5 ms·

Yeah, its like an SUV but twice as fast.

by jeiting 13y ago

lpolovets 13y ago
Perhaps 3-5x as fast in terms of time because you don't have to stop at red lights and you can take the "as the crow flies" path instead of zig-zagging. Pretty sweet deal for $30k!
- amagumori 13y ago
  avgas is more expensive doe
  - mistercow 13y ago
    Yeah, where I am, it's about 5/3 as expensive. The upper bound improvement factor you can get over driving due to flying in a straight line is 2/sqrt(2), so your best case cost-equivalent efficiency is about 11 mpg.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      The upper bound is infinite if you fly a route with no road equivalent, for example to an island. Even sticking to a single landmass, you can get arbitrarily high, as roads can be extremely indirect in some cases.
    - mahyarm 13y ago
      This is why I'm excited about electric airplanes and driverless cars. A GA electric airplane has about 1/10th the energy cost of an avgas one. The cost of avgas is what discourages me from owning an airplane.
      - sokoloff 13y ago
        In most cases, avgas will be under half your total expenses for the year. You have to fly well over the average utilization for gas to dominate over maintenance, insurance, hangar, database updates/charts, etc. Even at 100 flight hours/year in a thirsty airplane, you'll spend maybe $10K on fuel. It would take a very simple airplane, hangared very cheaply, and no abnormal maintenance events for the year, for those other costs to be under $10K. Few privately owned planes fly even 100 hours per year, and most of the non-fuel costs are largely fixed, meaning you pay them all just to fly the "first hour" and then subsequent hours just cost fuel and a small wear-related maintenance allocation. Airplanes are cheap to buy, but not cheap to fly. The cost of gas hurts, but doesn't dominate in my experience (owning three airplanes over 15 years, and flying my family on most of our domestic travel east of the Mississippi).
        leoedin 13y ago
        You're not taking into account the vastly simpler design of an electric aircraft. An electrically propelled aircraft will have maintenance requirements similar to a glider. Fewer engine overhauls and much simpler procedures means significantly reduced cost.
        sokoloff 13y ago
        I don't think you're taking into account the vastly increased battery maintenance, inspection and capacity testing that will be required. Yes, you'll save a lot on not maintaining a piston IC engine. You'll give some of that back in inspection processes to ensure that you don't have 95% of the range that you think you have. If you run of out power in a Leaf or a Tesla, it's overwhelmingly likely that the car will come to rest on a piece of pavement and intact. If you run out of juice in an electric airplane, you turn into a glider, and it's far from assured that you'll end up at an airport or on pavement. I'm not scare-mongering, but that's the point of view the FAA will take on inspection and testing requirements for electric storage systems to achieve equivalent level of safety. I know when I add 40 gallons into my left tank (beyond the unusable fuel) that I have added 40 gallons of range. I need some similar assurance for battery capacity. (again, it's not me, but the FAA.) Just have a look at the annual inspection requirements for ELT and starting batteries for piston airplanes. And those are not propulsion systems. The batteries that run the AHRS in the G1000 and Aspen systems are also onerous and those batteries are crazy expensive relative to their capacity. I can see electrics working for flight school airplanes, especially if they can get the 80% recharge time down under 2 hours. I don't see them as practical for cross-country travel anytime soon without advances in battery tech; those are inevitable, but I don't see them displacing liquid organic fuels in my flying career for 1000nm legs.
        mahyarm 13y ago
