My spies tell me Jabiru has been sold

[kgwilson]

25 minutes ago, BrendAn said:

batteries need to improve a lot yet. range and weight are the holy grail.  i wouldn't like to be in an electric plane during a battery fire either.

Weight is the major issue but energy density is improving all the time and there are numerous companies that have attracted a lot of investment and are in the prototype phase for short range domestic air travel. Batteries catching fire is also blown out of proportion. Battery Electric cars are 100 times less likely to catch fire than petrol/diesel cars and about 300 times less likely to catch fire than a hybrid. Battery fires get the attention of the press but are mostly from electric scooters and small items that have poor management systems or are being charged with an incorrect charger.

[BrendAn]

3 minutes ago, kgwilson said:

Weight is the major issue but energy density is improving all the time and there are numerous companies that have attracted a lot of investment and are in the prototype phase for short range domestic air travel. Batteries catching fire is also blown out of proportion. Battery Electric cars are 100 times less likely to catch fire than petrol/diesel cars and about 300 times less likely to catch fire than a hybrid. Battery fires get the attention of the press but are mostly from electric scooters and small items that have poor management systems or are being charged with an incorrect charger.

I agree the fire thing gets blown out by the press but it still happens. I would love an electric vehicle but they just don't work in Australia. Not for me anyway. Useless range for towing a boat or van although a van could carry a lot of batteries to extend the range I suppose 

[facthunter]

The battery in a normal plane can give you angst  and you still have the self destructing Piston engine as well to keep your life interesting..  Nev

[BrendAn]

2 minutes ago, facthunter said:

The battery in a normal plane can give you angst  and you still have the self destructing Piston engine as well to keep your life interesting..  Nev

Well imagine what 2 70 kg batteries could do if the liquid cooling failed. But I am sure the engineers that designed the aircraft would have good safety systems in place.

[turboplanner]

I would be listening to the South Australians rather than taking that 50 minutes as flight time.

There will still be taxy time, and if there's a strong wind around the circuit there will be exponential battery drain, partially made up if there is an equal downwind component.

You can't escape physics with flowery words or dreams of battery development; the equation is Exponential power demand = exponential battery drain.

 

You also have to allow a safety margin; people who've used whipper snippers and electric drills will know that even after a full charge the use time on the same job, that is the same battery drain can produce very different times if there is even a short period of hard work, or even if therer isn't.

In an aircraft if that happens, it becomes a real forced landing with real consequences.

From my memory, in SA they were working on around 30 minutes flight time.

 

While there's been an increase in ICE vehicle fires due to electronics failures, there have been plenty of EV fires shown on video, heaps of them Escooters and bikes, so fire protection will need to be addressed.

[kgwilson]

Luddites continue to push the myth that EV batteries catch fire all the time. The reality lies in the statistics.

 

From US insurer AutoinsuranceEZ

Per 100,000 sales

 

Petrol car fires         1529.9

Hybrid car fires       3475.4

Pure EV fires                25.1

[turboplanner]

One thing I forgot was the charging time; since the flight time will virtually require a complete battery charge, there's the issue of the slow charge rate at the higher precentages so there is a limit to the number of flights per day.

 

Aside from this the real question is what you would want to go electric for?

 

There are no NOx or PM (the emissions which can cause lung cancer) for light aircraft because the dispersal is so wide, so why would you want to bother with the negligible amount of CO2 saved, which ill be zero anyway if the batteries are charged from Australia's power grids.

[spacesailor]

For the ' Silence ' .

Simple

But ' most ' EV ' cars are too low for old me to climb in/out of , hence the preference for a ' tall ' 

4X4 , that you ' climb ' up into.

Had a Subaru 2.5 Lt sedan,  that I struggled with for 18 months . Then got a " full sized " car .

spacesailor

[FlyBoy1960]

The plane regererates 8-11% of the power used in the circuit during the landing process, BUT it requires a steep approach

[turboplanner]

6 hours ago, FlyBoy1960 said:

The plane regererates 8-11% of the power used in the circuit during the landing process, BUT it requires a steep approach

Regeneration was a theory developed in the 1960s and it does work to a degree, but has never achieved the goals originally claimed.

 

Using the figures you quoted you still expend 89% to 92% for all of the circuit except the small descent distance instead of 100% and that is offset by the exponentially greater battery drain in the climb segment, so it's a more complex  equation.

 

In EV, you still have to replace brake linings and rotors, just at slightly longer intervals. By comparison, a Jacobs brake, which provides engine braking independent of the foundation brake system, can provide up to 160% of engine power in retardation.

 

[kgwilson]

Jacobs engine brakes may be efficient on large trucks but are so noisy they are banned in towns and cities. One pedal driving in my EV requires hardly any braking at all. In fact in the handbook they recommend using the brakes occasionally to prevent them rusting and pitting. After 100,000 miles (160,000 km) in 2 years an EV wagon used as an industrial work vehicle showed no brake pad wear at all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj7fJ5JI-yI and the battery will outlast the rest of the car. Just look at the Tesla high mileage club & you will see Teslas with 200,000 to 500,000 miles & many of these on older battery technology. And of course the largest selling car in the world is the Tesla model Y.

 

All this will have a beneficial effect on electrically powered aircraft. Weight is the only archilles heel.

[Carbon Canary]

Well, this is not about Jabiru being sold, but solid state batteries show promise. Maybe early days in development but the benefits in weight reduction should be significant.

[BrendAn]

cement australias new electric prime mover

[BrendAn]

 

same truck this afternoon

[skippydiesel]

WOW!!!!

[Carbon Canary]

Are you sure it was an electric truck that caught fire ? Is there a reliable news source ?

