A Tesla Electric plane?

Eviation Aircraft prototype –
A new all-electric aircraft with a range up to 600 miles unveiled at Paris Air Show
Source: Electrek

From Electrek:

Tesla CEO Elon Musk [has] started discussing the potential for electric airplanes, which he thinks could be viable in about 5 years.

Could a Tesla airplane be in Musk’s plans?

We are already starting to see electric airplane programs, like the Pipistrel Alpha Electro all-electric plane and the Siemens and Magnus’ eFusion, but battery technology still needs to improve in order to have commercial aircraft like we have today.

Musk has long been talking about all modes of transport going electric at some point – except for rockets.

Years ago, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX even said that he had a design for electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft – though he never elaborated on plans to bring the aircraft to production.

In order for his design to work, Musk said that the energy density of batteries needs to improve.

Musk explains that jet fuel beats batteries when it comes to energy density, but the efficiency gains mean that you don’t need as much energetic potential:

“[Are electric planes possible?] Yes, but still a bit too limited on range. That will change in coming years as battery energy density improves.  Jet A (kerosene) has much higher energy density than Li-ion, but electric motors weigh much less and convert stored energy to motion better than combustion engines.  FWIW, based on calcs I did 10 years ago, cross-over point for Li-ion beating kerosene is ~400 Wh/kg. High cycle batteries are just over 300 Wh/kg today, but probably exceed 400 in ~5 years.”


Today, battery cells with high cycles are achieving about 300 Wh/kg of energy density.

[Read more here]


This obviously applies to short-range (600 miles/1000 kms) electric planes, but does it also apply to long-range and intercontinental jets?  Perhaps for long-range air travel, we need to produce carbon-neutral jetfuel. We can do that, using the Sabatier process.  Elon Musk's SpaceX plans point-to-point suborbital flights which would cut travel times between major cities by 90%.  SpaceX plans to use methane to fuel its BRS/Starship, and plans ultimately to produce the methane using the Sabatier process. Electrek suggests that Tesla won't get more involved in electric planes than manufacturing the batteries for them.  But SpaceX, on the other hand, might look into electric planes.  Because rocket launches and landings are so noisy, spaceports will prolly be out to sea, 30 or 40 kms or more from population centres.  Electric VTOL planes to fly people to the spaceport from nearby cities would be an obvious ancillary business to get into.