Here is another link on the BC seaplane operation.
Using the original DHC2 Beaver reminds me of the cottage industry converting old VW Beetles to electric.
Starting out with electric seaplanes is not a bad idea except for the salty water. But you do a lot of short legs and if you get into trouble you can simply land since you are probably flying over water anyway.
You can’t land a seaplane on the open sea unless it is pretty well dead calm, or it is a really big one. So if you depart from some protected harbour / fjord and head for another one, and have to go down in a 2m swell enroute, the plane will not come out too good.
Peter wrote:
You can’t land a seaplane on the open sea unless it is pretty well dead calm, or it is a really big one. So if you depart from some protected harbour / fjord and head for another one, and have to go down in a 2m swell enroute, the plane will not come out too good.
The Strait of Georgia and the San Juan Islands between Vancouver Island and the BC mainland, while a large enough water span to get rough in severe weather, is not what I would classify as open sea and if it were that rough they would probably not be flying. The main weather problem in that area is fog not wind.
LeSving wrote:
The result is that traffic in cities will grind to a hold because pedestrian and animals would lose all respect for the cars
Good! Cities have been ruined by cars, and need to be taken back by the people :-)
Bye Aerospace claims to have sold 300 electric planes.
This is either real (and amazing) or somebody is pulling somebody’s leg.
The eFlyer 2 will be certified under 14 CFR Part 23 small-aircraft rules that stipulate a stall speed of no more than 45 knots, two seats, and a single engine, and that limit flights to day- and night-VFR conditions.
First deliveries of the $349,000 eFlyer 2 (the original price was $289,000) are anticipated in 2021. Deliveries of Bye’s eFlyer 4, a four-seat, all-electric design that will be IFR certified, are planned in 2022.
Presumably the “orders” are conditional on it being certified by a certain date.
Saw it at Osh almost 3 years ago. It is really nice (looks, engineering and craftsmanship), and looks sell 
But 300 actually sold aircraft? Maybe those 300 are more like the fee to stand in line, which has become the new trend in electric cars. Maybe 10% will end up buying it?
Hmm, there may actually be some truth in this. OSM Aviation has ordered 60 planes.
We are excited to announce that today we have placed an order for 60 all-electric planes from Colorado-based aircraft manufacturer Bye Aerospace. These will be used for training at the OSM Aviation Academy flight training centres to qualify pilots for the future on sustainable wings.
From here
In the mean time, Siemens, which looked like it had a long term, strategical view on electrical propulsion, has sold the unit to Rolls Royce
10 years ago it all sounded great to me, specially the very reduced number of possible failures ( no valves, no injectors, no carburetors, the list goes on and on )
Now I’m becoming more skeptical everyday. It’s a very complex system, with power electronics, bearings, oil cooling, lots of software, and that’s not even talking about battery management. And yes batteries have evolved, but we have been talking about limited battery capacity for decades now.
Now, I just would love to know about Rolls Royce’s plans for that unit :-)
Talking about electric planes another one is temperature vs performance. We often fly at or below 0 degrees C.
“2.1. Low temperature effects
The performance of LIBs will degrade at temperatures below 0 °C. In 2001, Nagasubramanian showed that the power and energy densities of Panasonic 18650 LIBs were ~800 W/L and ~100 Wh/L at 25 °C, and these values were reduced by 98.75% and 95% to < 10 W/L and ~5 Wh/L at −40 °C. In another report, the state of charge (SOC) of a LIB, which is defined as the ratio of the present residual capacity to the overall available capacity, was also found to decrease by ~23% when the operating temperature decreased from 25 °C to −15 °C.”
(LIB = Lithium Ion Battery)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1002007118307536
[ edited to remove square bracket refs; these create a duff link on the forum ]
