Minimum Energy Cruise of All-Electric Aircraft with Applications to Advanced Air Mobility

A new research paper from Steven Li and Luis Rodrigues tackles one of the biggest challenges in electric aviation: maximizing limited battery range. Published on arXiv under the title 'Minimum Energy Cruise of All-Electric Aircraft with Applications to Advanced Air Mobility,' the study formulates the problem as an optimal control challenge. The researchers used Pontryagin's Minimum Principle—a cornerstone of control theory—to derive precise mathematical conditions for the ideal cruise airspeed and total flight time that minimize total energy consumption.

The model uniquely accounts for real-world battery physics, treating supply voltage as an affine function of remaining charge, which decays during flight. This allows it to calculate not just how to fly most efficiently, but also whether a given all-electric flight is even possible with a specific starting battery level, aircraft weight, and cruising altitude. The team validated their formulas with numerical simulations based on the real-world BETA Technologies CX300 aircraft, a leading eVTOL design for urban air mobility.

The findings provide a concrete toolkit for eVTOL and electric aircraft operators. By inputting parameters like initial battery charge and system efficiency, operators can determine the optimal speed to fly and predict exact energy consumption. This moves beyond theoretical efficiency into practical route planning, directly impacting the economic viability and operational range of emerging Advanced Air Mobility services.