A Huge Battery with an Airplane Painted On It

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Eviation, an Israeli company developing Alice, a high-speed, intermediate-distance commuter airplane, brought its prototype to the Paris Air Show this week.  Eviation co-founder and CEO Omer Bar-Yohay gave journalists a 27-minute overview of the aircraft, the philosophy behind it, and projections on its immediate future. “It’s basically a huge battery with some plane painted on it,” he told reporters. The 6,350 kilogram (13,970 pound) airplane carries 900 kilowatt-hours of batteries, equivalent to the cells in nine Tesla S P100D automobiles or one Tesla semi-truck.  Even that, according to rough figuring by yours truly and polished calculations by a smarter reader, seems to provide for only half the necessary energy to provide the range Eviation claims.  Will flight tests prove us misguided? Fuel Burn vs. kWh Carrying capacity and performance are similar to the Beechcraft King Air.  The King Air burns 100 gallons per hour at a fuel cost around $550.  The Alice consumes about 400 kilowatt hours at a cost …