Air taxis can't take off as a business until batteries catch up

Electric flight is harder on a battery than driving. Air taxi cells fall short of profitability today, and better chemistries remain years away

Giuseppe Cacace / AFP via Getty Images

The flying car has a battery problem. Electric air taxis — small aircraft designed to shuttle passengers across a city — can't yet store enough energy to make the routes worth flying.

The problem is weight. An aircraft burns energy just to stay aloft. Add a heavier battery and it burns more energy just staying up, leaving less for the actual trip. Push that weight far enough and the aircraft can't carry enough passengers far enough to justify running the route.

A NASA-affiliated study found in the AIAA Journal of Aircraft that air taxi routes only become commercially viable at a specific threshold of battery power, one today's best cells fall about 40% short of. New chemistries could close that distance, but the question is when.

The demands an air taxi places on a battery

Storage is only part of what a battery has to do. It also has to release........

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