LOS ANGELES — Ampaire officials report the electric aviation company has “accomplished the longest flight to date for any commercially relevant aircraft employing electric propulsion, in this case a hybrid-electric propulsion system.”
Ampaire’s Electric EEL, a six-seat Cessna 337 twin-engine modified with an electric motor in the nose and traditional combustion engine in the rear, took off from Camarillo Airport (KCMA) just north of Los Angeles at 12:20 p.m. on October 12. Test pilot Justin Gillen and Flight Test Engineer Russell Newman flew up California’s Central Valley at 8,500 feet, landing at Hayward Executive Airport (KHWD) at 2:52 p.m. Straight line distance was 292 statute miles, and the route as flown was 341 statute miles, according to company officials.
Speed during the cruise portion of the 2 hour, 32-minute flight averaged around 135 mph.
“The mission was a quite normal cross-country flight that we could imagine electrified aircraft making every day just a few years from now,” Gillen said.
This flight took place after four weeks of flight testing in the Camarillo area for the second Electric EEL test aircraft, which first flew on Sept. 10, 2020. The aircraft flew over 30 hours during 23 flights in 28 days, with 100% dispatch reliability, according to company officials.
“Our success in taking this aircraft in a short period from the test environment to the normal, everyday operating environment is a testament to our development and test organization, and to the systems maturity we have achieved with our second aircraft,” said Ampaire General Manager Doug Shane. “The ability to put innovative electric technologies into the air rapidly in order to assess and refine them is central to Ampaire’s strategy to introduce low-emissions aircraft for regional airlines and charter operators within just a few years.”
The EEL flown to Hayward is dubbed the Hawai’i Bird, as it will take part later this year in a series of demonstration flights with Hawai’i-based Mokulele Airlines on its short-haul routes. The flight trials will help define the infrastructure required for the adoption of electric aviation by airlines and airports, Ampaire officials noted.
These flight demonstrations also will mark the first time an electrically-powered aircraft has flown under an FAA “Market Survey” experimental aircraft certificate in order to gain real-world flight experience, officials add.
In Hayward, the aircraft will be partially disassembled for shipment to Hawai’i. The Hawai’i flight trials are funded in part by Elemental Excelerator, a global climate-tech accelerator based in Honolulu.
The Electric EEL can generate fuel and emissions savings up to 50% on shorter regional routes where the aircraft’s electrical propulsion unit can be run at high power settings, and generate savings of about 30% on longer regional routes, such as the Camarillo to Hayward flight, officials reported.
“The Electric EEL is our first step in pioneering new electric aircraft designs,” said Ampaire CEO Noertker. “Our next step will likely be a 19-seat hybrid electric retrofit program that will lower emissions and operating costs, benefiting regional carriers, their passengers, and their communities.”
Ampaire, with funding from NASA and others, is in the midst of design studies for such an aircraft based on the de Havilland Twin Otter. Ampaire has named the hybrid-electric 19-seater aircraft the Eco Otter SX.
There is no doubt this is the future, congratulations for having a go
135 mph? How fast could that plane have flown on the gasoline engine alone?
The C337 cruises at 194 mph, 235 mph if it has turbos.
So, 135 mph on one engine might be ok, but slow ….I couldn’t find any specs on single engine cruise.?
I am dismayed by the negativity (no pun intended) regarding electric airplanes. Progress is sometimes not instantaneous. We are not going to get a supersonic four seat electric airplane powered by a couple of AA batteries tomorrow, right out of the box from Wal-Mart – not just yet.
Ampaire has FLOWN a “hybrid” airplane, very similar to the Prius, and you see those everywhere. If the Prius weren’t worthwhile, nobody would buy them, and they sell very well indeed. Ampaire will improve their airplane, too, over time.
Bellyaching about losses in power lines ignores the costs of transporting oil halfway around the world, refining it, transporting the gasoline, storing it, pumping it, I wonder how much of the potential energy in crude oil is lost between oil in the ground and fuel in the vehicle, and how much pollution is made moving it around and refining it. Marine diesels (as used in supertankers) are one of the dirtiest prime movers around, and the service life of those huge supertankers is something like 15 years, then it is scrapped, often in third world countries where there are NO environmental or workers protections. All that has to be figured into the REAL cost of oil, and it usually is not.
Complaining about generating power being “dirty” is just silly. Power plants are highly regulated and professionally maintained, whereas in many cases individual vehicles have casual or no maintenance and in some states are not even safety inspected, let alone emissions inspected. Florida, for instance, where “a few” people live, has NO vehicle inspection program at all. Ever see a big diesel pickup rigged to “burn coal”? Tell me that isn’t pollution of the first order, and it is deliberate, too.
Power is also getting a lot cleaner. Many of the big power companies are building acres and acres of solar panel farms (zero emissions, and the fuel is free) or wind turbines (same). They wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t economically sensible, these are FOR PROFIT companies, they aren’t motivated by much else.
Florida alone got $165 million from the VW dieselgate scandal, it is being used to install car chargers along the interstates. As battery costs and charging times continue to go down, we are going to see more and more electric cars. Most people couldn’t care less what makes their car run, gas, diesel, pixie dust, ground up politicians (now THERE’S a good idea), they just want to get there, and they will vote with their wallets. The stone age didn’t end because we ran out of rocks.
