Bye Energy, Inc. and Cessna Aircraft Co. are expected to release details of their efforts to develop an electric propulsion system for a Cessna 172 Skyhawk during the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Aviation Summit Nov. 11-13 in Long Beach, Calif.
Bye Energy announced The Green Flight Project earlier this year, and is developing, with support from Cessna, electric and electric-hybrid propulsion systems for light general aviation aircraft. The company is planning to fly an electric-powered Cessna 172 Skyhawk proof of concept aircraft in the spring of 2011.
George Bye, CEO of Bye Energy, said integrated ground testing began within the past week on the various hardware components of the initial electric propulsion system. “Early test results are confirming that our assumptions of the benefit of electric propulsion are positive,” he said.
Cessna Chairman, President and CEO Jack J. Pelton said: “Cessna is enthusiastic about the concept of integrating electric propulsion into mainstream general aviation, and we are actively engaged in Bye Energy’s development efforts with the electric Cessna 172 proof of concept aircraft.”
Bye and Charlie Johnson, COO of Bye Energy and former president of Cessna, will be at the Cessna booth (#313) inside the convention center during the AOPA Aviation Summit.
I’m watching this with great interest. If you do a weight analysis of a Cessna 150, of the 1,600 pound MTOW, probably 600 pounds of that is the weight of the internal combustion engine propulsion system and the hardware associated with it – engine, mufflers, battery, engine ancillaries and instruments, fuel, fuel tanks, plumbing, cooling baffles and so forth.
A 100 horsepower 100 pound electric motor doesn’t appear to require any technological breakthroughs, the controller electronics are light, so “all” we need is 400 pounds of batteries which can store energy equivalent to the 22 gallons usable of a gasoline powered 150.
Therein lies the rub – battery technology still has quite some way to go before it can match (or even come close to) the energy density of gasoline. With the huge amount of money being spent on researching batteries for the electric car market worldwide, it probably won’t be very many years until this is achieved.
I’d love to see an electric conversion STC for my 150. It would be quiet, vibrationless, extremely low maintenance, unaffected by carb ice, and faster than a conventional 150 because there would be much less cooling system drag with an electric motor than with the present system of baffles, seals and so forth. There would also be no loss of engine performance with altitude, so density altitude accidents would become a thing of the past. In addition, and for the same reason, cruise speed at altitude would be higher.
No more short TBOs, problems with shock cooling, leaning mixtures, cracked cylinders, stuck valves, expensive overhauls – how would you like to see a 30 year, 50,000 hour TBO with the overhaul consisting of replacing two ball bearings and four brushes? (and there are brushless DC motors now, so it may just need the two bearings.)
I could forget about Mogas, ethanol, expensive 100LL, worrying about strange, unproven “green” fuels, no more sumping the tanks, leaky quick-drains, gasoline smells on my hands (which I don’t mind but my wife does), no more spark plugs, magnetos, oil changes, oil leaks and greasy aircraft bellies. No more danger of carbon monoxide poisoning, no more exhaust leaks, no more pollution, no more unhappy neighbors if I decide to fly early in the morning or late at night, and no more whiny tree-huggers complaining that I am wasting the planet’s resources selfishly flying myself around and burning up precious fuel. (Well, I still will be until the electricity I use is generated by nuclear power, but it would be political-correctness suicide to come out against ANY kind of “green” transportation.)
I can just see the ad for the new 2030 Bonanza E250: “Batteries not included, insert 5,000 AA cells here,”
We’re not quite ready to bury the internal combustion engine yet, but the day is coming. It has to, thee are so many advantages to electric propulsion that we would be downright foolish to ignore them.
I’m ready, and so is my checkbook . . .