It's over an order of magnitude heavier than the largest of those (Helios).

There's a difference between an aircraft being built to lift itself and perhaps a tiny payload and be paperlight vs. an aircraft designed for actual commercial service carrying passengers.

The feet are needed to accelerate the plane to takeoff velocities in order to conserve battery mass.

Also, the big AI companies get a number of advantages, such as large batch sizes and being able to balance on-peak and off-peak workloads better.

Is most of your daily driving "a race"?

This is a midrange model. This is competitive midrange pricing. For my midrange work I've been using GLM-5.2 - Gemini 3.7 flash is a bit cheaper and a bit better on the benchmarks, so yeah, I'll probably switch so long as the prices stay low.

Sometimes you need a high-end model (Claude Fable, GPT 5.6 Sol, Kimi K3, etc). Sometimes a low-end model is fine (GPT 5.6 Luna, DeepSeek 4 Flash 0731, etc). Usually a midrange model is the best balance.

There are to be three variants of the ES-300: an all-electric 200km version, a hybrid 30-seat 400km version, and a hybrid 25-seat 800km version. And the ES-300 airframe very much is not some existing airframe.

EV fires are rarer than ICE fires (and slower spreading as well), so given that the competition is fuel-based....

It is a perfectly cromulent statement. 1MW = power, $5 = a cost of energy. They are providing both power and (indirectly) energy.

They didn't bother to install a co-pilot, a seat for the co-pilot, passengers, seats for the passengers, the hybrid gen set as you say, fuel for the gen set, and who knows if they installed a full production sized battery or just a smaller one

Are you just learning about the concept of a prototype in this comments section?

That's not correct. There are three modes. All-electric, hybrid-30 passenger, and hybrid-25 passenger, with ranges of 200km, 400km, and 800km, respectively. The airframe is to be certified for 20k feet (FL200), with optimal cruise altitudes from 10-15k feet, but this was explicitly described by the company as a "low-altitude test flight".

And to all the people going, "LOL, that's never going to cross the Pacific!" or similar range comments... and? Long haul flights (over 4000km) are only 5% of commercial flights. Very short / regional flights are 27% of total flights. There's very much a market for puddle jumpers, and airlines very much will buy them if they offer competitive advantages.

It's not ideal to still use fossil fuels, but it could reduce pollution around airports. It could also save money if done right.

SpaceX was a massive pump-and-dump, and Anthropic probably is too. Just wish we could hurry up and get to the crash so I can buy some more HDDs.

This is a result of COVID stunting kid's growth. It was a one off (hopefully) event that wasn't handled well from a development and mental health perspective.

Now they have identified the issue they need to triage it, which is what this is, but also look at helping those kids recover.

More generally there is more pressure on kids these days. They didn't used to have to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt to get an education that is basically mandatory to do even entry level clerical jobs these days. An 18 year old today has lived their entire life under one "once in a generation" crisis after another, starting with the financial crash in 2008, all through subsequent economic problems, COVID, AI, and climate change becoming an undeniable lived reality. They aren't snowflakes, they have just been battered by the mistakes and terrible advice of previous generations.

Thanks. So it looks like it may be some time before this result can be verified.

Because people post the videos on social media.

Less RAM.

The much hyped light on the back only comes on when you talk to AI or get a phone call from someone on your favourite contacts list, that's it. It's not even a 2017 era notification light.

The cameras got a mild upgrade, but still aren't on a par with what Chinese vendors are offering at a lower price.

Even the free AI subscription was cut from 12 to 6 months.