A projected rollout of electric planes

[Eletruk]

Electric planes are already in the $40,000 to $150,000 price range (in the range of upper end cars). High volume production could reduce those prices to the $20,000 to $75,000 level. Actual visionary adoption could create the volume to get below $20,000.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/projected-rollout-of-electric-planes.html

[aviken]

This seems a little Jetson'sish to me...

[Eletruk]

Yea, that and they don't list where you can actually get those electric planes. I do know of a company that sells an EV conversion for a hangglider ultra light, but most of the other electric planes are like most electric cars... on the drawing board.

[lenapralos]

After checking out a few of these articles I was impressed with what is already being done with mere electric motors and lithium poly in the field of aviation.  Yea, most of this stuff still is on the drawing board just like EVs, which is frustrating, but I get this picture in my head of Boeing making these huge glider like electric aircraft 20 years from now capable of carrying 50+ passengers while only using battery power.  Hopefully these micro fiber lithium ion or whatever we end up using will be recyclable.  Some of the sci-fi I've been reading concerning "on Earth" air transportation might not be so sci-fi in a few years.

I suppose a self take-off electric powered glider is a long way from all out electric air transport, but it's a good start and makes me want to pull out my old RC plane and see how long it will go with electric instead of gas.