ColdFusion - The Truth About Electric Planes

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. A practical electric plane is something that has been so elusive, even more so than a practical electric car. Over the past few months, I've got a chance to spend some time with one of the first commercially available fully electric aircraft to really see what the state of the art is like right now. I'll be sharing my honest thoughts on the benefits and limitations of this technology

Starting point is 00:00:29 later in the video. What kind of future are we heading towards? Is it possible that short flights with an electric aircraft will become commonplace? As highlighted in my Uber Elevate video, battery technology is finally starting to improve, and we're just touching the state where a fully electric aircraft has just become feasible for some applications, mainly flight training and short distance travel. The aircraft in question is the Pipestrel Alpha Electro. Founded in 1989, Pipestral is a company based in Slovenia that specialises in manufacturing light aircraft.

Starting point is 00:01:07 Categorized as a light sport aircraft and only weighing 350 kilograms including batteries, the Alpha Electro is the first fully electric aircraft certified for flight training. The cost of a new aircraft is about 100,000 US dollars. On board there's a 20 kilowatt hour battery which translates to a flight time of over an hour plus reserves. This makes flight training the perfect application. If needed, the batteries can be swapped out in five minutes. The electric motor that powers the aircraft is 6,000. the aircraft is 60 kilowatts and only weighs 11 kilograms. Because the plane is so light, it can

Starting point is 00:01:42 literally be pushed and dragged around by one person with ease. I've found at a site that still takes them getting used to. Unlike a regular petrol light aircraft which uses 50-year-old engine technology with hundreds of moving parts, the Alpha Electro has only one moving part and hence the aircraft is safer and much easier to fly. There's only an on switch and a throttle lever to operate the engine. Normally, engine operation would be much more complicated with tasks such as mixing fuel on the fly. The company that got delivery of this aircraft is Electro Aero in Perth, Western Australia. Electro Aero hopes to carry out pilot flight training at a fraction of a cost of regular aircraft because there's no fuel costs and far less maintenance

Starting point is 00:02:24 costs than the status quo. Right now, it costs about $3 per hour to run the aircraft and that's about a tenth of the cost of a fuel engine. The result, cuts the rate of flight training by about $90 per hour in comparison to a plane like a Cessna 172. During the first 40 hours of lessons, an aspiring pilot could save over $1,000. So now it was time for the first of these aircrafts to arrive in the Southern Hemisphere. The Alpha Electro came in a shipping container from Slovenia where it had been manufactured. An aircraft coming in plastic wrapped pieces was certainly something unusual and it distinctly reminded me of an unboxing, which I posted on my Twitter and Facebook as such.

Starting point is 00:03:03 I was there when the plane was being assembled in an aircraft hangar in Jandakot south of Perth. Remarkably, the process only took a couple of hours and was pretty painless. After a quick test flight, it was ready to go. Electro Aero are the first company in the world to have this aircraft certified, even before anyone in the United States and Canada. And that makes this aircraft the very first certified electric plane in the world. I sat down with Electro Aero CEO Josh Portlock and had a chat with him about the the aircraft.

Starting point is 00:03:34 So the Alpha Electro being the first certified electric aircraft in the world and we were the first to get that certified at Electro Aero is a great opportunity to commercialise electric aviation in the training sector where the cost savings are very beneficial to pilots getting their licenses. But longer term we want to certify four, five and six seat aircraft allowing air taxis to utilise electric proportions. In air taxis at the moment they're using petrol engine aircraft that are designed for longer flights but are only being used for 10 to 15 minute flights.

Starting point is 00:04:06 That means the engines are being started and stopped much more often than they're normally designed for, therefore there's much more wear and tear on the engine and a lot higher maintenance expense than cycles. In electric it doesn't matter how many times you start and stop the motor it's not having to go through a major thermal cycle every time, it doesn't have hundreds of moving parts, just the one rotating part and direct drive no gearbox. So the short hop flights of sub one hour are perfect for electric. The batteries can already do it. The maintenance is not affected by the thermal cycling like an engine.

