Nov 122010
Two things:
1) I’ll believe it when I see it
2) If I see it, it’ll be awesome
Electric 172 Aimed At Training Market
Claims: 2-hour duration, 25,000 hours between engine overhaul, $5-$10/hour energy cost.
5 Responses to “Electric Cessna 172”
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An electric 172 is far more likely than a VTOL PAV.
It’s ridiculous to try to put something so energy limited on a very inefficient airframe like Cessna 172.
The flight time will be really short since the lift to drag ratio sucks and it needs so much power to just stay aloft.
Electric airfract will resemble sailplanes. Rigid composite high aspect ratio laminar flow wings. Take a Diamond for example.
Errr… no. While it obviously would increase the flight time to use a hyper-efficient powered sailplane configuration for an electric aircraft… the same logic applies for avgas powered aircraft as well. And yet, less-efficient forms are still employed. *If* this company has done their math right and can modify the 172 into an electric plane with A 2-hour flight time, then they will have produced a truly useful electric aircraft. Sure, maybe they’d get a six hour duration out of the sailplane configuration… but people aren’t using those configurations *now* for much of anything other than niche-market gliding around for fun.
Again, *if* they’ve done their math right, there are a whole lot of 172’s that can be had for relatively cheap, and are a known and accepted airframe.
Maximum efficiency is not always the best metric for determining what’s the best vehicle. And besides… *if* the electric 172 works, in ten years they’ll be able to swap out the current batteries and PV cells for new ones, and get three or four hours duration, without having to modify the airframe in any important way.
I would have converted this, because its composite structure makes it very light and streamlined, and it’s already used as a training aircraft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_DA20
I saw Bye Engineering give this presentation at an AIAA Section Meeting. Interesting ideas and business approach.