Diesel: why is it not taking off?

In the long run, innovation will win against non-innovation. Both Continental and Lycoming have not shown anything of substance in the last decades. Their efforts around electronic ignition or better thermal characteristics (GTSIO) are laughable. Banning leaded gasoline fuel is clearly the way forward and while it might be painful, the companies promoting diesel aero engines are leading the way.

In a Cessna forum, there was a discussion of the new SMA powered 182 JT-A and one guy said he would not buy it because there are many airfields that don't carry Jet A-1 but only Avgas. Quite funny from a non US perspective...

I for sure wouldn't buy a new airplane with an Avgas engine. However, I also wouldn't pay 130k€ to update my aircraft to an SMA powered airplane which is what it would roughly cost (if there was an STC).

The primary reason why Diesel has a huge problem taking off is trust. That trust was truely and utterly ruined by the Thielert affair, just when Thielert engines were about to really hit the market. The prime thing there was, Thielert offered a too good to be true and moreover unfinancable deal on those engines, basically including a lot of maintenance and warranties, which hit them badly when the gearbox/clutch thing broke. One of the factors in that bancruptcy but there were others. Thielert was primarily an engineer and a very good one too, but the way the company was set up did not help.

As a result, owners of that technology got between a rock and a hard place. While after a short period parts and repair were available, many airframes got grounded for months, had tremendous costs in terms of maintenance due to the gearbox change every 300 hours initially. As a result, the highly attractive deal became a financial nightmare.

Those who had been sneering at the Thielert hype now had the field day saying "we told you so" and to point out that basically any engine with less than a century of proof was to be disregarded. Total bull... but it hit home. Thielert did not fail for a bad product, it failed due to a very bad way of doing business.

As a consequence of that, Diamond pressed on their Austroengine, which has none of the technical problems the Thielert one had (obviously Austroengine knew all there was to know what was wrong with the Thielert diesel). While it is still a automotive engine converted, it is stronger and is a lot less critical in terms of maintenance.

SMA is now the choice engine for retrofit and for OEM, which is what Cessna is doing and which also is what others will do. With Continental involved, this should make a huge difference in marketing power. A bit like when Microsoft bought MS Flight Simulator.... which without MS would never have had the spread it did get. Now we do have one of the two "Big Ones" involved, not some "obscure" company in the woods of Europe.

Jet A1 is going to be the O N L Y reliably available fuel in the future in most places on earth for that generation GA planes we know today. Several reasons why.

Mogas: Yes, there is going to be Rotax and now Lycoming (O390) with it's automotive fuel but no, that is not a solution for any high compression engine. Equally, MOGAS is not as widely available as one might want to think and of course the regulator has immediately thrown a fit and banned most of them for aviation use, therefore again chanelling aviation MOGAS as a "special" fuel and therefore throwing a lot of the advantage out of the window.

Taxing e.t.c.: Yes, it is perfectly true that the regulators primarily in Europe but also in the US these days wish GA to go away or to be restricted to UL's or VLA's which stay within 50 NM of their homebases. Yes, they will try to tax the living daylights out of any way to "circumnavigate" the Avgas dilemma, which indeed has us by the short and hairy's. However, it will be VERY difficult to tax Jet A1 so outrageously as they have done with Avgas, because with this they will hit a very influential clientele: The Biz Jet owner. Those people will NOT stand for such behaviour and will take action our mere selfs can only dream of. However, what the regulators can NOT do is make Jet A1 go away like they do with Avgas. Also, Jet A1 is the one fuel which is not "special" production in terms of sales but a very broadly produced fuel.

We have to be careful when comparing the US to Europe, even if Mr Obama thinks differently.

In the US, yes, there is likely to be a solution to the problem of Avgas. IF and in what time frame the EASA and EU regulators will implement it here, is a totally different story. And when they do, it is the perfect occasion to say, ok new airframes yes, old ones, pay STC / certification costs worth a new airframe. However, which oil company will take it on to produce this in sufficient numbers?

Just to get the figures: ONE Airbus 320 takes on a quantity of Jet Fuel daily which can run my plane for 350 hours!!! That is 3.5 years!!! Or 500 hours and 5 years if they decide to top off! Jet Fuel is LOADS cheaper to produce for sheer quantity. And no, the new miracle fuel will not be cheaper to produce because it will have the same problem as Avgas has now: For the oil companies it is one drop in an ocean in terms of sales.

So the big question is: Will you bet the investment of a x100 k £ airplane on a fuel which will be extinct within a few years? Will you bet on the availability of a miracle fuel which "might" appear somewhen on Stardate 2900 if at all and will you bet on the EU regulators to allow it to be used? Will you bet on that miracle fuel to be produced cheaper than Avgas?

Me not.

But I do know one thing: Jet A1 is something no regulator can regulate away without very nasty implications. That is exactly why Continental has bought into Diesel now and Cessna has decided to offer the C182 as a Diesel only.

I do hope the retrofit market will develop fast with that. In 10 years, my engine will need to go to overhaul again and by then I do hope there will be a diesl to replace it. If not, it may well be the curtain call for most of GA, at least in Europe.

ONE Airbus 320 takes on a quantity of Jet Fuel daily which can run my plane for 350 hours!!!

Yes but that doesn't automatically mean there is no money to be made in avgas.

Very recently there was stuff in the press about a Polish refinery company getting into the avgas market. Speaking from my usual vague memory they said the market is worth about €200M/year, and that was just Europe and nearby areas. That's plenty of money to support the supply chain.

There is room in business for companies from very small to very large, and they can all make money which makes them happy.

