Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Australia's first electric aircraft has begun test flights at Perth's Jandakot Airport, amid hopes the plane will be flying to nearby Rottnest Island within months.
The two-seater single-engine Pipistrel Alpha Electro has two batteries that can keep the plane in the air for an hour, with an extra 30 minutes in reserve.
The team behind the plane says while there are environmental benefits in doing away with jet fuel, electric planes are also safer and easier to fly.
"Electric propulsion is a lot simpler than a petrol engine," Electro.Aero founder Joshua Portlock said. "Inside a petrol engine you have hundreds of moving parts. "In this aircraft you have one switch to turn the aircraft on and one throttle lever to fly."
The engine is powered by two lithium-ion batteries, similar to those used in the Tesla electric car. There is no gear box or multiple moving engine parts —instead the plane's motor attaches directly to the propeller. Rather than a fuel gauge, a panel tells the pilot the amount of power left in the battery, and estimated minutes of flight time, based on the throttle position.
The batteries are re-energised in about an hour by a supercharger based at the Jandakot airfield.
[...] In mid-January Mr Bodley will begin training local pilots to fly the single-engine electric plane, with registered pilots required to complete a familiarisation flight before flying solo.
Mr Portlock said the group had held discussions with the Rottnest Island Authority to install a supercharger to tap into its solar array, allowing pilots to fly the plane to the island.
Future plans include electric air-taxis capable of carrying up to five people to the holiday destination.
Related Stories
Electric planes might seem futuristic, but they aren't that far off, at least for short hops:
Two-seater Velis Electros are already quietly buzzing around Europe, electric sea planes are being tested in British Columbia, and larger planes are coming. Air Canada announced on Sept. 15, 2022, that it would buy 30 electric-hybrid regional aircraft from Sweden's Heart Aerospace, which expects to have its 30-seat plane in service by 2028. Analysts at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab note that the first hybrid electric 50- to 70-seat commuter plane could be ready not long after that. In the 2030s, they say, electric aviation could really take off.
[...] Aircraft are some of the most complex vehicles out there, but the biggest problem for electrifying them is the battery weight.
[...] Jet fuel can hold about 50 times more energy compared to batteries per unit mass. So, you can have 1 pound of jet fuel or 50 pounds of batteries. To close that gap, we need to either make lithium-ion batteries lighter or develop new batteries that hold more energy. New batteries are being developed, but they aren't yet ready for aircraft.
An electric alternative is hybrids.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @01:44AM (16 children)
In the early days, I can completely understand having a human pilot in charge of the aircraft, but with the simplicity of the electric motor the only major variable I see blocking autopilot take off and landing would be bad weather. Certainly would increase the carrying capacity of a 2 seater aircraft if one seat didn't have to be taken by a pilot.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:22AM
Filthy sow, get pregnant! Ah, too good! Cumming!
Oh, I see... it wasn't your asshole that I was squirting my diseased tadpoles into, it was a hunk of your rancid feces! Regardless, it's pregnant now, and it's all mine. Duuuuuu, I found another pinworm!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Monday January 08 2018, @03:59AM (8 children)
Another guy who's never been in a small plane.
Every gust of wind.
Every updraft off of hill or microburst over a runway.
Ever reach to a piece of luggage.
Every errant bird.
Every other aircraft.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Funny) by mmh on Monday January 08 2018, @02:13PM
𝅘𝅥𝅯 I'll be watching you. 𝅘𝅥𝅯
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @02:54PM (6 children)
I've only had about 20 hours in light aircraft (2 and 4 seat), hands on stick for maybe 1 hour total, no formal pilot training.
I did, however, develop an autopilot for a tiny unmanned fixed wing drone... lurches happen and autopilots are pretty good at recovery. Birds get out of the way or die (evasive can be more dangerous than taking the strike), other aircraft? Hopefully ATC can effectively manage traffic.
As I was saying: not on day one, not in year one, but it's an achievable goal worth pursuing. After a few thousand clean take off and landings with a competent pilot in the seat ready to take over, but autopilot in charge (like they're doing with cars), I'd be ready to trust it.
I'd certainly trust autopilot like that in the air, takeoff and landing more than auto-drive on urban freeways at 100+kph.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @04:16PM (5 children)
> Birds get out of the way or die
Sure, they die, but a bad hit can take you with 'em. I'm speaking from personal experience; I've been in a mid-sized plane (100 seats or so) that was hit by a bird right in one of the engines. That engine died. Luckily, the planes can keep flying without an engine or two, and it happened shortly after take-off, so we could return to the airport.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @06:23PM (4 children)
Aye, so - how will the human pilot be better? Like "Sully" demonstrated, the computer can decide go/nogo for available airfields and whether a water-landing is preferable much faster than a human, and apparently humans aren't too good at evading birds - arguably, autopilots could be more diligent at scanning radar looking for birds ahead...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:24AM (3 children)
I wonder how much it was the pilot and how much it was the computer or dumb luck that they landed on a busy waterway without hitting any boats?
