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Very cool, right? I had a brain fart when I read the title on the front page thinking it was a self-driving electric plane, for some odd reason, and my heart sk

by scoggs 9y ago

Very cool, right? I had a brain fart when I read the title on the front page thinking it was a self-driving electric plane, for some odd reason, and my heart skipped a beat. >It costs about $3 an hour to run the plane's engine, one-tenth the cost of a fuel engine. This sounds really great and at only €65,000 ($78196.30USD) it sounds like a steal that will scale nicely once it can carry the 5+ passengers it intends to. Someone in the comments mentioned it also sounds like a great idea because there will be many less moving parts. The plane also switches to more of a glider-mode once I imagine it's at altitude. A silent ride sounds kind of peaceful when I think of the drone of a normal plane.

chrismorgan 9y ago
Where’s the €65,000 number coming from? I found http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELECTRO-12-2017.pdf http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELEC... which suggests €159,000. That datasheet also says 700 cycles to 75% battery capacity, rather than the “about 1,000” of this article. The $3/hour figure doesn’t seem to me to match the other numbers, either: 60kW for takeoff and 20kW for cruising; let’s ignore takeoff (it’s rounding error) and just call it 20kW. 20kWh for $3? At residential rates, 20kWh will cost more like $5. But I don’t know what commercial rates are for electricity; maybe they do get power that much cheaper than residential persons.
- chrismorgan 9y ago
  Further to the running costs: if replacing battery cells worn out by 700 one-hour-flight cycles costs €12,000 (again citing http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELECTRO-12-2017.pdf http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELEC...), that’s €17.14/hour, which is over AU$26. So if you consider that to be a “fuel cost” (seems reasonable to me), then your “$3 an hour to run the plane's engine” has multiplied by ten—so much for “one-tenth the cost of a fuel engine”! (Yes, to make the comparison fair we need to factor engine maintenance costs into it, which can reasonably be expected to fall in the electric motor’s favour, but I don’t care to speculate how it may balance out this matter of the battery cost.)
- goodcanadian 9y ago
  Price of electricity varies greatly depending on where you are. My residential rate is about $0.13/kWh, so completely consistent with the article.
  - chrismorgan 9y ago
    Interesting. I was going off my experience in Victoria, combined with quick searching for Perth which showed about the same rates, then subtracting the appropriate N% for paying on time (a pricing model that I wish was illegal—expressing it as penalties for overdue payments would make life much easier) which generally gets it down to 20–25¢/kWh. 13¢/kWh is much lower than I’ve ever seen in Australia, not that I’ve looked all over the country.

by scoggs 9y ago

chrismorgan 9y ago

Where’s the €65,000 number coming from? I found http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELECTRO-12-2017.pdf http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELEC... which suggests €159,000. That datasheet also says 700 cycles to 75% battery capacity, rather than the “about 1,000” of this article. The $3/hour figure doesn’t seem to me to match the other numbers, either: 60kW for takeoff and 20kW for cruising; let’s ignore takeoff (it’s rounding error) and just call it 20kW. 20kWh for $3? At residential rates, 20kWh will cost more like $5. But I don’t know what commercial rates are for electricity; maybe they do get power that much cheaper than residential persons.

chrismorgan 9y ago
Further to the running costs: if replacing battery cells worn out by 700 one-hour-flight cycles costs €12,000 (again citing http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELECTRO-12-2017.pdf http://www.flypipistrel.com/price-lists/PIPISTREL-ALPHA-ELEC...), that’s €17.14/hour, which is over AU$26. So if you consider that to be a “fuel cost” (seems reasonable to me), then your “$3 an hour to run the plane's engine” has multiplied by ten—so much for “one-tenth the cost of a fuel engine”! (Yes, to make the comparison fair we need to factor engine maintenance costs into it, which can reasonably be expected to fall in the electric motor’s favour, but I don’t care to speculate how it may balance out this matter of the battery cost.)
goodcanadian 9y ago
Price of electricity varies greatly depending on where you are. My residential rate is about $0.13/kWh, so completely consistent with the article.
- chrismorgan 9y ago
  Interesting. I was going off my experience in Victoria, combined with quick searching for Perth which showed about the same rates, then subtracting the appropriate N% for paying on time (a pricing model that I wish was illegal—expressing it as penalties for overdue payments would make life much easier) which generally gets it down to 20–25¢/kWh. 13¢/kWh is much lower than I’ve ever seen in Australia, not that I’ve looked all over the country.