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posted by martyb on Thursday December 12 2019, @11:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the worlds-first-commercial-electric-beaver dept.

The Guardian is reporting;

The world's first fully electric commercial aircraft has taken its inaugural test flight, taking off from the Canadian city of Vancouver and flying for 15 minutes.

"This proves that commercial aviation in all-electric form can work," said Roei Ganzarski, chief executive of Australian engineering firm magniX.

The company designed the plane's motor and worked in partnership with Harbour Air, which ferries half a million passengers a year between Vancouver, Whistler ski resort and nearby islands and coastal communities.

The recycled 62-year-old de Havilland Beaver seaplane is designed for short hops of 160 km or less, which represents the majority of Harbour Air flights. They're looking to save millions on costly maintenance and downtime. Harbour Air hopes to convert most of their airplanes after certification.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday December 13 2019, @02:42AM (1 child)

    by Reziac (2489) on Friday December 13 2019, @02:42AM (#931609) Homepage

    And I was wondering about fallback and redundancy as compared to a IC engine, and relative reliability under, say, suddenly bad weather, or mid-air restart conditions.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @06:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @06:47AM (#931653)

    It is still a single engine aircraft, so it can't really be worse in terms of redundancy. Not air-breathing so it can't get a clogged or drowned intake or supercharger. There is no fuel pump to vapour-lock, spark plugs to foul, or cylinders to flood. Overheat would still be a problem, but that can happen with IC engines too. An electric motor doesn't have a starter so unless the battery is dead or there is an electrical or mechanical fault preventing it then restarting shouldn't be any different than on the ground, but IC won't restart without fuel or if damaged either. The only real downside I see mechanically is that an electrical fault is likely to be more severe than IC due to the greater current availability but even that is offset by the lack of volatile fuel to burn.

    TL;DR Electrics have far fewer moving parts than IC engines do, so there is less to break. The only reason mid-air restart would be less likely to succeed is because most of the non-fatal failure modes have been eliminated. That is, if it quits at all then Something Really Badâ„¢ happened that an IC engine wouldn't recover from either.