Piper Aircraft has partnered with CAE to develop an electric conversion kit for Piper Archers.
The STC conversion will feature Safran’s new ENGINeUS electric motor. H55 will provide the battery system. The Swiss company has years of electric flight experience, including the technology used for the Solar Impulse, according to Piper officials.
Pilot training provider CAE will convert two-thirds of its Piper Archer training fleet with the new kits, according to company officials. It also will develop a curriculum for new pilots to train on the operation of electric aircraft.
Piper Aircraft and CAE have agreed to work together on the development of an electrical conversion kit and intend to develop the training and support services required for the operation of electrified Piper Archers, Piper officials noted.
The development of the electric conversion kit is part of Project Resilience through which CAE is investing C$1 billion over five years in partnership with the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec to develop “technologies of the future.”
As soon as the environmental extremists recognize that all the battery components come from strip mining operations all over the world, most of which are controlled by China, we will have another upheaval!! Oh, and the strip mining operations are performed by huge vehicles burning loads of fossil fuels!! And where does almost all of the electricity come from—fossil fuel plants!!!
And it is going to cost billions to upgrade the power grid to accommodate all the electric vehicles that will be plugged into the grid!!
The solution to the electricity problem is nuclear generation but nobody wants to consider that.
One other rant while I am at it. All the monumental exercises performed by the environmentalists is wiped out by one large volcanic eruption!!
In case you think I have my head in the sand, I support continued research into alternative power sources, I just think folks are too caught up in the green frenzy!!
It will be a cold day when I relie on electric in an airplane! Any kind of power we use is not free!!! It has to come from a source of some kind!! Necular plants are being shut down. No new plans to rebuild because of the government. Others by natural gas. Coal is slowly being reduced to nothing. Solar only works when the sun shines. Wind mills only works when the wind blows, freeze up in the winter. Limited life times and become a junkyard. Batteries have a limited life time and must be replaced. Get a short in a battery and it will explode or start a fire. Either way your day will end badly. Big heads in the government are giving it to you in the end to end freedom.
In my humble opinion this is absolutely insane. The world is nowhere near ready for this technology. I’m not saying it’s not doable one day, but not today.
They’re learning with the electric cars that the world is SO not yet ready or equipped to move in this direction.
I personally know of a situation where a mom and dad bought their child a used electric car for $10,000 . The battery went out. The new battery was priced at over $14,000 needless to say the parents did not have $14,000 to replace the battery. The grandparents stepped up and said we will buy the $14,000 battery, BUT to everyone surprise they had stopped building this battery and there were no batteries to be found. They now have a $10,000 yard ornament.
Financially the world cannot afford to take this insane route at this time.
It’s way too expensive and they have not figured it all out yet.
That airframe isn’t remotely efficient enough. Georgy Bye went down this path ages ago, with a C172. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he needed much lower drag and structural weight.
Yes, very true.
A C172 retrofitted with a 150 hp motor , controller and a 1 hour battery, would exceed it’s gross weight by a few 100’s of pounds, without a pilot.
Even if the battery is improved to 10x the kWhr/ lb, a 3 hour battery of 340 kwhr [ 150 hp for 3 hrs ], would still weigh 340 lb ., more than to 50 gallons of avgas that would provide nearly 6 hours of flight.
Then there is the re-charging problem.
– You won’t be recharging at your hangar. 120 vac and 20 amps is 2.4kw and would take 6 days.
– The airport may install some level 3, fast DC chargers. At 250 kw, it will take about 1.5 hours to recharge. [ and someone has to pay the $50,000 cost to install it ]
Oh !, and you won’t be paying $0.13 per kWhr.!
Most public chargers cost $0.50 to $0.70 per kWhr, so recharging your 3 hour battery will cost about $170…!!
3 hrs of avgas is ; $6 x 8 gph x 3 hrs = $144….
So, my guess is 20-30 years, and a miracle occurs in battery chemistry.
Yes, electric aurplanes are in the future, for sure. However, you will know when the technology has arrived when the President of the USA Flys and all electric Aurforce One across the Atlantic , non-stop, to Europe. Personally, my money is on the “Flux Capacitor” that runs on banana peels to power all this stuff…
I’d love to have an electric airplane with equivalent performance as a gas powered airplane. Once the battery weight problem and recharge time problem are solved, and they will be, people are going to look at IC engines like we look at horses and buggies “People rode around in THOSE?” Remember, the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of rocks, we found something better. Same for the gasoline age.
Electric powered airplanes will be much quieter, infinitely smoother and with no vibration, far less tiring to fly and ride in, fewer fatigue cracks in the airframe. No flammable fuel to splash everywhere in an accident, no oil changes, no oil leaks, no rusted out mufflers (and no carbon monoxide problems), no baffle systems to deteriorate, almost no heat from engine (more correctly “motor”) operation, no hot exhaust, no loss of power with altitude, no carb ice EVER, no injector problems, no “water in the gas” problems, no pollution problems, no neighbors complaining about the non-existent noise (but I’m sure they’ll find something else to bitch about), TBO on the engine in five figures, TBO consists of replacing a pair of ball bearings, bolting it back together again and yelling “clear”, higher speeds because of far less cooling drag and the cowling can be made smaller and more streamlined, the list goes on and on.
Are electric airplanes ready for prime time? Not yet, but they are coming. When you have companies like Boeing and Airbus pumping cubic miles of money into these things, and when you have governments doing the same, and when you compare today’s electric cars with those of twenty or even ten years ago, it is easy to see that the writing is on the wall.
You’re also going to see the same STC and upgrade paths for electric airplanes as we have now for IC airplanes. Better motors, more powerful and lighter batteries, the airframe remains the same. The future is electrons – and lots of them!
Good points. If you get the chance to drive an EV you’ll probably come away with the “EV grin”. They’re fun to drive because the motor has so much torque and it responds instantly to a press on the accelerator. I’ve had a few friends and relatives drive mine and they all come away grinning and saying they want one for their next car.
An electric aircraft would have the same advantage in a go-around. Advancing the throttle would give you instant power and acceleration.
I bet pilots will still figure out how to find themselves in trouble with no battery charge left and no airport in range. We will probably never get rid of those sort of poor planning and bad decisions. Maybe at least the power remaining indicators will be more accurate then most of GA’s fuel gauges.
The power remaining indicator could also provide a range remaining number, giving the pilot an indication of whether or not they can make the next airport. It won’t guarantee that pilots won’t still screw up, but it will make it a lot more obvious to them that they are doing it.
That’s exactly how my electric outboard auxiliary engine for my sailboat works. It has a GPS receiver and constantly updates my range remaining (in nautical miles) based on current power setting and speed over the ground. It’s amazing to watch the range “jump” with a fairly modest speed reduction. I think what most folks are missing about the Archer refit & similar things is that they are intended for local area flight training. I’ve seen numbers discussed at OSH that suggest something like 90% of private flying is for about an hour, in the vicinity of the local airport. Anecdotally, that feels about right.
Nope, nope, yep, nope and nope. My money’s on the flux capacitor and banana peels 🙂