM (#18614924)

Excellent point. Often times only enough fuel for the route is taken so more payload can be taken. In a battery setup your max payload is always the same. No trade offs for range.

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Re:Eviation’s Alice is an all-electric, nine-person aircraft by rhinoceraptor on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @10:00PM (#18614985)

I would imagine that planes could have much higher battery cell per battery pack utilization, because the protective shell for the battery packs is less necessary.

Some back of the envelope math for the Model 3 battery: it has 4416 2170 cells, 66g each, is 291.5 kg, and the total battery pack weight is 478 kg. So only 60% of the battery pack weight is the actual battery cells.

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