When I talk with anyone interested in learning to fly, two topics seem to always come up. Pilots complain about the cost of flying and their spouse, who is usually not a pilot, worries about safety. It’s been this way for decades.
Well, things might be about to change. There’s a technology on the horizon that has the potential to increase safety and vastly reduce the cost of flying. It’s the electric airplane.
Before you say, “Eeeh, it’ll never happen” hear me out. Admittedly, innovation and change happens slowly and this is especially true in the highly regulated world of general aviation.
In the past 30 years, clean sheet aircraft designs that have made it to full scale production are as rare as hen’s teeth. The reasons for this are simple. The capital costs required to take an airplane from concept to customer delivery are staggering. And when the plane does come to market, the profit margins are usually razor thin, even in the best of times.
But electric power and the new Part 23 certification rules might just be the combination startups need to succeed.
The basic elements that make up a plane’s construction haven’t changed much since the Wright brothers first took to the sky. No matter the design, powered airplanes have three major components: The engine, the avionics, and the airframe.
When we look at the evolution of the various parts, airframes and avionics have certainly improved with time, but engines haven’t. The Lyco-saurus or fossilized Continental engine mounted in front of 95% of all piston powered GA aircraft have had the same basic design since the 1950s.
To take a leap forward in both safety and cost reduction, the way aircraft are powered also needs to evolve. In comes the electric airplane.
According to Mel Johnson, deputy director of the FAA’s Policy and Innovation Division, the FAA is willing and supportive of the development and certification of electric airplanes.
Johnson says that with the new Part 23 rules, the Policy and Innovation Division is working closely with industry groups, such as RTCA (Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics), SAE and ASTM among others, looking for ways to speed the certification process while simultaneously ensuring proper risk mitigation and acceptable levels of safety are achieved.
He went on to say that with the new Part 23 rules, there’s an opportunity to better leverage technology transfer from the electric automotive industry and apply what works directly into electric aircraft propulsion.
“But it’s more than just the electric motor that’ll need to be tested and certified,” Johnson cautioned.
“The batteries, for instance, have to be capable of withstanding a wide range of operating temperatures and the vibrations of turbulence and hard landings,” he noted.
He also stressed that the entire propulsion system will have to meet certification standards, including the electrical controls, power distribution system, and how all the various components are installed.
“They will all have to meet the required safety standard before the entire airframe can be certified,” he said.
While the standards for cars are different than airplanes, technological advancement and consumer acceptance is happening at a rapid pace. In just the last five years Tesla has sold more than 250,000 vehicles. Seeing this emerging trend, other automakers are quickly trying to catch up.
Just like Tesla, whoever creates a viable electric airplane will lead the market and other GA manufacturers will follow.
And even though FAA officials have said they are enthusiastic about the opportunities electric airplanes might bring, it won’t be without challenges. The driving forces behind widespread acceptance of an electric airplane will be realizing the promise of reduced costs, range, availability of infrastructure, and safety.
So, who’s leading the charge (Pun intended)?
On the general aviation end of the spectrum, the U.S. based Sun Flyer and Pipistrel Aircraft based in Slovenia both have been developing two-seat electric trainers.
Sun Flyer also recently announced plans to produce a four-seat variant.
With the boom in airline hiring and the need for low cost flight training, the timing for these ventures might be ideal. In 2016 a Boeing study projected that the world will need an additional 637,000 commercial airline pilots by 2035. The business of training these pilots will gravitate towards viable, low-cost solutions.
“We are innovating with purpose,” said George Bye, CEO of Bye Aerospace, which is developing the Sun Flyer. “Through the use of transformative technology, our trainer brings with it disruptive affordability that will change the way people all over the world learn to fly.”
And if the cost projections are correct, he may be right. According to Bye, operating costs of the Sun Flyer trainer will be 5.5 times lower than an equivalent Cessna 172 — $16 an hour vs $88 an hour.
