Derek Howe
Nice. Wonder how big the battery is, and what it's range is, I'm guess it's range isn't very good. But I'm thrilled to see electric aircraft progressing forward.
toyhouse
"Efficiency of up to 90 percent and zero emissions",? Zero - always, a dubious description for ev's. It mentions, 750kw, enough to power 250 homes. That's a lot of energy from the grid by a single user. It's zero if it's taken from a renewable source - anything else is playing semantics. That said, nice to see progress being made for electric aircraft and racing/record attempts are where new ground is often made. It's very possible, most student pilots will be learning to fly in them in another 20 years or less. Much cheaper to fly around the pattern than gas. Cross-country? Not yet, but anything is possible.
Paulinator
1,000 hp delivering only 300mph in that slippery airframe ?!?!?
What gives?
paul314
The record for propeller-driven aircraft is somewhere north of 530 mph, so there's a touch of headroom available here.
Nobody
This article leaves a lot of questions. Monitoring 20,000 data points sounds horribly redundant. 1000hp that only gives 300 mph also sounds a little off unless the plane is extremely heavy. Another problem with electric power is all the wasted heat just like an internal combustion engine. This always reminds me of the Freon engine booster from the 1960s that was supposed to use the wasted heat from a gas engine to up the overall efficiency. A small Freon powered generator could add to the power and range while utilizing some of that wasted heat energy.
Jay E.
It looks like a Jon Sharp Nemesis NXT that has been modified to electric power. With an airframe proven to be able to reach 575mph with 1000 HP, they are shooting awfully low with their goals. Perhaps the battery weight is the problem. The racer had twin turbos and produced huge amounts of heat, cant imagine why cooling should be an issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Nemesis_NXT
ei3io
Good points all,, The future may very well eliminate most of; the weight problem, the heat problem, the efficiency problem, the range problem, the emissions problem and the cost problems in manufacture operation & maintenance, plus the sound problems. How? By the very strong potential of Atmospheric Ion Propulsion [AIP] where simulations show well over 80% efficiency possible when only 25% efficiency is needed to lift 300 pounds vertically with only 1 square meter of jet exhaust.
Solar hydrogen fuel cells pushing warm air reaction thrust jet exhaust from a very light weight frame that is also the entire engine carrying a pod for live loads using NO MOVING parts,,, is only limited by the weight of power. Lets here it for Hydrogen fuel cell batterie evolution,,,
Leithauser
It would definitely be nice to have more information, like what is the range and how many people does it carry. It looks like a one or two seater in the picture.
F. Tuijn
It looks as if the battery pack is built into the fuselage instead of in the wings, giving a much larger weight than necessary.
RogerOS
Where in the article does it say it's 1000hp? If you read the source it clearly says that the combined continuous power output of the engines is 500hp.