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Clem Newton-BrownGuestScott RobinsonHost
Clem Newton-BrownGuestScott RobinsonHost
But there's people with developing conventional aircraft that just look like normal planes, but they're powered by electricity.
The only commercial ones are the small Pipistrel two-seaters, and I think there's a company in Western Australia that runs those and may actually be running them out to Rottnest Island now on a commercial basis.
There's another company that's doing retrofitting of old aircraft, a company called Dovetail, based in Melbourne.
So the real challenge is the battery life, and the batteries are getting better and better.
And you've also got to factor in It's great that it's using electricity, but where's the electricity coming from? Is it renewable? And you've got to look at the life cycle of the batteries and saving the environment on one side, but are you damaging it on the other? So there's a fair way to go.
But I think, look, if you could design cities now without having to take into account the way they've been developed, you may not have... fossil fuel petrol stations at convenient locations everywhere so that it's very difficult for people to make that decision to move into an electric vehicle.
I think people have realised that it might be okay if you're whizzing around town, but you don't want to be stuck In a country town, in a queue of three or four people with a broken charger, where you've timed it to be home at a certain time, and it's going to take you a whole lot longer.
So I think that's where there's that range of anxiety, and you certainly don't want to have that in the sky.
It's a very different thing to suddenly be in the sky saying, you know, landing now.
And this is why, you know, the hybrid is – in cars seems to be what people are buying now because they can – They get the benefits of electric, but they don't have that range anxiety.
And there are some aircraft, one of the partners we're working with is called Electra Aero, and they're a conventional or short takeoff and landing aircraft.
They've got an unusual configuration of propellers along the wing that enables them to just jump up in the air at very slow speeds.
But there's people with developing conventional aircraft that just look like normal planes, but they're powered by electricity.
The only commercial ones are the small Pipistrel two-seaters, and I think there's a company in Western Australia that runs those and may actually be running them out to Rottnest Island now on a commercial basis.
There's another company that's doing retrofitting of old aircraft, a company called Dovetail, based in Melbourne.
So the real challenge is the battery life, and the batteries are getting better and better.
And you've also got to factor in It's great that it's using electricity, but where's the electricity coming from? Is it renewable? And you've got to look at the life cycle of the batteries and saving the environment on one side, but are you damaging it on the other? So there's a fair way to go.
But I think, look, if you could design cities now without having to take into account the way they've been developed, you may not have... fossil fuel petrol stations at convenient locations everywhere so that it's very difficult for people to make that decision to move into an electric vehicle.
I think people have realised that it might be okay if you're whizzing around town, but you don't want to be stuck In a country town, in a queue of three or four people with a broken charger, where you've timed it to be home at a certain time, and it's going to take you a whole lot longer.
So I think that's where there's that range of anxiety, and you certainly don't want to have that in the sky.
It's a very different thing to suddenly be in the sky saying, you know, landing now.
And this is why, you know, the hybrid is – in cars seems to be what people are buying now because they can – They get the benefits of electric, but they don't have that range anxiety.
And there are some aircraft, one of the partners we're working with is called Electra Aero, and they're a conventional or short takeoff and landing aircraft.
They've got an unusual configuration of propellers along the wing that enables them to just jump up in the air at very slow speeds.
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