Additional savings come from the reduced maintenance and increased lifespan of an electric motor, which has a 10,000-hour time between replacement as compared to a piston engine with a 2,000-hour time between overhaul.
If the economics hold up, with an advertised endurance of three hours from a single charge, the Sun Flyer two-seat trainer might be the perfect platform for creating pilots of the future.
On the other end of the spectrum, government and industry giants such as NASA, Boeing, and Airbus are also looking at electrically powered passenger carrying airplanes as an alternative to Jet-A powered engines.
No matter the application, safety will always be a strong selling point for electric aircraft. Piston powered airplane engines have in excess of 200 moving parts, each a potential point of failure. An electric motor has only one moving part. It doesn’t need oil, gas, or any other explosive dinosaur juice to run.
Electric motors don’t produce any emissions, so they are environmentally friendly and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning to passengers is eliminated.
Additionally, reliability is vastly improved over piston engines. Electric engine reliability is as good or better than turbine engines so they don’t fail anywhere near as often as piston engines. To operate an electric motor safely, pilots don’t have to understand the intricacies of turbos, stoichiometric mixture ratios, or the complicated theory of internal combustion.
Next is range and infrastructure, and they go hand in hand. Currently this is the weakest link in the chain for electric aircraft, especially if they are going to be used to travel.
Currently there are no electric fast charging stations on the flight lines at airports or FBOs. So, the best a pilot can hope for is an extension cord and a hospitable FBO that’ll allow them to plug in to receive a “slow charge.”
But as we’ve seen with automotive adoption, if there’s demand, the infrastructure will follow as evidenced by nearly 20,000 fast charging stations for cars in the United States today. Luckily fleets of electric training aircraft aren’t limited by a need for long distance travel since most flights tend to occur near a single base of operations.
Some flight schools are starting to take notice. One well known school, Spartan College of Aeronautics, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, holds deposits for 25 of the first Sun Flyers produced to be used in its flight training department, showing that some businesses are already seeing the advantages.
The future of general aviation is certainly evolving and only time will tell if electrically powered airplanes are the wave of the future or just another idea that will be relegated to the scrap heap of ideas that never caught on.
More than anything else, economics will drive future development and the market adoption of electric aircraft. No one can argue that learning to fly is prohibitively expensive. The results are reflected in the total number of private pilots, which has shrunk from more than 300,000 to less than 195,000 in the past 30 years.
If electric aircraft can realize their potential, dramatically bring costs down and provide a viable platform for training pilots, the future might be bright.
One thing is for sure, the demand for airline pilot training continues to grow, and if electric airplane can fill this need, electrically powered trainers might soon become the Teslas of the sky.
Even if you accept the article as fact, how long do the batteries last? What’s the replacement cost for batteries?
I know one guy that had to spend $0.08 per mile for batteries in a Prius.
Not a pilot. But if your car used a quart of oil in an hr or 2 and needed new engine at 2000 hrs ( about 60000 miles youd not buy it
As an owner of an electric aircraft (Alpha Electro) and non-electric (DA40) I can tell you that the experience of owning, operating and flying an electric is very rewarding. Most pilots I know are weekend flyers and usually go up for an hour or two and make short hops for the “$100 hamburger”. I think an electric aircraft is very practical for this sort of flying … especially if you’re trying to fly on a budget.
When I want to go flying, 5 minutes later I’m airborne …. no run-up, no checking the oil, its always plugged in and ready-to-go. I have solar panels on my roof so the electricity is free but at current electricity rates it only uses about a $1.00 worth of electric per hour to fly anyway. There is almost no maintenance required and the only real operating cost of any significance is the insurance(which is the same as any other aircraft). Compare that to a gas-powered aircraft which needs constant maintenance. My DA40 is fairly new but it still takes a long time to perform the regular annual maintenance (and is often $$$). I’m sure an electric aircraft has gotta be cheaper overall to operate than even a $30K Cessna. You may save a bit up front but you’ll be paying a lot to keep it running.
