Re:Ultralight lithium-sulfur batteries for electric airplanes
by bdamm on Thursday August 20, 2020 @04:06PM
(#24228208)
Yeah, I think you're mostly right. I suspect it's going to start with seaplanes (oddly) because they fly short hop routes that are ideal for electric aircraft. Then you'll start to see new routes made economic by electrification, such as; Marin County->Palo Alto, SurfAir routes (like linking up the dozen airports sprinkled around Los Angeles area), generally linking up small hops. At the beginning electric aircraft won't be competing with existing airline routes, they'll be expanding coverage and reducing prices for local area hops.
If you can link up some sort of route(s) to deal with range-anxiety / weather, and can criss-cross the country, you're in business.
Once your route is built, it's straightforward to manage capacity/flight-plans (reservations / networks / routing), and then you move directly to demand-generation, but you'll have a real tough time competing directly with coast-to-coast direct flights.