Well, did you ever compare the cruise speed of a 180hp Arrow vs a 180hp Archer? 5-7 kts difference at best, and that probably has more to do with the prop than anything else. I'm talking airborne differences, not paper differences.
Cirrus aircraft are labour intensive with their hand laid plastic (ok composite...), oven bake and all that. Plus, they need to recoup their certification costs. Cessna paid for theirs ages ago, so they should be competitive, if they want to be.
The problem with Cessna/Piper and perhaps Socata is/was the unwillingness to actually provide something new to the market. Cirrus packaged their aircraft with modern electronics, and promised creature comfort. In fact, the Cirrus isn't any more comfy than a 182 or the 210, or TB20 for that matter, but it sure sounded like it, and nobody argued against them. So, now they own the market for 600kUSD aircraft.
Personally I would've loved to see a modern iteration of the 182RG and TB20. Maybe a diesel up front?
I think the SR22 loses 10-15kt due to the fixed gear - at the speeds it flies at.
The few airframes for which comparative figures exist tend to indicate the kind of difference. You would also find something similar if you compared a TB10 with the TB20, taking care to slow the TB20 down appropriately, and then extrapolating to the higher speed the TB20 does over the TB10. A 180HP Archer goes a lot slower than the ~150kt we are talking about here.
But obviously Cirrus salesmen won't say that because "simplicity" was their raison d'être (I had to get that spelling from wiki).
Why Socata stopped making the TB20? The topic comes up often. Nobody I know actually knows, or will talk about it. I think it was a combination of
I don't think the TB20/21 were expensive to build. Socata had good production tooling and good facilities. They are also very good engineers; the aircraft is well designed, well made, easy to work on. They could have easily gone the G1000 etc route; the product is dead easy to integrate.
Why they did the GT redesign, with so many little changes (and some bigger ones) and then just pulled the plug, seems a waste in retrospect. If I was them, I would have built a batch of say 100 airframes in 2002, and just carried on selling them. The only things which one would have bought as needed would be the engines and the avionics.
I would have also cut out all the European dealers, who were mostly useless, for the 15% margin they made on the supply of the aircraft. Europe is such a tiny place. Socata continue to sell parts via dealers (except to Australia, where the last dealer went bust a few years ago) who keep almost nothing in stock and just order even the smallest parts back to back (the story with "agents" everywhere, in nearly all business) adding no value and just stripping useful profit from the manufacturer who could roll out the red carpet for that 15%. Socata had a poor relationship with most of its dealers; they were practically at war with Air Touring (UK and Germany). They could sell parts direct; it is so easy these days.
All a bit frustrating really.
As for performance.. all you need is bhp.
Everybody says the sr22 is so efficient but basically it is just her 310bhp. I have a very nice comparison with the Commander. Basically a Commander is a very nice aircraft but not very efficient as it has short wings and a very wide cabin.
A standard 114b has 260bhp and typically flies 145kts. The 114tc has 270 but will fly 150-165 kts
Now there is also a Super Commander with a 320bhp io580.
It will typically fly 160-175 .. exactly in line with the SR22. Now if you would turbocharge (normalise) or supercharge that then you have sr22t(n) .. running 200
fuel flows go through the roof evidently.
What we really need are good jet a engines.. not this Thielert or Austro crap but serious engines without gearboxes like the Sma..
Both Sma as well as Continental (who licensed the first gen sra230) are working in higher spec 4 cyl as well as a 300-350 bhp 6 cyl.
That will make all our Avgas gurgling engines look like prehistoric while adding range and performance.
P.S. yes the Diamonds are very fuel efficient .. but .. wow can they become expensive maintenance wise .. It are not very well built aircraft.
Now, didn't Pipstrel just claim that they've managed to break the laws of physics? 200kts at 10gph, too good to be true?
Firstly the "200kt" will be TAS, not IAS. A standard salesman's trick, and works even better on turbocharged planes, at altitudes at which the oxygen arrangements are usually impractical 
Secondly, they have done a very clever cockpit layout, which makes great use of composite construction, and the seating position is significantly reclined. I've been inside it. It is suprisingly comfortable. It is a spacious cockpit but the front view shows where the low drag comes from.