You always seem to hear the same arguments marched out over and over about electric vehicles and sustainable energy. People bring up range or say its too expensive or say that it actually pollutes more. If they sincerely were interested in the truth, it wouldn’t take long to find peer-reviewed studies with actual facts but for whatever reason they seem content to re-circulate misinformation. From my own personal experience I’ve found that the greener I get the more I save. When I first got my electric car 5 years ago people were giving all sorts of reasons why they were no good … then they went for a ride … 6 of them have gotten Tesla’s since then and few other have purchased I3’s and other assorted electric vehicles.
If you want to get a sense for what electric flight is like, go for a drive in a Tesla. It’s smooth, quiet, powerful. You’re not worried that its going to conk out on you or anxious about some strange new noise the engine is making. It just works. A buddy of mine nearly had a major mishap in a tail-dragger on landing when it start to ground-loop. He tried to give it power to straighten it out but the engine just coughed and sputtered because the throttle was too aggressive. That would never happen in an electric aircraft.
James: Good information. It’s good to hear from someone who is actually flying behind electric power. I too went for a Tesla ride several years ago and now wouldn’t consider going back to ICE.
Dean. Most light aircraft fly at about 100 knots or 115 miles per hour. 2000 hours equates to 230,000 miles. Ast that point you don’t have to replace the airplane. Just the engine. What do you do with a 230,000 mile car? What’s that cost to replace?
This is great!! If this works then more people will fly. The cost to get started is too high. Once people learn to fly then join a group like FATPNW they and their families will see the benefit of flying. This could change the whole thing!
Lets stop the Bravo Sierra about electric vehicles being super efficient and non polluting. If it is charged off the grid, it is running on hydrocarbon fuel i.e coal, natural gas or diesel fuel. The efficiency of these systems is very poor. No body considers the energy losses in fabricating the fuel, the generation losses nor the the transmission and distribution losses. If it is run off wind or solar power then one can brag about efficiency, however, solar and wind power are a very small part of the overall electric grid supply and very weather/ time of production dependent.
So we will soon get coal fired airplanes with a short range. I am not saying that we should not be investigating electric powered vehicles and aircraft, just don’t drink the Kool-aid of high efficiency and low pollution. Look at the entire system.
We are looking at the ENTIRE system! You should be open to the evolved facts! You are as out of date as a Buggy Whip. Most of us have our own PV to generate the CLEAN ELECTRICITY. If not, then the grid is not as good…BUT STILL BETTER THAN GASOLINE OR DIESEL!
The first thing any good trainer must do is prepare the student for the next aircraft they’ll fly. From the article, “To operate an electric motor safely, pilots don’t have to understand the intricacies of turbos, stoichiometric mixture ratios, or the complicated theory of internal combustion.” Well, unless these new pilots want to spend all their time flying the trainer around the pattern, they damn sure better understand these “intricacies”. I thought this was about training airline pilots?
Why are they comparing a four-place, cross-county capable, rugged and reliable Cessna 172, to a plastic, fragile, better stay close to the field 2-seater? If you don’t think it’s fragile, just wait until ‘student pilots’ prang it on a few thousand time while leaving it out in the sun for a few years. Or better yet, talk to the flight schools who have already tried using LSA’s for training. The bottom line just doesn’t add up.
And notice how Bye conveniently leaves out the cost of amortizing the $250,000 + acquisition cost (his number for the Sun Flyer) in his “operating cost” estimates. Again, from the article, “According to Bye, operating costs of the Sun Flyer trainer will be 5.5 times lower than an equivalent Cessna 172 — $16 an hour vs $88 an hour.” If that entire $16 an hour went to pay for just the initial $250,000 it would take 15,625 flight hours to pay it off. And as I recall, most banks still charge interest.