Whining that Ampaire’s airplane is impractical, slow, expensive, finicky, etc. etc. etc, is like telling Orville and Wilbur to give it up because any horse and buggy could cover the same distance faster, would burn hay instead of dangerous, expensive, hard to find gasoline, and the horse and buggy can run in the rain, and even when there is no wind to “launch” into (and off a specialized launcher, no less).
The future of transportation is NOT fossil fuels, either burning them in the vehicle or burning them in centralized power plants. We’re beginning to have the electric cars, we’ve made a decent start on the recharging grids, we’re moving away from fossil fuels for power generation. The writing is on the wall.
I’d LOVE to have an electric airplane. No noise, no gasoline, no vibration, no oil leaks, no carbon monoxide, no carb heat problems, no loss of power with altitude (other than loss of propeller efficiency), tremendously reduced operating costs and maintenance costs, the list goes on. In the meantime, we are flying around in the best technology 1940 has to offer . . .
Well said!
All systems have pros and cons. We are best off employing a variety of systems, each where they are most suited, rather than pitting one system against the other.
Having a fuel powered aircraft with an additional electric motor where the batteries could be charging during cruise flight might be a great combo. Or maybe not. In any case, we should be looking for ways to best utilize all systems in concert with each other.
What part of this story has an electric aircraft in it? Still looking.
unfortunately….not this one.!
It is an electrically assisted takeoff,….sort of a part-time hybrid.
We still have a developing electric car product.
Which, on a cost per mile to operate, is little better than the average economy car.
From AINonline….’The Electric EEL is powered by a 310-hp Continental IO-550 engine installed in the tail of the aircraft and a 130-kW electric motor in the nose. According to Ampaire, the piston engine powered all taxiing, and then a combination of it and the electric motor were used for takeoff and climb. The cruise phase was mainly powered by the piston, while the motor was put in low power mode, before being switched to idle during descent and landing.’
Not really an electric aircraft flight, just reduced avgas use during the climb…
Thank for filling in the blanks on the story. I can see why they left that out….Just sayin’
Finally a commonsense and practical approach to electrifying aircraft. While the rest of us were arguing about power-to-weight ratios and future battery efficiency, these guys were out solving a real problem using today’s technology. Kudos to the Ampaire team. Let’s see more like them.
In a press release like this, an “ICE” can be assumed to be an “engine” that burns carbon-containing fuel, and a “motor” can be considered “electric”. Without a much better definition of the source of energy used during the flight profile above, this story has limited relevance.
Also, until transportation becomes significantly influenced by electric power, there will always be critics who point out that our electric grid is “dirty”. That should spur us on to clean up the grid, rather than disparage the well-intentioned effort to clean up the equipment.
More hocks pocus about emissions etc. Electricity has to come from someplace. Batteries use energy to produce and create a waste stream. Most of the power to recharge comes from the grid and not from renewable sources. It is good to see progress in the electric aircraft field, but stop the hype and hyperbole about clean, emission free etc.
I am a bit dismayed by the lack of specifics regarding how much the electric portion of propulsion system contributed to the flight. These are sort of like click bait media blasts and do not contain meaningful information.
No one focuses on the amount of energy or natural resources required to MAKE the batteries for these things … efficiency of propulstion here notwithstanding. There are more than 7 billion people clomping around the Earth. Everyone can’t have an electric anything without depleting the resources. And … how’s about recycling them, too?
Something to note: EV autos being charged by the grid average 80-90 mpg for any fossil fuels being burned in the grid. Much more efficient use of non renewables than ICE vehicles plus no emmisions. The same would apply here.
BTW, the EPA MPGe criteria is based on false equivalencies , that the cost of a gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 33.7 kWhrs of electricity, The conversion is accurate, but the cost of each is very different .
A $2.00 gallon of gasoline is equivalent to electricity at a cost of $0.059 per kWhr
.[ $2,00/33.7 ]
While the EPA uses $0.12 per kWhr for the electricity used to charge an EV battery. [ in CA we pay $0.244 / kWhr !]
Then consider the 90% efficiency of the battery charge/ discharge ratio, and the 90% efficiency of the charger . So, the $0.12 cost has to be increased by the 80 % eff. or, results in an actual electricity cost of $0.148 that is paid to the utility.
So, an ice gasoline engined car is more efficient than the use of electricity in an EV.
Then there is the 60% efficient conversion in the power plant, burning gas, coal, nuc. thermal.!
I much better measure of energy use is to state the cost per mile.
A 40 mpg gas car using $2 gas costs $0.050 per mile. [ and a refill time of 4-5 minutes vs the hours of battery recharge ].
An EV that uses 330 whr/mi. and $0.148 electricity costs $0.049/ mile, in addition to the higher cost to purchase.
This is an exciting and innovative project. The flight profile with one engine shut down in cruise was expertly explained by Dick Rutan in his wonderful book “The Next Five Minutes.”
From what I read, it was the ELECTRIC motor that was shutdown in cruise. How is that a demonstration of successful electric flying?