Quote:
Originally Posted by skyking
curious why you'd build an ev plane, with the limitations to range and charging. the only use I see is a motorglider in good gliding country.
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Hi, Yes all of that is true. My idea, and it is ambitious, is to use a small, light diesel to generate the electricity to drive one of the EMRAX motors. With batteries to assist the way they would in an EV Auto, as boost, emergency drive etc. I wouldn't need reverse or brake regen but otherwise I would think I could use a pair of Paul's controllers. I'm still learning but I think it is doable. So Far it looks like a GM 1.6L Turbo Diesel, some combo of EMRAXs for both AC generation and final prop drive, some type of AC-DC converter, a DC battery charger, a pair of tandem resolvers also from EMRAX and a couple of Paul's AC controllers. There is a similar Series-Hybrid Electric drive for planes in development by Siemens and Pipistrell. The total $$ of this drive system could be put together for less that any of the Aircraft engines that I was looking at and would sip Diesel or Jet-A in comparison.
I'm looking at two possible kit planes, both are in development and would be good platforms for this. One looks like it will be doing flight testing this summer, the other in a couple years. I'll try to supply more details after I do some more research and have more posts so I'll be allowed to create links.
Both Aircraft can have very high performance with this setup and therefore range.