Does anyone really believe any of the LSA’s will make it to fifteen thousand hours in a flight training environment? How about five thousand hours? And then there’s the cold, hard immutable laws of physics concerning energy storage. One pound of avgas contains approximately 5,600 watt hours of energy, whereas one pound of lithium based batteries contain about 100 watt hours. Yes, there are factors of efficiency that favor the electric motor, but you’re still left with an energy deficit of about 17 fold. Batteries might be able to double or triple their energy storage (not likely), but they’ll never increase 17 times! And don’t forget that the vast majority of electricity is produced using fossil fuels, and will be for a very long time.
What general aviation needs is a more efficient, jet fuel/diesel fuel based engine that can replace the piston reciprocating engines we’ve used for the past six decades or so. Where is this engine you say, well I bet we’d find it very quickly if we started pouring tens of millions of dollars into research and development to find it instead of indulging in the trendy fashion of electric vehicles.
Finally, the article makes an odd comparison given that if Tesla were an honestly viable product it wouldn’t have devoured billions of taxpayer dollars, now would it? The one thing I’ve never seen in aviation is a successful aircraft that can’t pay its own way; can you say Cessna TTx?
“Finally, the article makes an odd comparison given that if Tesla were an honestly viable product it wouldn’t have devoured billions of taxpayer dollars, now would it? ”
I see this argument incorrectly repeated enough that I wonder where it comes from? Tesla’s start up loans were completely repaid(early). And those loans helped start a company which is now the world leader in premium electric vehicles. Remember when the U.S. was the world leader in standard automobiles? It’s been a long, long time since we were the leader in any automotive category. Truly an American product.
Tax credits, which may not run out soon, are not issued to Tesla but to the buyer of ANY alternative fuel vehicle, including those sold by GM, Ford or Honda. I didn’t buy a Tesla early on because I get a much, much better tax break(Sec. 179) by buying an SUV for business, a tax break supported by both political parties for their own reasond. That tax break boosts sales of the some of the most profitable vehicles for domestic auto manufacturers, and it’s impact to the treasury is far larger than that of alternative vehicle credits. As an example, if I buy an SUV on December 31st, I can take a $25,000 tax credit for the year, even if I only put $1 down. The maximum alternative vehicle credit is $7500. Taxpayers have also bailed out U.S. automakers from bankruptcy on more than one occasion. So when someone repeats that “Tesla gets unfair tax credits” BS, that’s a red flag that they’re speaking from a biased agenda.
The FAA should be given a Pulitzer or Nobel prize for oral gratification. They talk the talk but rarely walk the walk as already discussed below. Won’t be long before they start bragging about how “green” the electric airplanes they’re ‘allowing’ are. All Bravo Sierra. And the Part 23 rewrite … THAT is somebody’s idea of a joke. The Appendix which would have helped EXISTING airplane owners with establishment of a new Primary airworthiness category (not the same as what we have today) is nowhere to be found despite FIVE years + of work by the ARC folks. I guess they forgot that most GA airplanes flying today are more than 30 years old?
So MY mission is to get between two locations 1400 miles apart. How’s THAT gonna work for me with an electric airplane with battery energy densities that we have today? OH … maybe we’ll build an 18 electric engine C152 look alike patterned after NASA’s X-57 Maxwell? Maybe if I glue a lot of PV cells to the top of the wing and take about 10 days to get there … IF it’s sunny every day?
And, beyond all that is the cost. Light Sport airplanes of today were supposed to bring aviation to “everyman” at a cost that would be palatable. How’d THAT work for us? Except for a few hypo performers like the carbon Cub bought by heavy hitters that have lots of disposable income and like toys … kinda like Roy Halliday and his A5 … more than a decade after establishment of the category, it’s NOT working … except maybe for that By Dan something or another guy. Even the successful #1 LSA for sales … the Flight Design CTLS … went belly up. The ONLY way that an electric airplane could become viable is if it cost sub $50K … and THAT ain’t gonna happen.
