Electric aircraft

The one area of eFlight that seems to have an order book and serious commercial interest is eVTOL (electric Vertical Takeoff & Landing) Taxi, aimed at short to meduim'ish personal/small group travel.
 
I'm nervous about range and battery consumption during flight. If you are tootling along at 3000ft and notice your battery is getting a bit low, there aren't any lay-bys. That's why pilots practice forced landings a lot, but petrol and diesel aircraft carry good reserves (if the pilot is halfway competent) whereas you currently (no pun) have pretty limited range with batteries and it takes time to find a place to land and perform the approach to it.
 
It's a technology for countries with lots of wide open space. Even something like this needs a bit of room to set down...

Calidus Autogyro at Weston Super Mare G9 P1010524.JPG
 
lindsay said:
I'm nervous about range and battery consumption during flight. If you are tootling along at 3000ft and notice your battery is getting a bit low, there aren't any lay-bys. That's why pilots practice forced landings a lot, but petrol and diesel aircraft carry good reserves (if the pilot is halfway competent) whereas you currently (no pun) have pretty limited range with batteries and it takes time to find a place to land and perform the approach to it.
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Properly planned flights, allowing plenty of reserve battery would be as good as making sure you had plenty of liquid fuel. Yes, range is currently rather limited but as battery technology improves, so will range. How many electric cars have you seen in laybys having run out of charge?
 
lindsay said:
I'm nervous about range and battery consumption during flight. If you are tootling along at 3000ft and notice your battery is getting a bit low, there aren't any lay-bys. That's why pilots practice forced landings a lot, but petrol and diesel aircraft carry good reserves (if the pilot is halfway competent) whereas you currently (no pun) have pretty limited range with batteries and it takes time to find a place to land and perform the approach to it.
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Is that not the same as a normal plane? You ensure you have the right amount of fuel for the trip + extra. So you make sure you have x gallons. Same here, if making a 100 mile trip you make sure you have say 150 mile range.
 
In normal flying, yes of course, but a typical light aircraft would have circa 4.5 hours of fuel on board, and the Pipistrel that this is based on currently has circa 6.5 hour range. Most hobby pilots will tell you that they personally have about a 3 hour max range (need for pee range). However with a range in electric aircraft of 1-2 hours max, the usefulness of the aircraft is very limited when set against its cost. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of moving away from the old American flat 4's and 6's burning 100 Low Lead, and the new E10 mixture of petrol makes using that fuel in light aircraft somewhat more risky than before in terms of icing in fuel lines etc. But always the argument will be over safety, and when I can fly an ICE-equipped aircraft for 2 hours with a further 2.5 or more range if I hit bad weather, I'll wait until the range is much better, like it is becoming with cars, before I would be interested in e-power. Of course the other factor is cost, and these will be costing an awful lot for limited utility I think for some while yet.
 
lindsay said:
In normal flying, yes of course, but a typical light aircraft would have circa 4.5 hours of fuel on board, and the Pipistrel that this is based on currently has circa 6.5 hour range. Most hobby pilots will tell you that they personally have about a 3 hour max range (need for pee range). However with a range in electric aircraft of 1-2 hours max, the usefulness of the aircraft is very limited when set against its cost. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of moving away from the old American flat 4's and 6's burning 100 Low Lead, and the new E10 mixture of petrol makes using that fuel in light aircraft somewhat more risky than before in terms of icing in fuel lines etc. But always the argument will be over safety, and when I can fly an ICE-equipped aircraft for 2 hours with a further 2.5 or more range if I hit bad weather, I'll wait until the range is much better, like it is becoming with cars, before I would be interested in e-power. Of course the other factor is cost, and these will be costing an awful lot for limited utility I think for some while yet.
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Ah, didn’t realise the range was so low. That is a poor range in terms of usability. My dad used to fly and a lot of trips we did would have been over an hour. Once he decided that rather go to corfu normally we would fly there in a Cessna 182. We did, as a 13 yo it was so dull in the back of a (not very warm) plane at 15,000 for hours on end with cold bacon sandwiches our in flight meal!!
 
It is a start, and in aviation things seem to develop very quickly.. I expect double that range will be with us very soon.
But the real prize is passenger flight with zero emissions.
Heavier long range craft will more likely be hydrogen powered first.
 
Terrywoodenpic said:
It is a start, and in aviation things seem to develop very quickly.. I expect double that range will be with us very soon.
But the real prize is passenger flight with zero emissions.
Heavier long range craft will more likely be hydrogen powered first.
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Solid state batteries are on the way, with significant increases in range (620miles) and fast charge times (10 minutes).....
 
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@cambsno I can well imagine the boredom for a non-flying person of a trip like that! I've done a few flights with friends in the past, swapping seats on trips to Europe at each intermediate stop, and the thing that kept me engaged when in the back seat was that I did all the navigation work (this was before gps was widely available) passing course corrections and new radio frequencies forward on post-it notes.

The Rolls-Royce electric power experimental aircraft looks interesting - it will be good to see such power plants and power banks become more practical. The cost though, is likely to be prohibitive and will only serve to perpetuate the story that only rich people can afford to fly, especially if it becomes more difficult to obtain conventional ICE fuels.
 
simon ess said:
Why don't the C.I.A. just release the anti gravity neutrino plasma drive system they have in Area 51 and save us all a lot of trouble.

:)
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I think all these new electric planes should be fitted with a flux capacitor as standard, after all how difficult is it?
 
One thing I'm worried about is the off set. I think any offset should be in the country of origin (for eg here in the UK) be real, auditable and verifiable. I'm worried that in reality it may not be.
 
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