        I would think inspecting & maintaining the actual capacity of the battery would be part of the automated charging system. It would be recorded to a fine a amount of detail. Most airplanes have a more predictable energy consumption model than a typical consumer car also, and since the typical pilot is more sophisticated, can afford to show a more complicated energy display for more accurate energy consumption and range assumptions. Electric aircraft currently would be very useful for people who live on an island or island cluster or want to do frequent short hop flights. For example Hawaii, the Caribbean, Indonesia, the Philippines, Seattle and the near by gulf islands, etc. I can take a ferry boat for 3 hours at scheduled times or I can hop on my plane for 30 minutes at any practical time at the same cost really changes things for island dwellers. I could live on an island and theoretically commute to work every day for 45minutes of total travel time. Going to Tahoe every weekend wont be a big deal, etc. It would be also useful for future automated air taxis, since the energy costs would soon dwarf the cost of everything else in those situations.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  Not really -- think "free like a puppy". Planes are like boats, except you die if you screw up. There are plenty of repairs, storage charges, etc that can get expensive pretty quickly. General aviation is something you do out of love, not to save money.
  - bdunbar 13y ago
    > except you die if you screw up. That happens with boats, too. Perhaps not as often - boats don't fall out of the sky when they stop working - but it happens.
    - freerobby 13y ago
      Planes don't really fall out of the sky either, especially modern commercial jets with high L/D ratios. There are some exceptions, e.g. fighter jets, but generally planes can glide down safely upon engine failure provided there is a nearby spot to land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio
      - Spooky23 13y ago
        We're talking general aviation here. Small private planes crash frequently. I live around Albany, NY. In the past 18 months, there have been at least 4 fatal crashes that I can recall as a casual newspaper reader. Usually it's related to tired/inexperienced pilots combined with some other factor (mechanical, weather, etc). One that I remember as a kid growing up in farm country was a guy who had an engine failure. Like you said, he didn't just fall out of the sky... he tried to glide into a field, and just missed it. Wing clipped a tree.
      - bdunbar 13y ago
        > Planes don't really fall out of the sky either I did not intend that metaphor to be literal.
    - GFischer 13y ago
- pingswept 13y ago
  True, but it takes around 45 minutes to prepare a plane for flight and about 20 minutes to put it away. Also, you have to drive to and from the airport. Planes are incredible, but you have to fly pretty far before they're a timesaver.
  - maxcan 13y ago
    and usually 30 min to drive to the airport.
  - S201 13y ago
    Where did those numbers come from? Preflight and run-up can be done in 20 minutes once you've done it many times and securing after a flight is as simple as turning everything off and pushing the plane in the hanger or parking on the pad. That's maybe 10 minutes at most. The only really time consuming part would be making and filing a flight plan. If you've done the route multiple times, you already have the flight plan and if you're operating under VFR (visual flight rules), you don't need to open/close it. Source: I'm currently a student pilot and have done this process many times.
    - pingswept 13y ago
      My parents are both pilots. The numbers are just my estimates from having flown with them a bunch. Maybe my numbers are a little high, but I think I'd stand by them. There's always a bunch of dealing with cranking open the hanger door with the winch, dragging the plane out, checking that there is no water in the fuel (both tanks), transferring the stuff you're bringing with you from the car to the plane, getting into the seatbelt, plugging in the headsets and checking that they're all working, talking to the tower, taxiing out to the runway, waiting for a plane or two to take off, and then actually taking off. Anyway, have fun flying.
  - mcv 13y ago
    I believe there's a town in California where everybody has their own hangar, instead of garage.
    - 13y ago
tfe 13y ago
And 1/10th the capacity!
gambiting 13y ago
Well, I used to drive my Land Rover LR3 4.4 V8 on the german autobahn regularly and I would say 13MPG is exactly what I was getting while cruising at 120mph.
- kokey 13y ago
  US or UK MPG?
  - gambiting 13y ago
    UK gallons.
josefresco 13y ago
More like a sports car that takes ultra premium as the plane can't carry a lot of people, can't tow anything and generally can't fly in bad weather.

