Y CombinatorThe World’s Largest Electric Aircraft Just Flew
Y Combinator
Largest Electric Plane Takes Flight 0:01
This is the largest electric airplane ever to fly, with a 100 foot wingspan and a takeoff weight of 25,000 pounds. The electricity needed to get it off the ground cost just 5 dollars. Its successor, the ES30, will fly up to 125 miles on battery alone, up to 500 miles as a hybrid, and recharge in about 30 minutes. It is the world's largest electric aircraft by roughly a factor of two, and the first clean sheet airliner to fly in the US in 18 years. Andrew Porceland, CEO of Hart Aerospace, showed a 3D printed model of this plane 7 years ago at YC. Today his team in LA numbers 40 people, and their mission is to reduce the cost of air travel.
Why Electric Motors Beat Jet Engines 1:31
Hart's plane swaps the jet engine for electric motors, which have essentially one moving part compared to the thousands in a jet engine. Because there is no combustion, the motors barely wear out, and they are nearly silent from 100 feet away. The power source is eight battery packs across the fuselage floor, carrying about 40 dollars worth of fuel, roughly the equivalent of four Teslas. Jet engines cost the same to build and wear the same whether a flight covers 100 miles or 1,000, which pushes airlines toward bigger planes and longer routes, leaving short regional flights badly served. Half of all flights in the world are under 2 hours, and the aircraft being replaced are 40 year old designs, so operating economics have improved from 33 percent better to 48 percent better as oil prices rose.
From Sweden to a Spam Folder 4:02
Anders grew up next to a Swedish air force base and later did a PhD on jet engines before landing at MIT, where Elon Musk's talk about electric transportation 12 years ago became, in his words, a call to arms. He spent years building airline relationships in the Nordics before he even had a company, and Hart's first big airline customer, United, came in through an inbound email that was almost deleted as spam. The design deliberately looks like the conventional turboprops it replaces rather than something futuristic. The hardest engineering problem was not the motor or battery but reserve power, since batteries do not get lighter as they burn, one in a thousand US flights gets diverted, and the aircraft needs enough reserve to loiter and fly on to another airport, which is why Hart added a small hybrid turboprop engine covering about 20 percent of the aircraft's upfront cost.
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