On "The Grand Tour" Hammond crashed Rimac Concept One that promptly burst in the flames. For the next 5 days it would randomly catch fire.
So what, tens of thousands of electric cars on the road now not bursting into flames. While this is a fact, it's very rare and belongs in the anti-electric, crying wolf category, and nullified by knowledge.
I own a Tesla driven daily, I own a 110hp Geely EV driven daily, I own a local distributorship of various brand EVs and my after hours hobby is designing and building an EV of my own.
Here's some random facts.
Heavy use of electric motors burns energy at a fantastic rate, far more exponential than ICE. Last night I drove home at around 180 kmh for almost 20 minutes and used over 250kms of range for 50kms and the heat it produced had all the fans on the Tesla screaming away when arrived at the toll booth.
The range numbers car manufacturers quote is rubbish for real world driving and should not be used as a guide for your calculations. Generally if you get 2/3rds with normal driving you are doing well, 1/2 if you are a lead foot, and then there's the reduction of safety allowance for finding your next charge point (or landing point).
Pipistrel EP have about the right balance currently, no doubt they spent a lot of time and money researching their facts. So about 40 minutes real time plus landing plus safety margin is about it at the moment in a 'normal' 2 place aircraft. If they wanted more range then the battery weight, with the airframe weight to support the extra weights of both increase at a no gain sum, maybe even a loss.
Notice I said "normal". I believe you will see manufacturers eventually turning to delta/twin wings/biplane/flying wings etc to go electric. This enables carrying capacity and wing loading.
In SvingvenB's case of a tow glider, this is a more realistic use and I would be looking at a more powerful, cheaper aircooled DC motor, controller and batteries arrangement rather than a watercooled AC setup for short powerful events. Same for an ultralight also. DC rules for outright power bursts needed for take offs and climb. It's also a lighter package.
AC is best for normal car driving applications, don't be fooled it's best for aircraft use, there are clear advantages and disadvantages for both systems.
The biggest hurdle for anyone considering it is the obscene price of batteries, even in China the best I can do is around $300 USD per KWH. That's why there's lines of people wanting to buy used Nissan Leaf, Tesla and Chev Volt battery packs from crashed cars for their homebuilt projects.
EV West have a complete conversion kit including 25KWH of batteries for old VW Beetles, probably similar components to the Pipistrel setup, for $19,000 USD. 60% of that price is the batteries alone.
Quoting motor weights without batteries is patently ridiculous.
