• ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 hours ago

    This article is idiotic.

    $5 cost. 25,000 pounds. BUT OVER WHAT FUCKING DISTANCE?

    $5 gets me 23 miles in my Delica. It gets me 100 miles on my motorcycle. It gets me 30 miles in my Porsche 914. But the article says nothing about distance.

    • mierdabird@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 hours ago

      Heart aerospace’s website indicates the X1 demonstrator has a 140kt “VNE” - never exceed - speed. So it’s probably safe to assume cruise speed would be closer to 100kt, and $5 of electricity used in half an hour might equate to around 50nm straight line distance.

      It’s pretty impressive for a plane roughly equivalent in size to a 30-seat turboprop airliner like the EMB 120

    • Mereo@piefed.ca
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      4 hours ago

      The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran.

    • fizzle@quokk.au
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      5 hours ago

      Literally the first sentence:

      The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity.

      Can your Porsche 914 fly for half an hour on $5 of fuel ?

      • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        36 minutes ago

        My 1975 was tuned for distance. When I drove it from Key Largo to Seattle, it did 35mpg average over the 3500 miles I drove. That car was lost in an accident, sadly.

        25 miles per gallon. 30 minutes would be 12.5 miles on half a gallon.

        My current one does about 25-30 mpg. It weighs 1950 pounds. So, yes. It can comfortably do half an hour on one gallon or so and have fuel left to get me to a refill.

        They have flat 4 two liter VW engines. Extremely efficient if tuned correctly. One top of that, there is a direct 1 to 1 drop-in electric kit for these. When my current engine dies, I have an electric kit I’ll put into it to make it an 914E.

    • Deebster@infosec.pub
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      6 hours ago

      I’m guessing it mostly flew in circles, since it’s a test flight that happened “at Plattsburgh International Airport” instead of between two locations. 27 minute flight, whatever that’s worth.

      • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        That seems like really bad efficiency, or really expensive power. I used to have a Nissan Leaf that would do over 5 miles to the kW. Even with rather substantial battery degradation, I could get 80 miles to a charge, and a full charge would run me about $1.25 at the local utility rates.