More than 550 positions have been sold and I believe they continue to sell about 2 per month. Most of the positions were sold at the $1.39 million original price (plus inflation) which means they are now about $1.6 million plus options. A very small number were sold at the $1.55m price and at the $1.76m price and maybe 30 or 40 at the current price of $1.96 million.
OK. Let’s project this forward say 2 years, at which point it will either be certified and delivering, or formally abandoned.
That’s 48 more to sell, which makes a total of about 600 positions.
Cirrus have thus received around $850M.
Will they be in a position to refund this if the project is abandoned?
I don’t think so, and in that respect this is the same as Eclipse. The investors, faced with that, will take their money and run. That is where the risk lies.
Also it’s really curious they sold 550 and sell 2/month now. That shows that a massive pent-up demand has been satisfied and there is almost no more. Or maybe the demand that has been satisfied is just those who have enough appetite (greed, basically) for the level of risk.
I wonder why you always mention “abandoning”.
Three prototypes have finished all their test flights and the first production airplane is already built. Also the Garmin 3000 Perspective is ready, and the airplane is in the very final phase of certifification after the Chinese consortium have invested another $ 100M.
It is very unlikeley that it might be abandoned at this stage.
Peter,
To secure a position, a deposit holder only had to put a $100k deposit down. After 2008, when the jet was delayed, Cirrus allowed deposit holders to use the deposit towards the purchase of a new 22. Many did this and many also cancelled and took their money back. If we assume that half of the position holders have a deposit then Cirrus has taken only $27.5 million.
If you buy a position today, lets say position number 570, you are likely to take delivery in about 5 years and I think that is the reason why sales have slowed, not because demand is filled. Having said that, 20 positions are for sale in the secondary market at a premium to the (original) purchase price so it is an interesting case study. You can see the positions for sale here on Controller presumably from early holders who either do not want to take delivery or have already moved to the eclipse/mustang.
http://www.controller.com/list/list.aspx?manu=cirrus&mdltxt=vision+sf50
And how many of the 550 are serious buyers committed to long term ownership, versus position speculators or people that are willing to “give it a go” but will put their new aircraft up for sale immediately if it proves not to be what they hoped for.
Then you get a excess of used aircraft on the market which undermines the manufacturers ability to continue selling new ones.
With regards to the Garmin controller “interconnectedness”, this should have nothing to do with the SAM, and as Peter said, it’s all vapourware right now anyway.
Besides, there is no need for Cirrus to innovate with the avionics, there are proven solutions already, and they have enough risk elsewhere on the project.
achimha wrote:
Here’s the Piper M600 cockpit and you can see it uses an Aspen display as backup EFIS, totally separate from the Garmin flight deck.
Hey C’mon now Peter, are we going to let ACHIMA get away with posting that gratuitous advertising of the M600 (:
Who knows, he might work for Piper!! 
Or for Airbus, and is trying to sell his excess stock of A350’s, eh? ;-)
By the way returned in icing tonight. Checked the radar nose on landing and there was 2 cm of ice on it. And that was after 10 minutes at +8C. Cirrus deicing of nose has nothing to do with performance. Must be ice ingestion.
JasonC wrote:
Must be ice ingestion.
Probably, since the engine is downstream. And while Cirrus_Man might go on about inlet anti-icing testing, it won’t be much help when a large chunk hits it. At least I don’t think so.
JasonC wrote:
Cirrus deicing of nose has nothing to do with performance. Must be ice ingestion.
I wonder if it also has to do with CAPS deployability as I recall the parachute is located in the nose. But then again, this negates the effectiveness of CAPS if you get caught in severe icing.
I don’t recall whether this was posted before – US AOPA jet hourly cost comparison. The Cirrus jet is in there.
The Boeing BBJ costs less than I expected 
