I can understand your thinking Peter and share the same but rest assured, this is not a majority position. 80% or more only do local flights where I am based. It’s even “worse” in France, there GA seems to almost exclusively limited to doing local flights.
I agree that is the present position; I am merely saying that introducing planes which can only do very short flights (in fact, not even a proper €200 burger run) is locking GA into a situation from which any progress is impossible.
An electric plane which can do 4hrs would be much more useful, because one has to accept there won’t be any “away refuelling” facilities so you need to go there and back on one charge. You have to allow at least 1hr reserve which gives you a 1.5hr endurance each way, which at the low speeds necessary to make the whole thing work (close to Vbg) is not very far; probably 100-150nm.
And if people never buy avgas at the destination, that airfield will lose the €0.40/litre or so on fuel sales, so will shut down even sooner. In fact electric planes are just going to really undermine the whole network of GA airfields.
I just feel strongly that we should do all we can to promote GA, and not just settle for a mindless but cheap way of banging circuits.
And that assumes the batteries actually perform as claimed. I have just chucked out a load of rechargeable batteries (NIMH, LIPO) all of which were basically trashed after a ridiculously short time. I have had an INOVA (not cheap) torch in the plane for a year or two which uses 3 x CR123 LIPO and they last about 3 preflight checks, which is laughable. I am now chucking them all out and have gone to the 18650-battery models e.g. UC50 which is a battery that seems to last a lot longer. My genuine Pentax battery (50 quid) lasts about a year… I can’t see why the batteries in “everything consumer” are always so relatively crap while the batteries in electric vehicles all magically perform to spec. It’s true that in electric vehicles the mfg underwrites the battery life (the cost of which they IMHO regard as cheap R&D even if the batteries make only half their claimed life) but will the same happen in electric planes? A company like Pipistrel would collapse if they sell hundreds of these planes and they underwrite the batteries with no backstop on the liability. And if they don’t underwrite the battery life, nobody who has ever used a rechargeable product is going to buy a €100k plane with them in. A while ago I went to an electric vehicle presentation by one of UK’s foremost characters in the field and I made this point to him (about consumer batteries) and he could not say anything in disagreement… so I think that there is a lot of snake oil being pushed out and the manufacturers are happy because they are all huge car players who pay for the battery warranty out of their R&D budget. Also remember that early electric cars were not underwritten at all (here in the UK); it started only recently and I wonder why.
18650 – if I’m not mistaken an A123 cell – I’ve said on previous threads that they were good. 
I always carry 20kWh of lithium batteries with me in the car. After 6 months and 6000km and almost exclusively fast charging (3h), I still get the mileage from the prospectus. Never got anywhere close to the prospectus mileage with petrol cars. Let’s see what it looks like in a year from now but I am hopeful.
16850 is 2 x 123 in size, but same voltage.
Anyway, if car batteries “work” I’d like to know what is different about them.
Never got anywhere close to the prospectus mileage with petrol cars
The reason for that is probably the standard driving profile which was designed to make the product look good and to set a favourable landscape for fiddling the emissions. That’s why you can re-flash the ECU in most cars (the later ones are encrypted so they have to use a different method) and get more power and more MPG.
More than 80% of the pilots at my airfield do not use the airplane to travel, only for local recreational flights.
Quite a few of our regular customers have a PPL, some even their own aircraft. One has two planes, among them a pressurised C210. But for business trips, they always charter a bizjet. Which is very sensible, as they can do the fun flying themselves, always get where they need to go and save BIG money over operating their own business aircraft.
Well, the reason we only do burger runs, is because aviation is too expensive to what was originally intended – to travel. That’s a political and technological problem. Do you remember those 30’s and 40’s Popular Mechanics cover stories where everyone was convinced that all families would have a flying car by the year 2000? What happened to that dream? Bureaucracy and greed, that’s what happened to that dream. But that does not mean it will not eventually become that. Maybe the timing was just off.
