Range-Dependent Takeoff Distance Comparison of Electric vs Conventional Aircraft

This paper builds a range-driven model that links required mission range to battery or fuel mass, total aircraft mass, and ultimately takeoff runway distance, and applies it to the NASA X-57 Maxwell Mod IV, which uses distributed electric propulsion (DEP), and the conventional Tecnam P2006T. It finds that the X-57’s DEP takeoff advantage disappears at roughly 59 nm, because the low specific energy of batteries makes the X-57’s mass, and therefore its takeoff distance, grow much faster than the P2006T’s when varying the mission range. The crossover depends on several estimated inputs, ranging from about 2 to 122 nm across the cases tested.