Hmm reading wiki, it seems it was all the pilots decision with the fly by wire system first helping the glide and then stopping the pilot achieving maximum landing flare which would have softened the impact.
Reminds me of the Gimli glider, where the pilot straddled a guard rail to shed speed and not run over the kids in front of the aircraft. Whether a computer would have made that decision is questionable, along with the computer being aware of the abandoned air field in the middle of nowhere and being capable of gliding a 767 which was considered unglidable. It was also an example of bad data (mixing up imperial and metric) along with a defective gas gauge in leading to big problems. Better outcome then the Mars Climate Orbiter which was on full autopilot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:08PM (2 children)
Certainly, human pilots tend to have more experience and data input sources (primarily visual scanning field) than autopilots and autopilot software authors do today....
However, we are quickly approaching the cusp at which autopilots will have more data input sources that they can process - more than a human will ever be capable of. (Good) autopilot software should be accumulating knowledge in a relatively immortal fashion, and eventually be trained beyond the capacity of 30 years of human experience.
There will always remain situations where a human can find a creative novel, potentially superior, solution to a unique problem that an autopilot would miss - but the point at which that advantage no longer outweighs the autopilots' massive database, lightning reflexes, and aggregation of more real-time data sources would seem to be approaching.
Meanwhile, bad stuff will be happening during autopilot development. I find it interesting that this Google search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=gainesville+autopilot+crash+terminal [google.com]
does not turn up the story of researchers who had outfitted a light aircraft with experimental more-autonomous autopilot hardware/software and accidentally crashed it into the Gainesville airport terminal with some pretty serious consequences. Details are fuzzy in my head, but it happened within ~ the last 10 years and was considered an extreme setback in that particular autopilot development program.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:30PM (1 child)
You're probably right about autopilots getting better and better and overall improving things. Perhaps it is human nature or just my age to be distrustful of machines driving/flying autonomously, especially the idea of totally eliminating the possibility of a human piloting a vehicle.
As for your search, it is interesting how Google serves results to different people. Here, the second result, sandwiched between 2 results of a Tesla fatal autopilot crash was http://www.gainesville.com/article/LK/20080407/news/604159153/GS/ [gainesville.com] which is probably the accident you're thinking off. Seems there was too much damage to say what exactly caused the crash but does talk about the autopilot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:32PM
Yep, that's the one - my first page of results was over 50% Tesla and didn't have this, which is doubly odd because I've used Google to search for and read this exact article in the past...
The thing I trust autopilots with the least is negotiating with human pilots, especially in crowded conditions like freeway traffic.
As for autopilot development - we lost a drone during development (apparently it went down deep in the woods - best possible result after a recovery without damage) and post-loss analysis showed us about a half dozen decisions which led to the loss, any one of those decisions being taken more conservatively would have saved the day (flying without the RDF tracker attached was my favorite mistake to remind people of) - but... this was about flight #25 in the program, and if we scrubbed for every "maybe" during development, at least half of the prior flights would have been grounded. Risk is one expense in progress.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday January 08 2018, @05:01AM (5 children)
Somehow I doubt that an easier-to-manage throttle significantly simplifies taking off and landing, by far the most dangerous and unpredictable parts of any flight.
Cruising maybe, but then autopilots have been able to mostly handle that since they were little more than a gyroscope and a brick on the gas pedal.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @03:05PM (2 children)
It's not about the easier throttle management, it is about the reduction in variables of power production, there are so many more (and more common) failure modes of internal combustion, and you manage lots of them differently based on feel and experience and things that sensors don't communicate.
Electric can fail - it can even go intermittent, bearings can seize or spall, props can take birdstrikes and potentially break in an unbalanced partial failure mode, lots of weird and seriously bad stuff can still happen, but the frequency of occurrence is much lower in a well maintained electrical powertrain and the FMEA is not so huge and full of intangibles that I think you need a human in the loop to achieve acceptable mitigation.
Put another way, I think that doubling the number of passengers with an autopilot would result in more passenger miles per fatality than having a human pilot in one seat ferrying one passenger at a time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @04:38PM (1 child)
Of course as passenger I'm not interested in passenger miles per fatality, but in the probability that this specific flight I'm on will not have a fatality. That probability will generally be the same whether there's a second passenger on board or not. It may not be the same whether there's a pilot on board or not.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @06:26PM
But, if you're two passengers, traveling on two planes instead of one, you've now doubled your odds of one of you dying... do you care about that?
