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Digging through their website[1] trying to figure them out. Seems to me that the whole business proposition depends on their understanding that Norway, Sweden,
by mustafa_pasi 5y ago
Digging through their website[1] trying to figure them out. Seems to me that the whole business proposition depends on their understanding that Norway, Sweden, (and I guess they expect others to follow) will mandate all short flights being electric in the next decade.
They also say turboprops are higher maintenance and this expense reduces the viability of short flying routes, and I guess their implication is that electric will be cheaper. I am not sold on that one. 95% of the maintenance cost is the routine inspection. You'd have to do a routine inspection on electric propulsion as well. This is all just speculation until you see it in action.
[1] https://heartaerospace.com/ https://heartaerospace.com/
- sandworm101 5y ago95% of daily maintenance costs. Overhaul costs of jet/turboprop engines are considerable, several hundred thousand dollars per engine. A reasonable operating budget is about 1000$/hour per engine. Electric engines should avoid overhaul costs, and the fuel costs would be practically zero.
- HPsquared 5y agoGas turbine engines have critical components which can have gradual failure (fatigue particularly, and creep) which need regular inspection to catch small defects before they grow to critical size. They also have large numbers of high-temperature, stressed components. Electric motors are generally much simpler in construction and wouldn't need nearly as much mechanical inspection. The difficult/expensive part is the battery, but that's going to have more onboard condition monitoring and will be simply replaced periodically, not subject to regular teardown inspections. The cost of ongoing battery replacements might be significant, though.