Elon Musk was the second person ever to amass a personal fortune of more than $US200 billion ($293 billion), breaching that threshold in January 2021, months after Jeff Bezos.
The Tesla chief executive officer has now achieved a first of his own: becoming the only person in history to erase $US200 billion from their net worth.
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There’s a seriously bad idea that would work to decarbonise flying - nuclear power.
I’d far rather we built a nuclear plant in a sensible location and used the electricity to make jet fuel from co2, but decarbonising the grid would be needed first.
Given that there’s nothing in the media about sensible plans to decarbonise steel and air transit, we’re really not taking these “net zero” pledges seriously.
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These trips are only viable if the aircraft only has to ‘refuel’ once a day or has sufficient layover scheduled to permit the batteries to be recharged. This is one of the major limitations of all electric transportation schemes except LRT, subway and non-battery municipal electric busses on fixed routes. If you have to wait for hours to recharge, operational flexibility is severely restricted.
A battery swap option would work to speed up getting vehicles back on the road or aircraft flying again but would no doubt present immense logistical nightmares. Can you imagine the battles over the last charged batteries at a battery exchange center on a major event night, especially with the American unlicenced firearms carry happening across the country? 
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True, I hadn’t considered refuel vs recharge times.
The good (?) news for the battery-replace scenario is that the routes I’ve mentioned pretty much have only one operator. Their competition is busses and / or ferries.
e.g.
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any idea how long it takes to get through security and seated on a plane in germany?
one thing i love about trains is all of the missing airport hassel: you show up when it’s time to board, and you go.
there’s no arrive 1-2 hours in advance, wait in line after line to check luggage, show id, remove shoes, scan items, board in order of paycheck, stow carry ons, roll dice to see which plane leaves on time, taxi to take off, if you’re lucky arrive on time - and then everything in reverse when you land. all as slowly as possible
flying is just about the worst way to travel short of being stuffed in the trunk of someone’s car, or stuck on the roof of mitt romney’s suv
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It’s not bad at all, but it also depends on which airport. Berlin Tegel is easy, but it’s a relatively small airport for a city that size. Security, gates, etc. are handled flight-by-flight, so you can get dropped off, check your luggage, get screened and be in your gate waiting for your flight in under 15 minutes.
Don’t try that at Frankfurt, though. The massive airport is difficult to navigate and has seemingly random security checkpoints within the airport, after you’ve already gone through security. It’s the only European airport I’ve been hassled about my (well-worn) passport.
Munich is similar in size and structure to many US airports, but seems quicker to navigate. My favorite part: the moving walkways, which seem at least twice as fast as anywhere else. You can really feel the wind in your hair!
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Never experienced that. Of course every international European airport has extra security checkpoints before the gates to US and UK flights, but that is the fault of those countries’ insane requirements.
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Apologies, nautical miles is actually what I meant. I rounded down to 200 because nothing electric ever gets the range they claim. There are a couple of startups like them attempting to electrify the regional routes currently served by turboprops, as I said upthread. Every bit helps, so I wish them all the best.
If the regional startups can do what they claim, I think replacing regional flights is a win. You can’t drive over water, so it makes sense in those cases, and every bit helps. If people who would have flown in a turboprop took an electric flight instead, that’s a win.
One of the cornerstones of success in climate change is not letting perfect be the enemy of good. Sure it would be ideal of everyone took high speed rail instead of regional flights, but outside Europe that’s just never gonna happen in our lifetimes. If we can fix the infrastructure we have, we need to do that.
The aviation startups claiming they can do this are claiming sub-60 minute charge times, which is less than gate-loading time. Obviously they thought of that- the people starting these companies aren’t stupid. That said, they’re no doubt basing this on fast-charge times to 80%, which is effective but hard on the batteries. Their business model may include a high turnover on the batteries which has its own as-yet-underdetermined environmental impacts. This is a plausible claim, at least. Fast-charge (20kW+, say 60 amps at 480V) for cars is about 20 minutes (again to 80%). So 60 minutes for a small plane is plausible.
But again, perfect is the enemy of good. A pile of toxic dead batteries is a much better problem to have than an entire dying planet.
For larger planes on long flights, well, charge times are the least of the deal breakers there, so it’s pretty moot,
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I travel through Frankfurt a few times a year. It is only a nuisance if you are connecting to a flight that isn’t code-shared with Lufthansa so you have to leave Terminal 1. Flying back to the states requires an additional security screening.
I do hate that they bring everyone through the boarding gate by group number but then they pack you on the same bus anyway to bring you to the plane.
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