Elon Musk thinks of a plane with an electric motor

Everyone already knows how to Elon Musk king electric vehicles. But this is not limited to his plans. He still wants to make electric motors and batteries for electric aircraft. On his plans to the executive director of Tesla Motors and SpaceX company told the participants of the competition Hyperloop Pod Competition , which ended last week.

In the nomination for the best design of capsules won team at MIT , their work is shown below.



The competition was attended by more than 115 engineering teams from 27 universities in the US and 20 foreign teams. Only 22 teams have advanced to the next round of the competition in California, where they will have this summer actually build and test its capsule design.

Returning to the aircraft. Elon Musk said that imagines "Electric Aircraft with vertical take-off and landing." He said that in his view they have something akin to this concept. "For me it is quite tempting to do something in this direction", - he added
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Elon Musk is not the first time mentions the power planes, remember journalists. He spoke of them in 2009 ( video), as well as thinking about the idea of ​​a few more times, including < a href="http://news.discovery.com/tech/alternative-power-sources/supersonic-electric-airplane-next-for-elon-musk-151017.htm">этой autumn. Although this is only a fantasy, but taking into account the frequency with which Musk talks about them, it is likely realization of plans in life that such a project actually start.

In general, for the movement of aircraft tried to use electricity from the 70s, but the power supply was significantly more expensive than conventional kerosene and the batteries were too imperfect. But even now some planes used battery as an auxiliary power source for a hybrid engine, for example, Boeing 787 Dreamliner. But Musk wants to create not a hybrid and all-electric aircraft.

If someone in the world and is capable of, it is Elon Musk. When Gigafactory plant running at full capacity, it will receive a huge number of lithium-ion batteries at low cost, which probably can be used in airplanes ... ever.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/270480/