Sami Grover on Treehugger.com has more news on this recent sub-thread concerning electric jets. I found his report on the strategy of Zunum to be of more interest than the propulsion itself:
The first story, reported by Fast Company and others, suggests that Zunum—a Seattle-based start-up recently out of stealth mode, and backed up by Boeing and JetBlue—is gunning for hybrid-electric passenger flights as early as 2022, and 100% battery electric flights not so long after.That’s a pretty astounding ambition. Key to it, though, is understanding that Zunum isn’t trying to just superimpose electric propulsion over our current inefficient, centralized hub-and-spoke model for passenger air travel. Instead, Zunum is developing smaller, nimbler aircraft with between 10 and 50 seats that are capable of utilizing America’s network of regional airports to service point-to-point trips of 700 miles and less, slashing journey times in half and offering competitive pricing of somewhere around 8 cents per passenger mile. The model, they say, is capable of delivering an 80% cut in emissions on regional air travel.
So just why do we have a hub and spoke system right now, anyways? Kevin Bonsor’s answer on How Stuff Works:
The hub-and-spoke system became the norm for most major airlines after the U.S. federal government deregulated the airlines in 1978. Under the direct-route, or point-to-point, system used prior to deregulation, airlines were forced by the federal government to fly directly between two small markets. This resulted in many flights that were routinely half empty, which resulted in airlines losing money. Today, most airlines have at least one central airport that their flights have to go through. From that hub, the spoke flights take passengers to select destinations.
It would be interesting to see a graph of the efficiency of flying passengers as passenger count varies for a generic fossil fuel jet, and then the same graph for these projected, small electric jets.
If you want a more technical approach to the subject of hub and spoke vs point to point, MS&E 135 @ Stanford has some material, which I did not read thoroughly, but I do take their points concerning the vulnerability of the hub & spoke model to weather incidents – and how a point to point system can work around it.