My caution would be that, knowing how much junk Justine and I take on our holidays, plus emergency gear like a life raft, etc, and the Panthera's nonexistent access from the back seats into the luggage space, one is going to have to be a lot more organised with what one carries on long trips. In my TB20, the 4th seat is totally lost due to the raft, emergency bag (ELT etc), oxygen cylinder... The luggage space is partly lost due to a toolbox, a bag with 4 life jackets, some boxes with stuff like oil, Plexus, etc. The TB20 has a big space in the back so we just dump our luggage on top of this "permanent" stuff, and importantly the luggage is all easily accessible by anybody in the back seat. I think Pipistrel ought to reconsider that issue, and provide access to the back from the back seats. It will also open up options like removing the rear seats to make room for larger things, including a ferry tank. I see they have the BRS chute right over the luggage space so maybe the partition is there to protect the passengers when the BRS rocket goes off?
At that sort of price, people are looking for a "working plane" which delivers substantial utility value, not an Extra 300 type of thing which does a bit of brief aerobatics, not to mention a considerable amount of posing by certain pilots with the right sunglasses and a €3000 watch
Pipistrel is a very clever company but perhaps they don't have much experience dealing with pilots who do serious going-places flying.
Both Sma as well as Continental (who licensed the first gen sra230) are working in higher spec 4 cyl as well as a 300-350 bhp 6 cyl.
I think that (SMA) may be the most interesting development in all this diesel saga.
I consider Pipistrel more in terms of a very smart Mooney. Very slick but smart designed.
However also very light. They were also going to offer tks and o2 but I do not know wether this is still the plan as they are aiming for sub 1200kg for certification reasons.
I did not fit .. but my build is simply not ga proof.
They do show that a good design can make a fast aircraft.. We knew this frim Mooney.
SMA jet a or Continental.. That is where the future lies..
I haven't seen the Pipistrel, but is it a competitor for a Cirrus ie 4 people with some bags going quickly?
Peter's post makes me think it is a little smaller more a 2+2
Utterly inept piston aircraft marketing in the USA, where many pilots had (and same today) never even heard of Socata!
That's not my memory, FWIW. The TBs were very well promoted and sold pretty well, although by the time the GT was on sale that might not have been true. The TBs sold well for a while in my youth, although its true that I haven't seen even one of them out and about for a while. Too bad, more types is better and more interesting.
Anybody who has been around for a while remembers the TBs, which is more than can be said for my (1970s) Euro import.
The point about utility is spot on - its really not a market for dilettantes, which is why any expensive new aircraft has trouble in a market flooded with used aircraft. FWIW I know of an almost new (200 hr) biz jet that was just bought in a distress sale for considerably less than half of new retail - a different market obviously but its the same trend.
I haven't seen the Panthera W&B but I would say yes it is a 2-seat tourer if carrying luggage and stuff.
No 4-seater I know of can carry 4 modern size male (or increasingly so female!) adults and full fuel and luggage. I thought the DA50 was aimed at that market? But that has not gone anywhere.
Pipistrel are claiming that they flew to Friedrichshafen at FL140, 160KTAS at 9.5GPH - about 16.8MPG.
I don't really see how the extra 40 knots TAS can come out of .5GPH, although they were somewhat above the ideal altitude (nearer 8 or 9 thousand I would guess). Even so, the SR22 would have been doing 11.2GPH for the same performance. Peter, am I right in thinking the TB20 at max range cruise is doing something like 15.1MPG at 150KTAS? At current fuel prices the pipistrel improvement alone is worth a lot.
The empty airframe is very light at 680kg, so they are claiming a full fuel payload of 345kg - space is of course another matter! Oxygen and full TKS might reduce that by 50kg, but 295kg is still very usable. I do wonder how much weight will be gained during certification...
They are clearly targeting the ELA1 category (MTOW <=1200kg) which should simplify things (and which will make a huge difference for maintenance/upgrades when the new rules come in), and they claim the fuel system is prepared for mogas - which will sell a lot of planes in Germany (and would be great in the UK if more airfields had usable supplies of low ethanol mogas).
For me the utility would come in the lower operating costs: TB20 like performance on 10% lower fuel flow while burning mogas, combined with ELA1 maintenance/upgrade simplicity should make a big difference. If they really can get to 200KTAS, then the extra speed at higher fuel flow would be a nice option too.
As an aside: I can live with switching to AVGAS for high temperature operation, but does anyone know how mogas deals with low temperatures at altitude?
The DA42's airframe is extremely poor in my opinion, now with the DA42-VI they are finally getting to what the airplane should have looked like from the beginning. I have to admit, the DA42-VI is very tempting.
@achimha: What huge differences do you see between DA42 and DA42-VI airframe?