It is entirely possible that in 50-100 years time we can fly around as was intended – for the same cost as we now drive. It’s entirely possible today to make a $100K pressurised, fast, all weather hybrid aircraft. It’s just that nobody has done it yet. But one day not far from now, an Elon Musk will step in, or maybe Elon himself, and all will change. Disruptive technology is just around the corner. The revolution will not be made by Cessna, Piper or Mooney with yet another avgas IO-540 in it, I can tell you that.
It’s entirely possible today to make a $100K pressurised, fast, all weather hybrid aircraft. It’s just that nobody has done it yet. But one day not far from now, an Elon Musk will step in, or maybe Elon himself, and all will change.
Overall I agree, but regarding the $100k price tag I am very skeptical. Elon Musk’s present car costs a lot more than that (here in Europe at least) and a car is nothing compared to the complexity of a pressurised aircraft.
One barrier to flying is the cost of the PPL. Another is the cost of actually keeping it up. Quite a lot of people do a PPL then find they’re not wealthy enough to carry on flying. But there are also people who could afford to keep on flying but don’t have £8k to hand.
As you pointed out, nobody is going to be able to do a cross-country qualifying flight in one of these electric aircraft, so for 8 hours of the PPL the flying school will require a second aircraft, using avgas or diesel. Or possibly with a pod producing electrical power – Airbus were considering this. So at the end of your PPL you will end up in much the same situation as at present – you have a smidgeon of theoretical knowledge and experience of flying cross-country and can fly an aircraft capable of doing so. But the difference is that it’s taken you far less money to get there.
I fly partly for currency with the occasional longer trip. If I could keep current more cheaply, I would actually fly rather more long trips. I would probably also be a better pilot – more circuit bashing and pfls etc. You would also hold on to those pilots who want to fly but just can’t afford it for a year or two whilst a new kid is on the way etc. I would love for there to be a field close by for me to do circuits a few times a month without having to travel an hour each way. In the present climate I can’t see that happening, but if these aircraft are quiet enough and with high enough performance to get out of small strips then I could see a lot more of them becoming available. I really don’t see anything not to like.
It is entirely possible that in 50-100 years time we can fly around as was intended – for the same cost as we now drive.
When that happens, airspace usage will be such that no human will be able to avoid traffic safely and we’ll have to depend on autonomous navigation systems. It may be ‘flying’ but we will no more be pilots than when we step aboard an airliner.
When that happens, airspace usage will be such that no human will be able to avoid traffic safely and we’ll have to depend on autonomous navigation systems. It may be ‘flying’ but we will no more be pilots than when we step aboard an airliner.
Maybe.
Overall I agree, but regarding the $100k price tag I am very skeptical. Elon Musk’s present car costs a lot more than that (here in Europe at least) and a car is nothing compared to the complexity of a pressurised aircraft.
I have to say that I find most cars to be much more complex than aircraft. An aircraft has almost no moving parts except for prop, engine and perhaps retraction of wheels. They can be made real simply. Part of the problem is the small volumes. With bigger volumes we could see economics of scale. But for that to happen, we first need disruption in technology. I think electric is that ticket.
Just for a second ignore batteries, power storage etc. Take my Aerostar. It has 2×290hp engines, which is 2×211kW = 423kW in total. Let’s say at 65% cruise today I burn about 30gal/hr. I pay about $5.50gal/hr here in the US, which means my fuel costs are about $165/hr. Let’s just play with the thought that there was an electric Aerostar. It would use 65% of 423kW per hour. That’s 274kW/h. In CA the cost at peak is about $0.12/kW and $0.08/kW at low peak. At peak that would be an hourly cost $32 and at low peak $22. That’s 5-6 times cheaper per hour in US prices. In the UK it would be about 11-12 times cheaper to operate. Are we starting to see the possibilities here? It’s a game changer if they can ever figure power storage out.
And I haven’t even mentioned maintenance costs. They’re likely to reduce by a factor of 10 as well. There’s not much that can break. Batteries however, are something that will need replacing. And they won’t be cheap. But probably cheaper than engine overhauls.
