Sorry, long post follows.
But the cause of your outrage is between your ears, not anything this group has done or said.
Please take this down a notch, Skippy. No need to make this personal--I'm not.
It's fine if you don't want to support it because you just don't like electric vehicles.
Where's this coming from? Most of my posts in this thread have made the point that I support electric aircraft. In fact, I think the 103 rules should be amended to allow electric aircraft to get some weight credit for the fuel that is allowed to be carried by other Part 103 aircraft. I'm just no longer giving a pass to the feel-good green claims if they aren't supported by facts.
Please quote their website, application or the original post for where they claim clean, green, or any big hand-waving claims, other than the single mention in the application about reduced emissions in the San Joaquin Valley training area.
As you wish. A brief sampling:
From the original post (instances in
red):
“Joseph Oldham, director of the Sustainable Aviation Project (SAP) asked me to pass this information along . . . .
Those wanting to advance clean aviation.
When there's a green buzzword in the
name of the organization and of the project--can we please just drop the pretense that this isn't part of the claimed justification?
From
a letter signed by Mr Oldham (CEO of New Vision Aviation (NVA)) and the city managers of Reedly and Mendota:
The Sustainable Aviation Project's goal is to demonstrate proof of concept and develop pilot training
opportunities that are cost efficient and ecologically sensitive using zero emission electric airplanes
Zero emissions-- gotta love that. The letter is sprinkled with other happy talk and half-truths. I recommend you give it a read before trying to tell anyone that this effort isn't wrapped in a green justification. They are rolling in it.
For those wondering, this "affordable" program has involved the purchase of the 4 electric aircraft and ancillary equipment (for the use at the main FBO) for a total price of $
745,000. Additional costs include $15,000 for each additional charger. Surprise! It's all "public" money. That's a time-honored but increasingly common route to "affordability"--transfer the cost to someone else.
If we want to consider the "affordability" in more conventional terms, let's look at the numbers. The claimed benefit is that fuel costs (for electricity) are reduced to
$4.88 per hour (it will be slightly cheaper in the winter) If we instead flew a C-152, it would burn about 6 GPH, which prices out to $31.80 per hour (at the $5.30/gal charged at Fresno Chandler Executive Airport today). Let's round it up to $33.88/gal to include oil. So, our electric plane reduces fuel costs by $28/hr.
But the additional fuel bill only applies when the plane is actually being rented. The folks in the SAP say that will be 4 hours per aircraft per day (IMO, very unlikely, but we'll see). This is key, because the much higher fixed costs of the electric airplanes (especially for insurance and capital) accrue whether the planes are rented or not.
Capital costs: Clean, straight, perfectly serviceable C-152s are widely available anywhere in the country for $40,000 - $50,000 each, compared to the approximately $185K being spent for each of these electric Pipistrels. In the real world (i.e. not using government funds), capital has a cost. Business owners understand that the $140K difference in the cost of these electric planes will equate to about $48 per day (financed over a 15 year service life, at the prevailing small business loan rate of 10% per year). For a one-trick pony aircraft that can operate only at 4 airports.
Insurance: Insurance costs are highly correlated with hull value. "New Vision Aviation" (the entity that benefits from the purchase of these SAP aircraft) is paying
$6500 per year to insure each of these electric airplanes. The cost to insure their (gas powered) Pipistrel is just $3600 per year. That's still more than an FBO would pay to insure a C-152. The much higher insurance costs for the electric planes will either need to be passed to students or made "affordable" in the way the school is apparently making other things "affordable" (have someone else pay). The added insurance cost for the electric planes comes to about $8 per day--every single day.
Higher capital and insurance costs = $56 for every single day. That money comes right out of the flight school's till whether they fly or not--Christmas, etc.
If our planes fly 4 hours
every single day, the higher capital and insurance costs will wipe out half of the purported hourly savings in fuel costs. Now, add in reality (planes down for MX/repairs, weather not conducive to training, scheduling issues, etc) and it is very likely the real world savings will be zero.
The
Pipistrel USA website tells us what this electric training looks like:
The flight testing is quantifying the amount of energy necessary for cross-country flight in various wind and temperature conditions and for maneuvers such as a standard traffic pattern. Flight duration averages about 40 minutes per charge while landing with more than 20 percent state of charge (SOC) remaining in the batteries, the level that Pipistrel recommends as a minimum for landing.
So each sortie is about 40 minutes. That's a lot shorter than a typical flight in a "regular" trainer--more trips to and from the airport to get the same amount of flying time. Unless our student is riding a skateboard to the airport, let's not forget to add the fuel used in those additional trips into the "green" equation.
Don't like C-152s? Rotax 912UL powered Pipistrel Alpha's are apparently much less expensive than the "Electros" and certainly more capable--students could actually fly somewhere, and the planes could operate more hours per day (so, a school would need fewer of them). NVA chief Oldham says their Alpha with a Rotax burns
$11-$12 in fuel per hour, so only about $6 to $9 more per hour in fuel compared to the electric planes. That's much less than the expected additional insurance and capital costs per hour of the electric planes.
But, we hardly needed to crunch any numbers. Let's just look at the planes that private flight schools (i.e. that actually support themselves) really use--"experienced" C-152s. Are they banging down the FAA's doors to get permission to use electric airplanes? No, because they know these electric planes are not economically feasible in the US. They'll be expensive to keep running, and they have very limited utility (even in the context of a flight school). The first and only US applicant requesting a change to allow use of these electric SLSA aircraft for flight training is a program that is not subject to free market forces. Surprise!
Gonna save money on maintenance with these electric planes? We'll see. A C-152 can take the abuse that happens in flight training, maybe the Pipistrel Alpha Electro will be as tough. The folks that are playing this game with their
own money are apparently unconvinced.
If electric trainers made financial/operational sense, real businesses would be flying them, (or asking for permission to fly them). It appears to me that Mr Oldham has found a local source of "green" money (he beat out some folks that wanted to use the grants for electric buses and some other projects of evident public utility). He got his taxpayer-funded battery planes claiming he'd use them for a flying school/club (NVA), now he wants an FAA rule change to allow that.
So at <300 cycles you're fully covered on a battery replacement, at 690 cycles you're pro-rated...
