Vancouver Seaplane Company To Resume Test Flights With Electric Plane (www.cbc.ca) 62
A Vancouver seaplane company says its retro-fitted all electric airplane is set to take to the skies for more test flights this year, as it pushes forward with its plans to make commercial air travel cheaper and greener. CBC.ca reports: "There's no wavering in our confidence and determination and interest in getting this done," said Harbour Air CEO Greg McDougall. Founded by McDougall in 1982, Harbour Air uses small propeller planes to fly commercial flights between the Lower Mainland, Seattle, Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and Whistler.
In the last few years it has turned its attention to becoming a leader in green urban mobility, which would do away with the need to burn fossil fuels for air travel. In December 2019, McDougall flew one of Harbour Air's planes, a more than 60-year-old DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver float plane, which had been outfitted with a Seattle-based company's electric propulsion system, for three minutes over Richmond B.C.
Harbour Air joined with Seattle-based company MagniX in early 2019 to design the e-plane's engine, which was powered by NASA-approved lithium-ion batteries that were also used on the International Space Station. At the time, based on the success of that inaugural flight, McDougall had hoped to be using the plane to fly passengers on its routes, such as between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria, by the end of this year. Now, that timeline has been pushed back at least one year due to the pandemic.
In the last few years it has turned its attention to becoming a leader in green urban mobility, which would do away with the need to burn fossil fuels for air travel. In December 2019, McDougall flew one of Harbour Air's planes, a more than 60-year-old DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver float plane, which had been outfitted with a Seattle-based company's electric propulsion system, for three minutes over Richmond B.C.
Harbour Air joined with Seattle-based company MagniX in early 2019 to design the e-plane's engine, which was powered by NASA-approved lithium-ion batteries that were also used on the International Space Station. At the time, based on the success of that inaugural flight, McDougall had hoped to be using the plane to fly passengers on its routes, such as between downtown Vancouver and downtown Victoria, by the end of this year. Now, that timeline has been pushed back at least one year due to the pandemic.
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Actually it is a great comparison. The mpg of small planes is not dissimilar to that of a car. "That shift, coupled with a very clean wing-flap design granted the Cessna C-34 the ability to fly at an average of around 17 miles per gallon of fuel—an accomplishment impressive enough to make it the most fuel efficient airplane on the market at the time."
Not surprised such a lame comment is so embarrassing the author doesn't want to claim ownership, and not surprised by the moderation on this topic by the
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No passengers in it either.
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Hahaha, planes and cars are two different beasts,
A four seat plane with only 145 horse engine and 43 gallon tank can go 740 miles. Doesn't seem to fit with your bizarro world math, does it?
Re: Three minutes (Score:2)
43*6 = 258lb of fuel(gasoline)
43*33.4 = 1436kwh stored energy
1436*0.4 = 574.48kwh useful energy
Meanwhile
1200lb of Tesla battery is 85kwh
8110lb of Tesla battery is 574kwh
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Even Tesla is doing better than that these days with latest battery in the 3, 265 wh/kg or 144KWh with 1200 lbs. of battery.
And the electric planes (and Tesla) are going to lithium sulfide with 400+ wh/kg. A 140 horse electric four-seater will go 200+ MPH for four hours. (eFlyer Four)
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Aircraft makers know titanium is strong as steel but half the weight.
I'm amused by people replying thinking "has to weigh same as four person plane and carry same weight."
No, the goal is only to get four people in the air for long enough distance at faster than automobile speed while powered by battery. The four person electric planes I've seen have weight 1/3 or less usual four person plane.
Re: Three minutes (Score:1)
No, has to not weigh more than a 4 person plane in order to not need to consume more energy for yhe same flight. Batteries weigh more.
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that's true but the real four person electric planes I've seen really are much lighter than the ICE ones. the lithium sulfide batteries will get them into range of being something useful.
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A 140 horse electric four-seater will go 200+ MPH for four hours. (eFlyer Four)
Bullshit.
Max gross on a C172 is 2300-2500lbs. A Cirrus SR-22, which is probably a better comparison for this piece of vaporware has a max gross of 3600lbs.
Do the math on your numbers above and you've got at least two tons of batteries for that endurance with that power requirement. In other words, you're 10% heavier than max gross on the SR-22 before you even have an airframe, much less power plant, avionics, seats, passengers, cargo....