We may yet get a diesel that proves itself in time but by definition it must be at least several years away at this point, and in the meantime I don't see any great action taking place.

To those in electronics, Avgas is like RS232, RS422, RS485 It was supposed to be obsolete 20 years ago and replaced with Canbus!

The US EPA business makes a lot of noise. It will probably eventually lead to a 100UL fuel, and there are several ways to make such stuff.

In the long run, innovation will win against non-innovation

Only if people buy into it. Quite often, they don't.

Bah, the future of GA is electric. Electricity is 100% clean, cheap, readily available and the only solution to our problem.

Now, about those coal burning electric power plants...

Not to mention the lead that coal puts into the atmosphere as it produces most of our electrical power...

Re innovation - considered on a case by case basis it mostly loses to prior art. Only a small fraction of new technologies prove useful enough to beat hundreds of years of prior development. I've spent 25 years working in mechanical engineering R&D so far, and my father spent 55 years doing the same. Only a tiny fraction of the work done went anywhere at all commercially - the prominent example being an innovative ditch pump that's still in production after 50 years. Still fun work though, once you get used to the idea that in a career of gathering patents and doing 'clever' stuff you might be involved in one innovation that actually succeeds. Its humbling :-)

Re Jet fuel availability, its true that while 90% of the US airports I fly to have 100LL, probably only 25% have jet fuel. Why would a small, short runway airport serving GA have jet fuel? So one King Air or Pilatus per day can buy fuel? I don't think so.

Silvaire,

let me tell you, here in Europe this is very different. Practically ALL airports have Jet A1 due to the amount of helicopters and other turboengines flying, not to speak of diesel engines. Diamond have sold quite a few diesel planes here...

I did a quick check for Switzerland: Total of 38 aerodromes, of which about 10 are private, closed to visiting airplanes. Avgas is available at 32 of those. Jet A1 is available at 23 of them, including most of the ones with hard surface runways and customs but also 5 grass airfields. Mogas is available at 3.

If you check southern Europe however, things go much in to the favour of Jet A1. Greece has only 6 airports with Avgas but some 30 with Jet Fuel. Bulgaria has Jet Fuel on all international airports but avgas can be had mostly at smaller airports which don't have customs or at prohibitive prices on 3 of the international ones with pre-notice. Italy has several of it's larger airports which do all have Jet but no Avgas and the availability is often very cumbersome.

If you fly out of Europe, Avgas can be a show stopper. Africa: Between Egypt and Kenia there is practically no Avgas, so either you have 1000+ NM range or you can't go. Asia same thing.

I can hardly believe the US to be so badly equipped, there are thousands of jet copters and quite a few turbine Malibus and others which feed on Jet A1.

Peter,

Yes but that doesn't automatically mean there is no money to be made in avgas.

Well, there is but at the cut-throth prices we see today. €3 / Liter is normal these days.

Very recently there was stuff in the press about a Polish refinery company getting into the avgas market. Speaking from my usual vague memory they said the market is worth about €200M/year, and that was just Europe and nearby areas. That's plenty of money to support the supply chain.

That is very good news. So far there was only one refinery in the South of France which delivered to continental Europe. They were bitching at it for decades and might well now close their Avgas supply.

The US EPA business makes a lot of noise. It will probably eventually lead to a 100UL fuel, and there are several ways to make such stuff.

Yes. This will lead to another "rare" fuel. The only way would be if all engines can take automotive fuel right as it goes into cars but we do know that this is an illusion.

Only if people buy into it. Quite often, they don't.

When the diesel came out there was a huge hype and people bought like crazy. Of course the Thielert disaster did a total reversal for a while but Cessna's and Continental's step now open a totally new ballgame. I would not be surprised if Lycoming is searching frantically for an answer to that.

There is more than just availability. These diesels eat a lot less fuel than a corresponding avgas machine. So not only is it much cheaper to buy Jet A1 but you also need significantly less. Austroengine (175 hp) has a consumption of around 5-6 gph.

Right now, with the price at €3 and above for 1 liter Avgas and 40-60 cents less for 1 Liter of Jet A1 (including taxes) that means about €120 for a 10GPH Avgas engine and around € 55 for a DA40.... QUITE a difference.

For me, it would mean that with 52 USG I now have a range of about 4 - 5 hours plus reserves whereas with a 5-6 GPH Diesel I'd end up with 8-9 hours with the same capacity. That is practically double. With 140 kt, that is 650 NM vs 1200 NM....

In my experience flying around the US, any hard runway FBO that can take a turboprop has Jet-A. Europe is the same. Grass strips maybe different so perhaps there are places a DA-40 would want to go but couldn't get Jet fuel. Part of my reason to change engines was due to unavailability of Avgas at some major airports I need to use for work (EDDB for example).

I'll have to check the Airport Directory - I wrote 25% of those I use have Jet Fuel, perhaps it is more. However, its certainly not true that all hard runway airports that could take a diesel or turboprop have Jet A in the US! Many of them are 2000 ft long and see zero Jet-A burning traffic - grass roots flying includes a whole lot of airports, but most all have (often self serve, unattended, no FBO) 100LL. A diesel powered aircraft that can land on a 2000 ft runway would have far fewer places to buy fuel in the US than a similar Avgas powered aircraft.

I've only ever landed on grass in the US once, and that was on a polo field.

Oddly enough as I was running an errand today, I saw a DA42 flying high above. High aspect ratio. I know a retired surgeon who has one at the large airport where I am based, but its the first time I've ever seen a DA42 (or any other diesel) flying.