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As someone who lives in the Great Lakes region - there are a ton of 100 mile flights that would take 4 hours to drive - often as the first leg in a two-flight trip. Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives, heavily dependent on road conditions all within the pure-electric range.

by griffinkelly3 hours ago|

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There's regular DEN to COS flights by United, every hour on the hour. Sometimes can be faster than driving, would be a great one to replace. Also ORD to MKE. A lot of small routes that are about 100 miles that are equally inconvenient to drive.

by its_ethan3 hours ago|

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ORD to MKE is a 60-90 minute drive depending on traffic. When you account for going through ORD security, boarding, taxiing at ORD, etc. I'm not so sure that it's a win for travel time. Depends on where you're starting from in the Chicago area, I suppose.

Your DEN to COS suggestion would probably be quite popular for skiers coming in that want to avoid renting a car and would enjoy the electric hop to avoid a 2hr drive.

The real winning route would be two airports separated by ~100miles that still have a 3+hr drive, or two small regional airports where security time is negligible (that's certainly NOT O'hare, in my experience at least lol) Flights leaving GRB to northern Michigan would be perfect for this though since the alternative is to drive around Lake Michigan.

by toast03 hours ago|

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ORD to MKE is a (mostly) silly flight if that's your whole trip.

ORD to MKE is reasonable as part of a X -> ORD -> MKE one stop; at least when I was using MKE, I'd always need a stop (Midwest was too expensive for me) and ORD was an option, although I think I always went through DFW or PHX.

by cucumber37328424 hours ago|

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>Also places like Denver -> Ski resorts (Vail/Aspen/Crested Butte) are 2 - 3hr drives

See also: Boston and NYC to Cape Cod and the Hamptons.

The electric/green angle helps with these kinds of routes too.

by nradov4 hours ago|

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The best use case might be short flights over water or other geographic obstacles where driving routes might be much longer or impossible. Like Kahului Airport to Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport for example.

by hermitcrab2 hours ago|

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What happens when a large amount of these batteries get submerged in fresh or salt water?

by nradov2 hours ago|

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Nothing good, but if you have to ditch in the water then batteries are the least of your concerns.

by tiahura2 hours ago|

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They sink.

by jdlshore2 hours ago|

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Portland to Seattle is about 140 miles and has constant flights. Even if a small part of the flight uses fuel, that’s major cost savings.

by kevin_thibedeau4 hours ago|

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Island hopping is the usual sales pitch for these planes.

by SoftTalker3 hours ago|

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Maybe from mainland to islands if there's enough range for the round-trip. Otherwise many islands are not going to have the electrical infrastructure to handle the charging demands.

by rootusrootus2 hours ago|

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I would not expect the charging demands to be that big a deal on a plane this small, at least. I would guess the battery is about the same size as a modern long range electric pickup. A garden variety 400 kW fast charger would probably be sufficient. Surely any island big enough for a proper airport could handle that.

by SoftTalker2 hours ago|

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I guess it depends. Some island airports aren't much more than a landing strip.

by Garlef1 hours ago|

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San Francisco - Napa Valley

Booze Cruise aka "Winetasting" for the tech crowd

Fly sustainable, guzzle some fermented bio grapes, ...

by burkaman2 hours ago|

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There are like 10,000 flights between Milwaukee and Chicago every year. Personally I would take the train, but a lot of people do not.

by cameldrv1 hours ago|

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My guess is most of those are passengers from Milwaukee connecting in Chicago. You could take the train, but then you'd be in downtown Chicago, and have to take Uber or the El to O'Hare. That's a big hassle and takes a while.

by bkummel3 hours ago|

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Remember the days when people laughed at the range and charge times of first-gen electric vehicles?

by vel0city1 hours ago|

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I agree these numbers are likely to improve. I'm purely thinking about this particular model at this particular time.

I'm mostly just wondering why they're making such a big point talking about this being a battery electric plane when the actual commercial variant they hope to sell will likely be mostly used like a plug-in hybrid (I'd imagine).

> The ES-30 is a conventional fixed-wing, 30-seat hybrid-electric regional airliner

by ramesh314 hours ago|

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>"At 120 miles of useful pure electric range, I can't imagine there are many US corridors where that pure electric range makes sense. That's still a range where the door to door time of a car can still win."

It's about feeding the existing network. Millions of people in the US live in places a 2+hr drive to the nearest major airport, but have plenty of smaller municipal fields nearby. Electric aviation could finally make it profitable and cheap enough to run those routes. It also opens the door to true commuter aviation becoming a thing, when you can offer short flights for the cost comparable to a train ticket, and operate out of small fields with small planes multiple times a day and no need for the whole TSA experience.

by vel0city3 hours ago|

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> Millions of people in the US live in places a 2+hr drive to the nearest major airport

If its >2 hour drive to the airport this plane probably isn't going to take you there on pure-electric power, that's my point. If you drive 65MPH for two hours, you've gone further than this thing can fly (on pure battery).

by inghamemerson3 hours ago|

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GE along with BETA, NASA, and Boeing showcased a hybrid aircraft at the Farnborough airshow last month that's worth checking out!

https://investors.beta.team/news-events/press-releases/detai...

by tiahura3 hours ago|

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Appx 5% of us domestic flights, 1200 per day.

by panick21_3 hours ago|

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They want to push the 'all electric range' angle, but the people who buy it know what it can do.

by vel0city10 minutes ago|

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Yeah, reading a bit more it does seem like this experimental version is to really test the battery electric components but the actual plane they're looking to put on sale seems to be sold as like a plug-in hybrid.