Let's say 2k for the aircraft sans "fuel" (SR-22 is 2200 empty). 4k+
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Not bullshit, the gross and empty weight of the electric plane are much less. Yes they're therefore less capable then their IC counterparts but they can be useful in 70% or more the market for a 'plane trip' for four. Those claims aren't mine.
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Not bullshit, the gross and empty weight of the electric plane are much less.
140HP is 104KW. At 75% efficiency, at 80% power, for four hours. You're drawing > 100KWh per hour. Times four. Even with the best possible battery chemistry from your claim (400Wh per kg) you still are > 1000Kg in batteries alone for four hours endurance. And note, my math is being VERY generous to your case. You now weigh as much as an SR-22 does empty, without the rest of the airplane. The SR-22 is already made of composites, exactly what are you going to do to get the airframe weight down ev
That's 17 mpg (Score:2)
> Hahaha, planes and cars are two different beasts,
> A four seat plane with ... 43 gallon tank can go 740 miles.
> Doesn't seem to fit with your bizarro world math, does it?
Um, that's 17 mpg.
So tell me, that's radically different from a car how?
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How many MPG does your car get going 140 MPH with four people?
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Twice the mileage at half the speed.
I'm sure you had some sort of point you were trying to make by pointing out that a particular plane gets 17 mpg. What was your point?
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Exactly. The majority of the flights undertaken by Harbour Air are 20 minutes or less. If they can give it 40 minutes of flight time with the batteries, that's enough to get back. Further, being seaplanes, there are lots of acceptable places between Vancouver and Vancouver Island where they can safely land if they have to divert.
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https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener... [ieee.org]
The cost of retrofitting the planes will not exceed what a standard engine overhaul—required after every 2,000 or so hours of flight time—typically costs, . . .
Aside from the batteries, the key requirement for electric aircraft is the motor’s power-to-weight ratio. magniX’s 560 kW motor weighs 100 kilograms, for a robust 5 kW/kg. Packing power into a lightweight package is expensive—prohibitively so for cars and boats—but makes sense for a
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Ignoring the many logical embarrassments in your post, they point you completely missed is that this particular plane is practical because its typical flight is 20 minutes, so energy density matters hardly at all. The dominant factor is that electricity is way cheaper watt for watt than avgas, especially in BC where it essentially runs down the mountains.
Re: Three minutes (Score:1)
Wrong about fantasy, yes. You're not wrong about battery tonnage, though. 2020 flight had cabin nearly filled with batteries.
Australian firms are also looking at doing short-hop electric flights, others are using the motor unit to power hydrogen conversions https://www.flyingmag.com/stor... [flyingmag.com]
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OTOH, gas is expensive, with Vancouver having some of the highest prices in N. America, and aviation fuel delivered to the harbour probably likewise whereas hydro is cheap. Quiet too, which may matter when flying out of downtown.
Re:Three minutes (Score:5, Insightful)
That was an incredibly misinformed post by someone with an obvious grudge against anything electric.
The first flight of the plane was three minutes long by choice, not limited by battery capacity. They were testing the new powerplant and corresponding vastly different distribution of weight it caused, not the battery life, on that flight.
They have, since the initial flight, had a 30 minute flight using LiFePO4 batteries, which are twice as dense as Lithium Cobalt (commonly referred to as Lithium Ion) batteries that they will run in the actual example.
335 kW (450hp) for 5 minute climb = 28kWh
65% power for 15 minute cruise = 54kWh
Total for flight =82kWh
At the same density of Tesla battery (150Wh/kg), weight of battery = 546kg, weight of electric motor = 40kg
Weight of gasoline engine =290kg, weight of fuel for same flight, 45kg, weight of oil (6 gallons!) 19kg
586kg -354kg = 232kg extra weight for the electric version.
Beaver useful load = 954kg
Electric Beaver useful load = 722kg.
The standard Beaver is an 8 seat plane, the electric will likely only be a 6 seater at best. Maintenance costs, however, will be way, way cheaper, as the DeHaviland Beaver uses a Pratt & Whitney R-985 Radial engine designed in the 1930s. This alone, regardless in fuel savings, will more than make up for a loss in useful load.
The calculation is based on no improvements in cooling or density of the Tesla battery pack, which is not optimized for aviation. Bare cell energy density right now is 265Wh/kg. The calculation also does not account for reserve in the plane. These may cancel each other out. There will also be drag reduction from not having 9 air cooled cylinders and a supercharger.