It's too early to make this argument, but, long term - we will eventually show that autopilots have less chance of killing the passengers than a human captain, maybe not today's autopilots, but eventually.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 08 2018, @06:45PM (1 child)
You'd be supersized. Takeoff and landings are the times when the pilot of a small plane almost never takes a hand off of the throttle.
Less so on take off perhaps. Its just firewall it, for the most part, and then throttle back at some acceptable altitude. Its precisely THEN, as you throttle back after a sustained full power run, that an internal combustion engine is going to come apart (if its ever going to come apart).
On approach and landing you are always fiddling with power settings. Un-intuitively, power controls altitude and stick (pitch) controls speed during approach and landing.
Making small power adjustments to control sink rate, you have to be aware of carb icing, you end up having to apply power just to keep the engine warm and ready, you have to not let it idle too long during descent, you have to be constantly aware that an IC engine has a response delay, you don't get power the instant you ask for it. If you slam the throttle to the firewall you are like to induce misfires due to flooding when you are most in need of power quickly.
Throttle management is a huge part of takeoff and landing work load.
Will electrics be any better? Hard to say. You substitute range anxiety for engine micromanagement. So who knows.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:38AM
Oh, I'm willing to bet electric saves a whole lot of headaches, especially during landing. But I also suspect that aspect of the takeoff and landing would already be the easiest to automate. It's the rest of it, especially in adverse conditions or the occasional, inevitable, emergency landing, that I suspect will keep human pilots in the cockpit for many years to come.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @02:07AM (8 children)
Righto.
Everyone knows downunder has the skies pointed downwards - as such this is not (I repeat it is not) an all electric plane, it's a submarine!
(Those crazy Ozzies, they think they can defy an "+Insighful" post?)
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday January 08 2018, @02:20AM (7 children)
This is a toy. An hour of flying time? You can literally buy toys that can fly that long. One passenger? Good luck turning a profit with that. They will play with it off and on, you won't "see it in the skies" anywhere in commercial aviation service. I would say they were at least getting experience for a future when we have batteries good enough but really, we don't NEED to learn anything. We know how to make a single engine prop job, we know how to build an electric motor (hint: Tesla, etc.) and the hard parts are essentially unchanged. The hard part of a plane is the control surfaces, cockpit, aviation electronics, etc. incorporating a century of knowledge of the thousands of ways they can go wrong and kill you.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Monday January 08 2018, @03:25AM (3 children)
http://www.rottnestisland.com/the-island/getting-here/By%20Air [rottnestisland.com]
It is a twelve minute flight, so think of this as a fancy, exclusive, air-taxi.
There isobviously demand for flights this short (and likely many places like this in the world)
Quiet, sometimes silent, different. All things that might appeal to well-heeled tourists.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @04:10AM
They might as well have used a catapult, them bastards!
I mean... look... is in bad taste to do contrary with what jmorris have decreed... even if the entire world functions mostly contrary with his assertions - it only to shows how much bad taste exists in this world.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @03:08PM
The near-silent aspect is one worth mentioning - this could extend viable operation hours, get access to airfields otherwise closed to commercial traffic, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 08 2018, @04:01PM
A prop is never quiet if it is pulling any power.
And the article sucked! "has begun test flights." - Pix or vids! or GTFO! And when they do finally make that video, I want to hear the natural sound, not some lame background promotional music.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Monday January 08 2018, @05:09AM (2 children)
Now, if you can stick it in a sailplane, something with a huge surface area that doesn't actually need power to stay in the air, and you might have something really intriguing. A glider that can launch and land under it's own power, get a boost as needed to more easily navigate thermals, and spend the rest of it's time recharging as it glides. Wouldn't be the fastest thing in the air, but it would be one hell of a toy. And potentially a valuable surveying/research tool as well.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Monday January 08 2018, @12:48PM (1 child)
Something like this [front-electric-sustainer.com]? This is just a sustainer however and doesn't enable powered takeoffs.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:28AM
Quite. With the added benefit of having the fuel tank constantly (slowly) refill as you glide. And self-powered takeoffs would certainly add a great deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:28AM (7 children)
Is it that I have not been paying attention for a long time to the design of small aircraft?
The doors on that thing are mostly windows. [netdna-ssl.com] (page) [cleantechnica.com]
Is that unusual?
I'm disappointed that the none of the top side is covered with solar cells.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @04:31AM (6 children)
here, have a lolly, is it better now?