Fairfax and Murdoch covered the story but didn’t mention it was electric - which seems odd. TikTok however, states it was electric. Curious.

[Cooko]

That is not the same truck. Also, the brand of prime mover is Janus rather than Jabiru. 😀

[aro]

16 hours ago, turboplanner said:

Regeneration was a theory developed in the 1960s and it does work to a degree, but has never achieved the goals originally claimed.

Tell that to Toyota, or any of the electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturers. Regenerative braking is key to their efficiency. Friction brakes and Jacob brakes both convert kinetic energy to heat and dump it into the environment where it can't be recovered. Regenerative braking stores it in the battery where it can power an electric motor to convert it back to kinetic energy. It's not 100% efficient of course, but a lot better than the 0% of regular brakes.

 

However, there's not much scope for regeneration in an aircraft because most of the energy from a descent is used up in staying aloft and overcoming drag.

 

You only have excess energy available if you are at zero power setting and you want to descend faster without gaining speed. That really only applies to aircraft with speed brakes or on final approach to landing. Most of the rest of the time you will be using engine power i.e. no regeneration available.

[Thruster88]

8 hours ago, Carbon Canary said:

Are you sure it was an electric truck that caught fire ? Is there a reliable news source ?

Fairfax and Murdoch covered the story but didn’t mention it was electric - which seems odd. TikTok however, states it was electric. Curious.

 

[BrendAn]

8 hours ago, Cooko said:

That is not the same truck. Also, the brand of prime mover is Janus rather than Jabiru. 😀

How do you figure that. 

[BrendAn]

9 hours ago, Carbon Canary said:

Are you sure it was an electric truck that caught fire ? Is there a reliable news source ?

Fairfax and Murdoch covered the story but didn’t mention it was electric - which seems odd. TikTok however, states it was electric. Curious.

The fire was roaring out the sides from behind the cab where the batteries are. A normal truck fire would start under the bonnet. 

[turboplanner]

6 minutes ago, Thruster88 said:

 

The EV evangelists should take a very close look at the typical thermal runaway flame pattern shooting out, mainly sideways compared to the natural flames of the truck component. This is what is being captured on video on e-scooters, e-bikes, e-cars on a regular basis.

 

While some gullible people tell us there is new battery technology on the way, I was first promised this new technology with magic range, magic weight, magic safety by a manufacturer in 1986, 37 years ago.

 

Janus started modifying Prime Movers a few years ago and you can take your ICE truck in and come back and pick it up as a BEPM.

 

To be fair to them, they recognised the main weakness, short battery range at cruise power, and came up with an exchange battery concept putting their money were their mouth was and actually building their own infrastructure of change stations with Fork trucks and quick connectors.

 

Given that an over the road Prime Mover averages 250,000 km/year and a shuttle Prime Mover 350,000 km/year (where its fuel cost equals its prime cost in 12 to 18 months the exchange battery concept is not numerically viable because the batteries can't be charged fast enough, but applications like metro delivery of cement where annual distance can be 40,000 to 90,000 km are viable - a bit like the daily commuter who buys an EV to drive to the railway station or has a short commute.

 

Thermal runaway though is something the industry has to face up to, and has caused many jurisdictions to prohibit the storage of EVs on ground or underground floors of multi-story buildings, forcing EV owners to charge their cars out on the street; anither challenge the EV industry so far hasn't solved.

 

 

[turboplanner]

8 hours ago, aro said:

Tell that to Toyota, or any of the electric and hybrid vehicle manufacturers.

As luck would have it Toyota announced their position for Australia just a couple of weeks ago:

This from their Commercial Vehicle Chief Engineer and their Australian senior manager of vehicle evaluation:   https://www.goauto.com.au/news/toyota/hiace/hydrogen/toyota-explains-hot-hydrogen-tech-advantages/2023-11-14/92417.html

 

8 hours ago, aro said:

Regenerative braking is key to their efficiency.

How well does that work on the outer suburban and highway cycle?

 

 

[aro]

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

How well does that work on the outer suburban and highway cycle?

Surprisingly well. Unless it is dead flat they harvest energy on the downslopes and use it on the upslopes and the flat. It's not just the energy from friction braking they save, but also engine braking i.e. the energy to spin the engine when you lift off the throttle.

 

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

As luck would have it Toyota announced their position for Australia just a couple of weeks ago

Toyota has decades of investment in hybrid that will become worthless if the world moves to fully electric vehicles. The focus on "hot hydrogen" seems like an attempt to steer things in a direction where their hybrid technology is still useful. You can be sure that their hot hydrogen ICE would be a hybrid, just for the efficiency factor.

 

Toyota sells huge numbers of hybrids across most of their range. They can't build them fast enough to meet demand. If the world moves away from ICE, they become the leader in a technology that no-one wants anymore.

 

 

[turboplanner]

32 minutes ago, aro said:

Surprisingly well. Unless it is dead flat they harvest energy on the downslopes and use it on the upslopes and the flat. It's not just the energy from friction braking they save, but also engine braking i.e. the energy to spin the engine when you lift off the throttle.

 

Toyota has decades of investment in hybrid that will become worthless if the world moves to fully electric vehicles. The focus on "hot hydrogen" seems like an attempt to steer things in a direction where their hybrid technology is still useful. You can be sure that their hot hydrogen ICE would be a hybrid, just for the efficiency factor.

 

Toyota sells huge numbers of hybrids across most of their range. They can't build them fast enough to meet demand. If the world moves away from ICE, they become the leader in a technology that no-one wants anymore.

 

 

The new concept is ICE not hybrid.