This is the perfect use case for electric aviation - all their flights are about 20 minutes or less. While we are decades away from electric commercial airliners, short flights in smaller planes are possible now with existing commonly available technology. The limit right now seems to be 1 hour/100 mile flight. The Pipistrel Alpha Electro (small, 2 seater plane that's been on sale for 3 years now) will fly about an hour. It is unlikely to increase quickly, batteries increase in energy density about 3-5% per year averaged over a decade. We've been stuck around 265Wh/kg for a few years now.
Lithium Sulfur batteries will be out in the next year, at least one company is building a large scale production plant now. These will likely initially have 350Wh/kg.
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Electric is also much more reliable (much fewer moving parts, for example no fuel pump) and needs less maintenance in the first place. The car industry already found that out. On the minus-side, your electronics is more complex, but it is known how to do electronics up to ultra-high reliability levels (space-tech, for example).
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There are maintenance procedures for every 50 hours, 100 hours, 200 hours, 800 hours, and require a complete overhaul at 1600 hours. The complete overhaul costs about $40,000.
Here's a few items from the 100 hour maintenance check. I am not including any of the dozens of "inspect xxx", and this is just a subset of the actions required every 100 hours of operation, and Harbor Air is likely flying them a little more frequently than 100 hours per month:
Replace spark plugs (18 of them at $27.50 each)
Retighten ex
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Lithium Sulfur batteries will be out in the next year, at least one company is building a large scale production plant now. These will likely initially have 350Wh/kg.
And common jet fuel will have an energy density in Wh/kg of OVER NINE THOUSAND!
No, seriously, it's over 9000 Wh/kg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Having 350 Wh/kg is quite pathetic by comparison.
While we are decades away from electric commercial airliners, short flights in smaller planes are possible now with existing commonly available technology.
Transatlantic flights carrying passengers will never happen with an electric airplane. You seem to be good at math, do the math.
Or, watch a video from someone that already did the math:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
That was an incredibly misinformed post by someone with an obvious grudge against anything electric.
It's not some "grudge" against anything electric, it's physics and math. If we are going to ge
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It is a grudge to declare electric cars as fantasy and Harbour Air's electric plane as unreasonable, when the math and the physics clearly state that they are. As I've shown here. Where are your calculations to refute any of mine?
Harbour Air does not have to worry about flying somewhere that doesn't have electricity. This is like stating United Airlines has to worry about flying a 737 into a airport that doesn't sell fuel. While it is true that fuel or electricity is not available at some airports/seaports,
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Do you really think they don't know how these planes work?
I think they know how these work. They know that talk of an electric airplane will get them some free advertising, possibly some government money, and keep enough work for their pilots and mechanics during the COVID-19 slump in air travel for them to have enough hours logged to keep their certifications. It's busy work meant to bring in some money, or at least lower costs, until the economy recovers.
My mention of "over 9000" was meant to be a humorous reference to that Dragonball cartoon meme that was goi
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I don't need years of experience to tell me electric vehicles don't have a chance in replacing the internal combustion engine. That's because I can read, do math, and even once in a while do "30 seconds of googling".
And that sums up your rambling post entirely. Experience counts for nothing, since you've done some reading - good luck with that.
They know that talk of an electric airplane will get them some free advertising, possibly some government money, and keep enough work for their pilots and mechanics during the COVID-19 slump in air travel for them to have enough hours logged to keep their certifications. It's busy work meant to bring in some money, or at least lower costs, until the economy recovers.
So, they started this electric aircraft project in early 2019 to keep people employed during the Covid-19 slump? I think there were better ways to make money if they knew that was going to happen. And there are better ways to keep pilots employed than on a development plane that might fly a few times per month. Also, how development of an aircraft that will not have a paid fligh
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where would we be if everytime a 'difficult' engineering challenge was encountered the response was to just throw hands in the air and claim it's impossible?
Even if this particular endeavor fails, the lessons learned can be applied to the next attempt. That's how progress happens.
What was the state of play in batteries even 10 years ago? They didn't magically get better in the intervening 10 years ago without some degree of testing and practice.
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I guess they're still restless.
Call me when you get a drone that can... (Score:1)
... safely and comfortably get me where I want to go when I want to go faster than ground transportation at an affordable price.
