Electric Aircraft Has Unlimited Range… With A Fleet Of Recharging PlanesElectric Aircraft Has Unlimited Range… With A Fleet Of Recharging Planes

It’s okay, you’ve not clicked on “Green Plane Reports”, but every so often something from beyond the world of cars catches our attention.
This time, it’s electric flight. The concept is nothing new, and it’s even been alluded to by people like Elon Musk of Tesla, but for the time being it remains a true flight of fancy, rather than a working concept for passenger transportation.
The video above suggests one such way of making the concept workable. We’ll leave you to form your own thoughts, but we can forsee a few disadvantages.
The concept is sound–ensure an electric aircraft can theoretically stay aloft forever, by recharging it in mid air. Think of it as the flying equivalent of inductive charging being built into every road in the land, allowing electric cars to charge as they drive.
And of course, electric planes are a nice idea–there’s no issue with how high they can fly as they don’t need oxygen to produce thrust, and they’d save millions of gallons of oil per year.
But the concept in the video is a little too Rube Goldberg for us.
We like the range-extending idea of a detachable, flying battery backup, but it seems quite complicated. Imagine if electric cars were always backed up by a recovery truck with a charger on board. Great! Now imagine that truck is also powered by electricity, and constantly has to disappear to be replaced by another truck. Not so great…
And when the concept of electric flight is to cut down on fossil fuel usage and pollution, is sending a fleet of ships, carrying a fleet of recharging aircraft, really the best way of doin that?
Probably not. It’s a nice idea, but this might be a case for going back to the drawing board…
+++++++++++
Follow GreenCarReports on Facebook and Twitter.

View original article at : “https://www.greencarreports.com//news/1078631_electric-aircraft-has-unlimited-range-with-a-fleet-of-recharging-planes”