Yeah, its like an SUV but twice as fast.

by jeiting 13y ago

Yeah, its like an SUV but twice as fast.

Perhaps 3-5x as fast in terms of time because you don't have to stop at red lights and you can take the "as the crow flies" path instead of zig-zagging. Pretty sweet deal for $30k!

amagumori 13y ago
avgas is more expensive doe
- mistercow 13y ago
  Yeah, where I am, it's about 5/3 as expensive. The upper bound improvement factor you can get over driving due to flying in a straight line is 2/sqrt(2), so your best case cost-equivalent efficiency is about 11 mpg.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    The upper bound is infinite if you fly a route with no road equivalent, for example to an island. Even sticking to a single landmass, you can get arbitrarily high, as roads can be extremely indirect in some cases.
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    This is why I'm excited about electric airplanes and driverless cars. A GA electric airplane has about 1/10th the energy cost of an avgas one. The cost of avgas is what discourages me from owning an airplane.
    - sokoloff 13y ago
      In most cases, avgas will be under half your total expenses for the year. You have to fly well over the average utilization for gas to dominate over maintenance, insurance, hangar, database updates/charts, etc. Even at 100 flight hours/year in a thirsty airplane, you'll spend maybe $10K on fuel. It would take a very simple airplane, hangared very cheaply, and no abnormal maintenance events for the year, for those other costs to be under $10K. Few privately owned planes fly even 100 hours per year, and most of the non-fuel costs are largely fixed, meaning you pay them all just to fly the "first hour" and then subsequent hours just cost fuel and a small wear-related maintenance allocation. Airplanes are cheap to buy, but not cheap to fly. The cost of gas hurts, but doesn't dominate in my experience (owning three airplanes over 15 years, and flying my family on most of our domestic travel east of the Mississippi).
      - leoedin 13y ago
        You're not taking into account the vastly simpler design of an electric aircraft. An electrically propelled aircraft will have maintenance requirements similar to a glider. Fewer engine overhauls and much simpler procedures means significantly reduced cost.
        sokoloff 13y ago
        I don't think you're taking into account the vastly increased battery maintenance, inspection and capacity testing that will be required. Yes, you'll save a lot on not maintaining a piston IC engine. You'll give some of that back in inspection processes to ensure that you don't have 95% of the range that you think you have. If you run of out power in a Leaf or a Tesla, it's overwhelmingly likely that the car will come to rest on a piece of pavement and intact. If you run out of juice in an electric airplane, you turn into a glider, and it's far from assured that you'll end up at an airport or on pavement. I'm not scare-mongering, but that's the point of view the FAA will take on inspection and testing requirements for electric storage systems to achieve equivalent level of safety. I know when I add 40 gallons into my left tank (beyond the unusable fuel) that I have added 40 gallons of range. I need some similar assurance for battery capacity. (again, it's not me, but the FAA.) Just have a look at the annual inspection requirements for ELT and starting batteries for piston airplanes. And those are not propulsion systems. The batteries that run the AHRS in the G1000 and Aspen systems are also onerous and those batteries are crazy expensive relative to their capacity. I can see electrics working for flight school airplanes, especially if they can get the 80% recharge time down under 2 hours. I don't see them as practical for cross-country travel anytime soon without advances in battery tech; those are inevitable, but I don't see them displacing liquid organic fuels in my flying career for 1000nm legs.
        mahyarm 13y ago
        I would think inspecting & maintaining the actual capacity of the battery would be part of the automated charging system. It would be recorded to a fine a amount of detail. Most airplanes have a more predictable energy consumption model than a typical consumer car also, and since the typical pilot is more sophisticated, can afford to show a more complicated energy display for more accurate energy consumption and range assumptions. Electric aircraft currently would be very useful for people who live on an island or island cluster or want to do frequent short hop flights. For example Hawaii, the Caribbean, Indonesia, the Philippines, Seattle and the near by gulf islands, etc. I can take a ferry boat for 3 hours at scheduled times or I can hop on my plane for 30 minutes at any practical time at the same cost really changes things for island dwellers. I could live on an island and theoretically commute to work every day for 45minutes of total travel time. Going to Tahoe every weekend wont be a big deal, etc. It would be also useful for future automated air taxis, since the energy costs would soon dwarf the cost of everything else in those situations.
Spooky23 13y ago
Not really -- think "free like a puppy". Planes are like boats, except you die if you screw up. There are plenty of repairs, storage charges, etc that can get expensive pretty quickly. General aviation is something you do out of love, not to save money.
- bdunbar 13y ago
  > except you die if you screw up. That happens with boats, too. Perhaps not as often - boats don't fall out of the sky when they stop working - but it happens.
  - freerobby 13y ago
    Planes don't really fall out of the sky either, especially modern commercial jets with high L/D ratios. There are some exceptions, e.g. fighter jets, but generally planes can glide down safely upon engine failure provided there is a nearby spot to land. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-to-drag_ratio
    - Spooky23 13y ago
      We're talking general aviation here. Small private planes crash frequently. I live around Albany, NY. In the past 18 months, there have been at least 4 fatal crashes that I can recall as a casual newspaper reader. Usually it's related to tired/inexperienced pilots combined with some other factor (mechanical, weather, etc). One that I remember as a kid growing up in farm country was a guy who had an engine failure. Like you said, he didn't just fall out of the sky... he tried to glide into a field, and just missed it. Wing clipped a tree.
    - bdunbar 13y ago
      > Planes don't really fall out of the sky either I did not intend that metaphor to be literal.
  - GFischer 13y ago
pingswept 13y ago
True, but it takes around 45 minutes to prepare a plane for flight and about 20 minutes to put it away. Also, you have to drive to and from the airport. Planes are incredible, but you have to fly pretty far before they're a timesaver.
- maxcan 13y ago
  and usually 30 min to drive to the airport.
- S201 13y ago
  Where did those numbers come from? Preflight and run-up can be done in 20 minutes once you've done it many times and securing after a flight is as simple as turning everything off and pushing the plane in the hanger or parking on the pad. That's maybe 10 minutes at most. The only really time consuming part would be making and filing a flight plan. If you've done the route multiple times, you already have the flight plan and if you're operating under VFR (visual flight rules), you don't need to open/close it. Source: I'm currently a student pilot and have done this process many times.
  - pingswept 13y ago
    My parents are both pilots. The numbers are just my estimates from having flown with them a bunch. Maybe my numbers are a little high, but I think I'd stand by them. There's always a bunch of dealing with cranking open the hanger door with the winch, dragging the plane out, checking that there is no water in the fuel (both tanks), transferring the stuff you're bringing with you from the car to the plane, getting into the seatbelt, plugging in the headsets and checking that they're all working, talking to the tower, taxiing out to the runway, waiting for a plane or two to take off, and then actually taking off. Anyway, have fun flying.
- mcv 13y ago
  I believe there's a town in California where everybody has their own hangar, instead of garage.
  - 13y ago

tfe 13y ago

And 1/10th the capacity!

gambiting 13y ago

Well, I used to drive my Land Rover LR3 4.4 V8 on the german autobahn regularly and I would say 13MPG is exactly what I was getting while cruising at 120mph.

kokey 13y ago
US or UK MPG?
- gambiting 13y ago
  UK gallons.

josefresco 13y ago

More like a sports car that takes ultra premium as the plane can't carry a lot of people, can't tow anything and generally can't fly in bad weather.