Sea planes... Good idea/ (Score:4, Funny)
shocker (Score:2)
Re:shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably the same thing that's currently done to prevent people from being harmed by burning fuel in a conventional airplane:
Try to avoid crashing.
That is actually the first ... (Score:2)
- Only short hops between islands
- Power demand to get over the hump on take-off is easier to satisfy with electric motors
- Lots of possible landing spo
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The thing with electric planes is the mass is constant. You land with the same weight as when you started.
If you don't know why that's that a good thing - shifting mass means a changing CG, and planes are carefully loaded to ensure that the CG stays within a specified rage (the CG envelope) from full tanks to empty. As the plane uses up its fuel, it gets lighter.
Helicopter pilots often have to seal with chifting CG as passengers get on and off, or when carrying cargo that is dropped off.
An electric plane do
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The thing with electric planes is the mass is constant. You land with the same weight as when you started.
If you don't know why that's that a good thing - shifting mass means a changing CG, and planes are carefully loaded to ensure that the CG stays within a specified rage (the CG envelope) from full tanks to empty. As the plane uses up its fuel, it gets lighter.
Helicopter pilots often have to seal with chifting CG as passengers get on and off, or when carrying cargo that is dropped off.
An electric plane doesn't have its CG change. This itself can make for more interesting aircraft designs because without fuel changing the CG, the design can be different to allow for narrower CG ranges that are defined more by carrying capacity than fuel.
CG is extremely important on a plane. Get too tail heavy, and kiss your butt goodbye. I did a lot of flying some years ago, and always traveled heavy - My equipment was essentially another passenger. Puddle jumpers for the first and last legs of the flight One time a really obese guy got on the plane, and they had to move him to a different seat to balance the plane. I knew why, and felt a bit like an asshole for his embarrassment, because it was my equipment that made for the balance problem. 400 pound gu
good luck with that (Score:1)
I mean, truly I wish him luck considering we haven't actually solved the electrical vehicle weight issue for something relatively simpler like delivery trucks.
(Almost invariably, someone will come here INSISTING they've been commercialized: they have not. Such is the typical "if I wish hard enough it will exist" of the electric car lobby.)
Curious (Score:3)
Would the savings be marginal or make a big impact?
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Some back of the envelope calculation:
1) Speed at rotation is maybe 1/3 of cruise speed
2) Kinetic energy is a function of the square of velocity
3) This would do nothing for the change in potential energy getting the plane to cruising altitude
So I'd say it would saved much less than 10% of total trip energy.
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That would however increase the range roughly for the same amount.
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"it would saved much less than 10% of total trip energy". Much less, I'd say. If rotation (which presumably happens at the same time as the plane clears the catapult), is 1/3 cruise speed, then you've saved 11% (1/9th) of the energy it takes to get to cruise speed without a catapult. You still have to get to altitude (your point 3), and then cruise to wherever you're going, pushing aside air all the way.
Also, when planes launch off a carrier, they're full throttle (with afterburner going, IIRC); the cat
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There would be fuel savings from the launch, but catapult launches are extremely stressful for the airframe. The entire structure of the aircraft would have to be beefed up, which adds weight. I suspect it would be a non-starter because of that concern.
On the other hand, taxiing a jumbo jet from the gate to the end of the runway uses a huge amount of fuel. I asked a pilot why they didn't tow the plane to the end of the runway, and his response was that if a last minute issue prevented them from taking of
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You seem not to be aware how close after each other passenger jets are launching.
Of course a plane "stranded" at one edge of the runway would block the runway.
However modern planes are starting to use electric engines in the wheels to taxi from and to the runway.
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Oh, I got that all right, I just don't know why the cart that towed Aircraft 2 into place couldn't also remove Aircraft 1 out of the way.
Wasn't aware they're using electric engines in the wheels, cool development.
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It would probably be worse overall due to added weight. The amount of energy used at take-off is a small part of the overall flight, but you have to carry the extra weight the whole way.
It would probably have to be a very, very big catapult as well, so that acceleration could be low and not rip the aircraft apart. You also need time to reset it and ground crew to attach it, working in a dangerous zone where aircraft are moving at speed.
No "wavering"? (Score:2)
On a sea plane. I saw what you did there.
what about dumping batteries mid flight (Score:3)
What about shedding weight by dumping expended batteries mid flight, possibly in a controlled manner with parachutes? This could be a bit like rocket booster stages, where more recent models are recoverable (space-x style).
Just a toy (Score:1)