Silicon has the bad habit of being heavy and since the flight only takes 20 minutes both ways, why not put the solar panels... I don't know... somewhere nearby the plane's parking spot or on top of the hangar? The other advantage is one could put a lot higher PV surface than could ever fit on the plane's top side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @04:50AM (1 child)
Tell it to the Solar Impulse 2 folks. [soylentnews.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @05:00AM
I don't know why I should; two different purposes, two different solutions.
The short distance taxi-plane doesn't need to circum-fly the Earth in a single go, it's only a 10 minutes flight per leg.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @03:26PM (3 children)
The other thing to consider is that, even on a bright sunny day, solar panels on every available surface wouldn't even provide 2% of the power used for level cruise - as you say, most of the power they would provide would be going toward keeping their excess weight aloft, and on rainy days or at night they're just a liability.
Most people seem to think that a square meter of solar panel provides power like burning a liter of gasoline per hour, when in reality:
it takes about 50 square meters of solar panel, in good sunlight, to equate to burning 1L/h of petrol.
Cut that power to 50% when your sun-angle is 30 degrees (the ~2 hours before sundown and after sunrise).
And... a Cessna 172 at 75% power standard cruise burns about 32 liters per hour, not your most energy efficient light plane, just say that we only need 20 liters per hour for a really efficient light plane - that's 1000 square meters of solar panels, where a 172 has a wing area of just a touch over 16 square meters. Let's cover the whole damn thing in solar cells and give it credit for 25 square meters of solar intercept... now we're cookin' with 2.5% of the required power for cruise, in an aircraft that's 50% more efficient than the 172.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday January 08 2018, @04:22PM (2 children)
Solar Airship.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @05:26PM
If the winds cooperate, then, sure, blimp away. But, they're slow and have well known limits.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:45PM
If you have a large carrying-capacity airship, it may as well carry heavy load of batteries for a long range trip.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:56AM (6 children)
As someone who is earthbound, I wouldn't mind if they tightened noise regulations so all general aviation aircraft are electric. The kind of incessant droning that some small aircraft produce should not be allowed in a democracy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @04:00AM
> incessant droning...
That's the prop you are hearing. Might be some IC engine noise mixed in there, but the prop is often close to supersonic speed at the tips and makes most of the noise (except for some larger planes where the props are driven by a gear reduction).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday January 08 2018, @04:05AM (1 child)
An amazing amount of this noise comes from the propeller tips, which break the sound barrier.
Its not only the piston engine exhaust you are hearing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @07:33AM
Well, it's true that a lot of the noise comes from the propeller, but the propeller tips do not break the sound barrier. Those that do produce noise on a whole other level. One example here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H [wikipedia.org]
A better comparison would be a piston-powered light aircraft to a turboprop-powered one. The turboprop is generally a lot quieter, but it's certainly not silent.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 08 2018, @04:20AM
Allow me to remind you that the laws of physics are oblivious to democracy (or, for the matter, to any political regime).
Have you heard the noise an all-electric remote controlled drone makes [youtu.be]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 08 2018, @04:40AM
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=24201&title=Hybrid+Octocopter+at+CES [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by crafoo on Monday January 08 2018, @05:26AM
Wow. What a twisted and evil worldview. You have minor audio discomfort so our ENTIRE SOCIETY should pick a far less optimal use of resources? You know what, I wouldn't mind if we erected new regulations to send people like you to Somalia for a year each time they demanded new regulations for some inane pet complaint (forcing your will upon others through the power of the state). Before you can exert this type of force on others you should feel what it is like to have it arbitrarily exerted on you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Monday January 08 2018, @10:10AM (3 children)
What enviornmental benefits? Australia's grid is friggin 800g CO2/kWh, it is one of dirtiest grids in the world (seriously, they are competing with places like botswana in terms of being dirty). This plane probably will be retired long before the grid drops down to non-horrible levels.
The less moving parts thing is nice, and for short jumps electric planes really should see more use (if nothing else for noiselevels), but touting electrical enviornmental benefits in australia is just weird.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Monday January 08 2018, @10:11AM
Sorry for even worse spelling than usual, didn't get any sleep - so today will feature extra-horrid spelling from me
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 08 2018, @03:33PM (1 child)
Oh, but if they cover the entire tarmac on both sides in solar cells, then _this_ plane can be clean and green, while the rest of OZ proceeds to kill the GBR directly with increased acidity and AGW.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:27AM
Rooftops seem like a better place to start.
At my latitude, 1 sq.m produces 1kW on a sunny day.
...and I'm in favor of anything that gets us away from digging up sequestered carbon and putting that into the atmosphere.
Short-haul electric stuff, powered by renewables, is already a no-brainer here.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]