$5 cost. 25,000 pounds. BUT OVER WHAT FUCKING DISTANCE?
$5 gets me 23 miles in my Delica. It gets me 100 miles on my motorcycle. It gets me 30 miles in my Porsche 914. But the article says nothing about distance.
If humans can hang glide I don’t see why we couldn’t use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It’s a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.
The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.
Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.
My 1975 was tuned for distance. When I drove it from Key Largo to Seattle, it did 35mpg average over the 3500 miles I drove. That car was lost in an accident, sadly.
25 miles per gallon. 30 minutes would be 12.5 miles on half a gallon.
My current one does about 25-30 mpg. It weighs 1950 pounds. So, yes. It can comfortably do half an hour on one gallon or so and have fuel left to get me to a refill.
They have flat 4 two liter VW engines. Extremely efficient if tuned correctly. One top of that, there is a direct 1 to 1 drop-in electric kit for these. When my current engine dies, I have an electric kit I’ll put into it to make it an 914E.
I used to drive a '76 Rabbit that got 40 mpg (and with a carburetor no less). Unfortunately, it had no chance of passing an emissions inspection and not much chance of surviving even a low-speed collision.
Why would you leave behind a perfectly nice airstrip when your goal is testing a new aircraft? One step at a time, Speedy. Aircraft distance depends on altitude and winds. Not the goal of this flight to break this kind of record. Easier things like time come first. Only then can they calculate how far they can go. Aircrafts can’t park on the shoulder like your 2D vehicles do.
Heart aerospace’s website indicates the X1 demonstrator has a 140kt “VNE” - never exceed - speed. So it’s probably safe to assume cruise speed would be closer to 100kt, and $5 of electricity used in half an hour might equate to around 50nm straight line distance.
It’s pretty impressive for a plane roughly equivalent in size to a 30-seat turboprop airliner like the EMB 120
I’m guessing it mostly flew in circles, since it’s a test flight that happened “at Plattsburgh International Airport” instead of between two locations. 27 minute flight, whatever that’s worth.
On average, a 737 or A320 consumes between 2,500 and 3,000 litres of fuel per hour
Take a typical two-hour flight, such as Amsterdam to Barcelona. The total fuel burn would be approximately 5,500 litres. At a reference price of $0.59 per litre, that translates to around $3,200 in fuel costs.
So that’s $10 an hour down from $1600 an hour? Seems decent.
The X1 demonstrator is more comparable in weight and power to an EMB 120 Brasilia, a 30-seat turboprop. Forum chatter seems to indicate those burn around 1000 lbs per hour, or $335/hr in fuel using the $0.59/liter price you mentioned.
The first flight of the largest battery-electric aircraft to take to the skies lasted nearly half an hour while costing just $5 of electricity. That aviation feat comes at a time when jet fuel prices have skyrocketed because of the US war with Iran.
That seems like really bad efficiency, or really expensive power. I used to have a Nissan Leaf that would do over 5 miles to the kW. Even with rather substantial battery degradation, I could get 80 miles to a charge, and a full charge would run me about $1.25 at the local utility rates.
This article is idiotic.
$5 cost. 25,000 pounds. BUT OVER WHAT FUCKING DISTANCE?
$5 gets me 23 miles in my Delica. It gets me 100 miles on my motorcycle. It gets me 30 miles in my Porsche 914. But the article says nothing about distance.
Literally the first sentence:
Can your Porsche 914 fly for half an hour on $5 of fuel ?
Off a cliff yeah
It would have to be a very high cliff.
Or have a really strong updraft
Or go through the center of gravity so it eventually turns back around
If humans can hang glide I don’t see why we couldn’t use those aerodynamic principles to try to glide a car hooked up to glider wings. It’s a real engineering challenge, but I feel like it would be possible to get some distance in a scenario where a car uses its wheels to go fast, drives off a cliff, deploys some kind of glider wings (or drive with the glider wings timed out to where the car gets to the cliff edge right at the point where the wings plus updraft provide enough lift) to get the vehicle to glide a substantial distance.
Seems horribly dangerous but not impossible.
Anyone know the terminal velocity of a falling Porsche 914? lol
The terminal velocity of a penny is at least 40 km/h. A Porsche would be much higher. Assuming the Porsche fell that slowly and reached terminal velocity instantly, the cliff would have to be 20 km high for the Porsche to fall for 30 minutes. Given Mt. Everest is just under 9 km high, you would need more than 2 Mt. Everests of height for your cliff to make this happen.
Based on all that, the terminal velocity of a Porsche is irrelevant.
My 1975 was tuned for distance. When I drove it from Key Largo to Seattle, it did 35mpg average over the 3500 miles I drove. That car was lost in an accident, sadly.
25 miles per gallon. 30 minutes would be 12.5 miles on half a gallon.
My current one does about 25-30 mpg. It weighs 1950 pounds. So, yes. It can comfortably do half an hour on one gallon or so and have fuel left to get me to a refill.
They have flat 4 two liter VW engines. Extremely efficient if tuned correctly. One top of that, there is a direct 1 to 1 drop-in electric kit for these. When my current engine dies, I have an electric kit I’ll put into it to make it an 914E.
I used to drive a '76 Rabbit that got 40 mpg (and with a carburetor no less). Unfortunately, it had no chance of passing an emissions inspection and not much chance of surviving even a low-speed collision.
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Point to me in your quote where it talks about distance.
Why would you leave behind a perfectly nice airstrip when your goal is testing a new aircraft? One step at a time, Speedy. Aircraft distance depends on altitude and winds. Not the goal of this flight to break this kind of record. Easier things like time come first. Only then can they calculate how far they can go. Aircrafts can’t park on the shoulder like your 2D vehicles do.
Heart aerospace’s website indicates the X1 demonstrator has a 140kt “VNE” - never exceed - speed. So it’s probably safe to assume cruise speed would be closer to 100kt, and $5 of electricity used in half an hour might equate to around 50nm straight line distance.
It’s pretty impressive for a plane roughly equivalent in size to a 30-seat turboprop airliner like the EMB 120
I’m guessing it mostly flew in circles, since it’s a test flight that happened “at Plattsburgh International Airport” instead of between two locations. 27 minute flight, whatever that’s worth.
$10 an hour still seems really good though right? I’m not sure how much Airlines pay currently for fuel though.
Only article I could find was this: https://flyinginsight.com/2026/02/14/how-much-does-it-cost-to-fuel-an-airplane/
So that’s $10 an hour down from $1600 an hour? Seems decent.
The X1 demonstrator is more comparable in weight and power to an EMB 120 Brasilia, a 30-seat turboprop. Forum chatter seems to indicate those burn around 1000 lbs per hour, or $335/hr in fuel using the $0.59/liter price you mentioned.
Dropping down to $10 is still pretty decent lol
Yeah except this is a tiny little plane and a 737 is huge. So those comparisons don’t make much sense.
At what airspeed?
Fast enough to take off and then not fall out of the sky.
It could grip it by the husk.
It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios. A five ounce bird could not carry a 1 pound coconut!
Did you reply to the wrong comment because you’re quoting time, not distance?
23 miles lol. For $5 I get about 125miles in my Atto3
With horse power and cargo capacity an airplane has I really doubt it
That seems like really bad efficiency, or really expensive power. I used to have a Nissan Leaf that would do over 5 miles to the kW. Even with rather substantial battery degradation, I could get 80 miles to a charge, and a full charge would run me about $1.25 at the local utility rates.
Charging at home vs public charger, driving speeds, hilly terrain, etc.