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| Alia Electric VTOL Aircraft |
The above image is a prototype aircraft (sans vertical lift rotors) in flight. It's being developed by Beta Technologies, a small startup company in Vermont. They have acquired nearly $800 million in funding for development. That might be enough to get them through FAA certification, which might be the most expensive part of bringing any new airplane to market.
UPS plans to buy 150 of these aircraft when they are ready, which isn't going to be for at least a couple more years. With a price tag of $4 million each, that would be $600 million, which makes it seem like that $800 million investment could possibly pay off. There are a number of hurdles to overcome before they get there though, and it wouldn't take too many stumbles to scuttle the whole thing.
The thing that bothers me about electric vehicles is the stupid lithium-ion batteries and their propensity to catch fire. Actually, that's not fair. There was a spate of Tesla automobile fires a while back, but somebody checked and concluded that the rate of Teslas catching fire was lower than the rate that conventional gasoline automobiles catch fire. The bigger problem is how difficult it is to put out an automobile battery fire. It might take 2,000 gallons to put out the fire in a burning gasoline powered car, but it will take ten times as much water to put out an electric vehicle fire. I suppose someone will develop a protocol for dealing with lithium-ion battery fires and then, eventually, fire departments around the country will adopt new practices and equipment to deal with them.
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