Saturday, April 23, 2011

Getting a Charge

LEAP award winner Elektra One. photo courtesy PC-Aero GmbH
Well, Thomas, you've done it again: gotten me to blather on so long with your as-always thoughtful and knowledgeable comments that I exceeded the comment buffer so have to palaver on here in another post.
Well, that's why they call it a weBlog I guess: it's a place to hang our thoughts out to dry.
So what's below is a response to your comment from yesterday's post, with a couple more pix thrown in to thump the eye candy factor.
I think we can't overlook the market factor here.  Just as car manufacturers know where the buyers are, it could be what we're seeing with these projects aiming toward higher/faster/more payload electric are manufacturers figuring that they're since they're going to sell more of the expensive, travel-capable airplanes than sailplanes and motorgliders anyway, why concentrate time and resources on a transient, historically tiny share of the market?  Leapfrog to the future, expect the tech to come along as needed.

If I'm right, it's a visionary way to jumpstart an entire new genre, a new epic in fact, of flight.
And since I don't profess to be an expert, I'm just observing it like you are and wondering myself exactly which way and ways it will go.
Your NASA reference is intriguing.  I'd like to talk with some electrical bigbrains for enlightenment on the concept as I hadn't heard that. 
It could very well be that there's an "economy of weight", like economies of scale in manufacturing, that comes into play beyond a gross weight threshold, given the current technology.
HYNOV aircraft - first to fly 100% on hydrogen. Photo: Gerard Thevenot
 Still, Randall Fishman is quite unequivocal about it: he says he's crunched the numbers and has no doubt that the heavier the airplane and the poorer the pure aerodynamic efficiency, the less electric power makes sense, given the capacities we have today. 
I'll save myself from being thought a fool by opening my mouth and removing all doubt, by continuing to watch for what actually comes to market and extrapolating possible futures from that, as we've all begun doing to date.
I do believe we will see 4-seaters like Yuneec is currently promising.
When? 
Battery advances will surely determine, barring some other superspiffy technology coming in that nobody expects, such as some super solar cell.
Energy storage remains the holy grail from what I hear and read everywhere.
I also believe Yuneec has learned very well how to gin up enthusiasm, but it may well be true, like the flying car people, that they're simply making sure their name stays out there in public view, knowing  full well they'd be making an epic mistake by pushing out "vapor wings", i.e. aircraft that aren't really refined and truly ready for the market.
Antares DLR H2 fuel cell power: Photo: DLR-Institut für Technische Thermodynamik, Lange Research Aircraft GmbH
They can't fail to have noticed the Billion Dollar Debacle of VLJ, the Very Light Jet, as envisioned by Eclipse, which went down the drain and took most of the other swimmers with it. 
VLJ was trumpeted as the next great thing, the savior of smaller airports, the harbinger of a vast new regional "air taxi" network that would make short- and medium-distance travel more practical by  helping many of us, especially businessfolk, avoid the hassles of big airline terminal travel.
Problem was, the idea was not economically practical as conceived, and few VLJ will ever make it to market.
Yuneec has a lot of money and is at the vanguard of an entire new industry that they're helping to create, and surely hope to cash in on with lots of sales.
And clearly they're not rushing anything to market.  I wondered if they were having technical problems.  But the word I get from Yuneec insiders is they are not going to risk all that potential by rushing anything to market until it is thoroughly wrung out and ready for John Q. (Litigation-Capable) Public to fly safely and enthusiastically.
Fascination Ekarus, electric power.  Photo by W. Dallach
Remember when the iPhone came out?  That was a well-refined product.  I remember seeing the first commercials with the finger flick-scrolling from page to program, and thinking, "Yeah, right, just another bogus advertising hype."
Then I saw one some eager owner couldn't wait to share with me and anyone else within earshot.
I bought one as soon as I could and have never regretted it.  History changed with that product, just as it will with well-produced electric aircraft.
Two- and four-seat electrics are in our near future, we can hope, along with practical, affordable electric cars. 
In the meantime, there's a much broader technology to grow, and we're so clearly very much in the early Wright Years, so my guess is Moore's Law of computer tech proliferation (doubling every 18 months I think it is) will not likely happen just yet. 
There's still an entire, and basic, infrastructure to create and develop.  There are economies of scale to create first to make them affordable.
So that leads me back to concluding that for those of us who really want to fly behind (or in front of) an electric propulsion unit, we're better off for the next five years flying what I espoused above: light, efficient glider-style aircraft.
We shouldn't expect the moon just yet...but we can sure jump in and join the party, rather than gripe that we're not really saving money or going as far as we can with gas airplanes.
That's not the point in this stage of history, not the point at all.
Would I love to be dead wrong?  Would I welcome a two-seat, 2-3 hour electric 100 knot cruiser next month?  That didn't cost $150,000, but more like $40-50,000?   
You bet I would. 
And maybe we'll see it happen.
That's part of the fun: we get to watch it happen, all of us, and be a part of it as it unfolds.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

James,
I suspect people will find that success goes to those who can make a profit with the technology and market that exists today, and grow into the future, rather than trying to leap-frog and then wait for the technology. Electric cruisers are too far off: the battery tech just isn't there, and there's really no way for airframe design to substitute for kWh.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if, before the batteries ever get there, we find someone coming to market with a fuel cell solution that can handle JetA... At that point we'd be back to storing the energy in a liquid hydrocarbon (complete with smell)...

- Thomas

James Lawrence said...

Thanks Thomas, I'm enjoying these back-and-forths with you. You may be right about fuel cells...but I have faith that battery capacity will increase by an order of magnitude or two in the next three years. There's so much promising research going on right now, much of it is teetering on getting funding to do production prototypes, then start cranking them out. Fingers Crossed Dept., anyway.
Just got some exciting news today about a kind of hybrid LSA airplane we all know and I love that is working on an electric version.
By hybrid I mean it's already a viable touring motorglider, not just a super-efficient sustainer motorized sailplane like many of them are.
I'll post about it later today and will look forward to your comments.

Anonymous said...

James,
Greg Cole has reportedly estimated 5x in 10 years. Other estimates are in the range of 7% to 14% per year, which would give 2-4x in 10 years.
Even allowing for the high efficiency of the actual motor, batteries need to improve at least 10x to allow an electric aircraft to replicate the capabilities of a gasoline powered one. Super-lightweight exotic carbon fiber machines may get great numbers, but the market needs robust, cheap transportation.
That said, I hope you're right, and that an order of magnitude (10x) is <3 years out. It would be a huge breakthrough, and not just for aircraft!
-Thomas

James Lawrence said...

Thanks Thomas, big oopsie, I misused the term which as you correctly state is commonly considered 10X the previous value.
I meant 1X, not 10X, so to restate, if we get even 1X, or double the increase of battery storage, in the next 2-3 years, current aircraft would, theoretically at least, double their range. So even a ship that gets just an hour now would get two...so we could perhaps call that a visceral order of magnitude at least, in the expanded sense of range and in-flight options we'd have.

Finbar said...

James,

I agree that "just" doubling the capacity would be a big step. At the moment the realistic flight time for a training aircraft would be 30-60 minutes, and the CFRs require a 30 minute reserve. Going from a 60 minute battery to a 120 minute battery thus triples the usable flight time.

Cheers,

Thomas

Anonymous said...

James,

Oops - that last comment was from someone else's computer, and it was logged into their Google account. So I guess it would post as coming from them, with my name signed to it.

Not sure how you'll sort that one!

Thomas

James Lawrence said...

Excellent observation Finbar, that's what I was thinking too...even adding on an hour at this stage of the technology would open all kinds of practical scenarios.