Scudrunners

By my simplistic calculations electric is about 15x worse than a turbine/Jet-A.

When Harbor air was talking about electric beavers and otters I did a few multiplies and divides to see what reality looks like today when comparing a PT6 to electric and what it could look like as batteries seem to be doubling in efficiency every 9 years or so. Assuming (yeah right) thats a linear trend its 35+ years to break even and maybe 10 years away from short haul. Now I'm not sure the 8% per year is accurate but that's the longish term trend. None of that takes into account battery charging/swapping/safety etc. which are huge issues.

Everyone knows that the numbers have to make sense
before the government starts spending billions of dollars,
right?

I wonder if something like Moore’s Law can apply to all (most) technologies if the demand is strong enough...

When elected officials as opposed to consumers decide it almost never goes well.

I once sat in on a meeting with some government types who were insisting that our network links which used a geosynchronous satellite had to have sub 40 millisecond latency and failure recovery times ... I guess I was 28 at the time and my boss had to literally hold me in my seat and keep kicking me to shut me up while promising to study the problem.

Sigh.