Electric Airplanes

[dcb]

lol @ james, let me know when you finally come up with a problem for this "solution" Keep trying though, and explain why you like dead weight and lots of initial expense over any other available options.

30mile range, before FAR 91.151, which means 0 mile range here or negative 15 mile range at night (60mph assumed). 175 miles per hour max, meh, tell me when this isn't a stupid idea. The battery probably weighs 70lbs, then add motors etc.

Get a motor glider like http://www.eel.de/images/pdf/ULF-2_e_neu.pdf and spend that 70lbs in fuel and you can cruise at 62mph for 11.6 HOURS for a range of 700+ miles.

IF you guys really need a toy, go for it, run and get your checkbooks now, but efficiency for utility is next to zero. There are severe limitations on power to weight/power to size for batteries and they are even more pronounced in an airplane than in a 2 or 4 wheeler. The gap is so huge in fact that there is little else to do but laugh at folks taking this seriously.

IF you cannot be bothered to load up a trailer of 55 gallon drums to have fuel on site solely so you can fly in small circles away from fueled airports, but near an air strip with sufficient power to recharge your plane quickly, then this is the plane for you.

[NeilBlanchard]

Another electric airplane; obviously from a company that doesn't know what they are doing:


(click on image for link)

[dcb]

They know what they are doing, trying for 1.3 million in prize money while working with funds from airbus. It carries 2 gallons equivalent worth of gasoline in batteries that cost more than perhaps you and I combined will ever make. And it is competing in another x-prize style contest with electrical bias via pMPGe now? 2011 GFC FAQ

You tell me Neil, from an engineering perspective how does it make sense to make airplanes heavy with low energy to weight ratios?

Also, wtf does this mean? This has to be the most pointless contest I have ever heard of. You can enter, get 200mpg and they can say "sorry"?
Q #23: How will CAFE measure fuel or energy use? Will it be strictly by weighing?

A: CAFE reserves the right to use methods other than weighing to measure fuel or energy consumption, depending upon the aircraft design. (rules, p. 24, 38)

So, if they like electric, they will use really wonky numbers for pMPGe (wtf is that too?) This isn't about efficiency with rules like that.

One of the documents on the site (which is now not directly inaccessable) by a mr Gremban, indicated that he thought it would be won by a glider like diesel fwiw:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=...iJnOAFyA&pli=1

If you want to do it for recreation, fine, or have a runway in your back yard and an outlet, and lots of mula for a battery, great. You will have to keep the range short to not have a serious performance penalty of course. But everything else being equal, it is worth shlepping a couple gallons of biodiesel around IMHO, for the foreseeable future.

And if this is about mostly inefficient recreational use, for the bourgeois, then why should the rest of us care?

[NeilBlanchard]

They got up to 400MPGe per passenger and have a range of about 300 miles.:

Pipistrel wins $1.35 million in Google-sponsored 2011 Green Flight Challenge

[gone-ot]

...interesting propellor-blade "shape" on that Pipistrel.