ME … I’m gonna spew as much lead out of my O-320 powered (that’s the engine pictured here) airplanes as I can in the time I have remaining to be a stick actuator. I have less than $60K tied up in two great airplanes and that’s the way it’s gonna be until I’m done. I attend numerous aviation oriented venues and all I see — for the most part — are grey haired older gents who just want to be left alone to do pretty much the same. The few younger folks — who I give GREAT credit to — are trying but they’re swimming upriver in a heck of a current. When I get an opportunity, I help them any way that I can but it’s going to ultimately be too little and too late. In the end, I plan on donating my airplanes to worthy causes to help same. That’s the best I can do.
The ONLY hope for GA is the E-AB movement, as I see it. Sebastian’s machines would be a perfect example. It sure isn’t going to be an airplane powered by D cells.
Good forward thinking article. It’s amazing to me that we’re still using leaded fuel in most GA planes in this day and age (with few viable alternatives available). Like most innovations in aviation it will probably start in Experimental (kits), and has the potential to transform kit aviation just like electric propulsion transformed the R/C (radio controlled scale model) industry years ago by lowering the costs and complexity and increasing reliability and safety. I’m excited about the future of electric propulsion for sport aviation.
Many of us can agree that the technology will continue to improve and the ultimate flying vehicle will make it to the homebuilt market. My pessimism comes from the ridiculous FAA bureaucracy. There’s no one in the FAA that will sign anything off anymore. By time they get an electric aircraft certified a two place trainer will cost over a million dollars.
Do you have any idea how many decades went by before there was an alternator option for an early model Piper Cherokee?
The FAA still hasn’t settled on the 100LL replacement.
Ask Gill and Concord about battery standards and why an obsolete design cost 4 times more than the modern automotive equivalent.
Amen. There are some wonderful folks in the FAA working the towers and trying to educate us bonehead pilots. But somewhere deep within the bowels of the FAA is a hardened cadre of non-aviator bureaucrats who likely believe that the only safe GA aircraft is one that never leaves the ground. That goes ditto for pilots. Until and unless the anti-growth nanny culture of the FAA is changed, practical innovation will be stifled no matter how much safer, more efficient and better GA might be.
After more than 40 years watching the growing calcification of the FAA bureaucracy, I don’t have much hope that an agency more supportive of personal aviation will evolve.
Bill has hit the nil on the head. I remember a few years back when a guy had built a homebuilt with a 2 cycle engine in it. The FAA inspector wouldn’t issue an airworthiness certificate and operating limitations because the aircraft didn’t have an oil pressure gauge. So help me, this is the honest truth. The guy went out and bought an oil pressure gauge and installed it in the panel so he could get the necessary paperwork from the FAA. I had a recent deal also where I wanted to mount a PMA’d light weight Odysee battery in a PA-18 in the same location as the original battery was installed. i had to write a 10 page maintenance manual for the non-servicable battery to get a Field Approval. At first the inspector wanted to know why I wanted to instll a battery thgt was no good in the plane. He thought non-servicable meant it wasn’t any good. I get so frustrated with some of the stupid regulations coming out of the FAA and until that bureauacracy is completely “flushed” and started over, don’t expect anything easy to come as far as certification. Another thing, why are less expensive non-TSO’d ADSB units approved for use in the airspace on experimental aircraft but they are not approved for use in certificated aircraft? Seems to me if it does the job in one it should work in the other too.
Electric aircraft are NOT practical for anything other than close to field training flights (very limited range).
But if you wanna be serious about real safety there is no feature in aviation superior to an all airframe parachute. Add to that modern and sophisticated all glass panels, Nexgen ADS-B and GPS navigation. Eventually with landing assist or fly-by-wire at the GA level.
Also, getting a lower cost turbine engine and sipping Jet-A diesel engine would also help a lot.
Infrastructure should be the easiest part. If there are over 200,000 charging station, why not make more stations for cars and put them at FBOs? This would be a win win.
We can’t even get electronic ignition for Lycoming pushed through the FAA for certified aircraft!
Back before FSDO offices when there were GADO offices, some of the GADO offices would not approve Strobe lights on aircraft. The one in New Orleans was famous for that.
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