jim(at)PoogieBearRanch.co
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 Posted: Thu Jun 22, 2017 7:27 am Post subject: Future of Flight |
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<< Why would you choose to buy a Cole powered car with gas near $2.00 /
gal.
headed toward $1.00 for the next several years. >>
In part, because I already have a wind generator that supplies about 1/2
of my electricity, and if I do get an electric car, I will add a solar
system that will provide the rest. At that point, I would only be
concerned about recharging on the road...
But I also believe your "headed towards $1.00" gas outlook is a bit
optimistic.
<< Flight schools will be the very last adopters of electric airplanes
if ever. Flight schools only make money by keeping their aircraft in the
air every hour of every sunny weekend day, to make up for all the down
time. You can refuel an empty gas powered 172 in two minutes while the
next pilot is performing a preflight inspection and get it earning money
with essentially no gaps. >>
You are making the assumption that the batteries in that airplane cannot
be swapped out in an equivalent amount of time. Some of the more
practical designs for electric-powered airplanes have swappable battery
packs that can be recharges over time - no need to draw massive amounts
of electricity over a 5-minute period. You've got a full 24 hours to
recharge that battery pack. That changes the power draw required to
recharge that battery to about 30KW (if I did my math correctly).
And as someone else pointed out, our Lycosaurus engines are <30%
efficient at converting gas to power (though some more modern designs
may be up to 45% efficient). By contrast, an electric motor running at
75% rated power is generally 90% efficient. So you'll need about 35% of
the energy using an electric motor that you would if you used an ICE. So
your 30KW draw comes down even further, towards the 10KW range.
And you're completely ignoring the economics of no longer having to
maintain that internal combustion engine, the fuel pumps, lines, and
tanks, etc. Even at current battery prices, Siemens and AirBus have
determined that it would be less expensive to purchase and maintain
spare batteries than service and maintain gas-powered engines.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think this is going to happen tomorrow, and
I'm not selling my gas-powered airplane any time soon, but it WILL
happen in most of our lifetimes, and perhaps even within the next few
years. The airplanes may not look like what we're used to seeing, but
multi-rotor type aircraft are on the (very near) horizon!
Jim Parker
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