Apologies if this has already been posted - didn’t see it in a quick search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NogbitXvP-w

Mosaic? Priced lower than an avionics stack… and 800 mile range. Wonder if Tesla is really entertaining getting into aviation? They don’t know what they don’t know of course.



Discuss….


Jeff

Looks like AI slop.

Agreed click-bate like.

Wouldn't it need a pretty long cable to keep the battery charged.

Had casual opportunity to sit in a BETA s/n 0001 & grill the demo pilot for quite a while the other day.

Had stopped here on way back from Oshkosh to home turf in Burlington VT

Lots of innovation, redundancy, compromise & creativity.

The company offers free flight training to all employees, even summer interns!

Ramping up production.

It's a matter of time...
The electric motors are far superior than our 80 year old tractor technology.
Only issue are batteries... Which will be better soon.

I imagine that the batteries in 20 years will be exponentially better than today, and will be able to be used for aviation.

Watched it fly at Osh. That the first electric plane that has gotten my attention. They were ripping it around like crazy.

This thing may be gaining some traction. The potential customer base is impressive to say the least, and the range and payload make it viable for a lot of uses.

I don't see anything that is reasonably foreseeable to change the energy density of batteries so radically as to make electric aviation truly viable over a wide spectrum of uses.

The best use of electric aircraft are very short commuter flights, like this:

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/harbour-a ... -buzz-b-c/

Short, 30 minute flights, make this quite viable, with sufficient recharge time at the dock. If you wanted to replace the longer range aircraft, there is no viable concept that will do that as of today. So electric aircraft will remain a niche technology that will find some uses, but it isn't going to replace a 172 any time soon.

Mike C.

I don't see anything that is reasonably foreseeable to change the energy density of batteries so radically as to make electric aviation truly viable over a wide spectrum of uses.

The best use of electric aircraft are very short commuter flights, like this:

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/harbour-a ... -buzz-b-c/

Short, 30 minute flights, make this quite viable, with sufficient recharge time at the dock. If you wanted to replace the longer range aircraft, there is no viable concept that will do that as of today. So electric aircraft will remain a niche technology that will find some uses, but it isn't going to replace a 172 any time soon.

Mike C.

Wow, did Hades just freeze over??? Chip agreeing with Mike??????

Hopefully some of the VTOL gets shelved and they just concentrate on making a decent load carrying airplane first. I was impressed with the airplanes flying and testing in the Flightchops YouTube video.

The cabin and high wing would make a hell of an Airventure camper. Just rearrange into something shaped more like a Beaver or Norseman. Or the Wilson Private Explorer.

Is the pusher really that efficient with the big box airframe ahead of it? Same with the wing and tail planform if not a VTOL?

Beta intends to produce a vtol using that airframe. I spoke to some of their engineers at Oshkosh and came away impressed. They described their crawl, walk run philosophy. They intend to certify the simpler pusher aircraft first and then move onto the vtol. They also told me that they have installed charging stations at 50 airports to facilitate their flight testing and they can recharge in 15 minutes. I think they were claiming a range of something like 250 nautical miles but I’m not sure if that was with reserve. I did also hear how they offered flight training to their employees and have a number of airplanes, including a husky on floats.

Talk is cheap, delivering is not.


That's like saying they are going to build helicopters by building airplanes first. Those two things are so different that they really don't mesh.


Which ones?


Which means they have extra weight for heavy conductors and battery cooling.


ADS-B track?


Ah, that is clearly the key to making this all work.

Mike C.

Sure have been hearing the term, EVTOL a lot lately.