Starting point is 00:04:40 So this is the front battery compartment where it stores a 10 kilowatt hour battery. So there's a battery in the front and in the rear. So the two batteries combine get just over an hour of flight time and it gives us redundancy. So if one of the batteries fails, the other battery can keep flying the aircraft and and give you typically half an hour sort of reserve to bring the aircraft down. Normally you've got your engine taking up this much space, but instead the electric motor only takes up this much space. It's quite compact. It's a pancake sort of size motor. The charge port is under here, very similar to the Tesla.

Starting point is 00:05:21 The alpha electro is fitted with a ballistic parachute. That means that in the event of a control system failure or a catastrophic airframe failure that you couldn't glide down, because that's your first choice of safely bringing the aircraft down, you can pull the big red handle, and it will launch a rocket out of the roof of the airframe and pull a parachute out, and it's an entire airframe parachute. So the straps that hold the airframe are under these covers, and it'll actually be floating down to the ground on that parachute

Starting point is 00:05:53 and landing safely so that the occupants can safely get out of the aircraft. The Electro Alpha has an EPSI, which is an electric compartmental. instrument system. It has a garment GPS that's a capacity of touchscreen so you've got your ability to pinch zoom just like a mobile phone. So it's like a modern-day glass cockpit on a nice portable device so it can unclip from here and you can take it home to programming waypoints or flight plans. When the plane was set up and the hard work was out of the way, it was time to celebrate. There was a few speeches and a Tesla came in for a symbiotic photo opportunity at a glimpse at a possible electric future. Over the next couple of days, local news teams

Starting point is 00:06:34 came to check out the electric aircraft and take a ride in it. There was keen interest and genuine curiosity. Now to the aviation revolution that's taken off in Perth, the world's first fully electric aircraft has hit the skies and its owners believe it's just a taste of things to come. This plane is a first of its kind in Australia. A Perth company has launched a revolutionary electric plane that could change the way we fly.

Starting point is 00:06:59 It could be the future of flight in WA, a revolutionary plane that runs on electricity, but the power to slash operating costs and fares. Probably the quietest take-off you've ever heard. An electric plane, the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. So how is it like to fly inside? If you've taken a flight inside any light aircraft, it's basically like that, but the views are better because the windows are unusually big.

Starting point is 00:07:27 That aside, the main thing you'll notice is the noise, or lack thereof. It's a lot quieter than the average petrol plane. Most of the noise is from the propeller itself and the air rushing past the cockpit as you're flying. I took the controls for about 30 seconds and was surprised at how sensitive it was. Just a light press from your index finger could have you banking at a healthy angle. Now that some test flying had been done by some of Electro Aeros pilots, it was time for a challenge. The team was going to attempt the very first cross-country flight in Australia with an electric aircraft. The team composed of Rob, the pilot, Richard, the finance director, but also a pilot himself,

Starting point is 00:08:08 and me who would be documenting the day's events. The plan was for Rob to fly from Jandakot Airport to a rural airport called Dale River, which was about 70 kilometres away. At Dale River, we would then use a portable generator to recharge the plane. After this, Rob would make the return journey. So, when the day came, we all met at Jandakot Hanger at 7am. We performed some checks on the charger and loaded it onto a train. truck and check the weather to see if it was suitable for flying. From there, Rob took off while

Starting point is 00:08:38 Richard and I drove to Dale River Airport. When I arrived at Dale River Airport, I thought it looked more like a patch of abandoned farmland near a highway than an airport. Regardless, Richard and I would wait for Rob's arrival. For safety, the team devised a decision point. The decision point comes into play when the battery is at 65%. If Rob hasn't flown half the distance at this point, then it would be best for him to turn back and land. The main concept is he never want to break through that 30% reserve battery. There would be nowhere to land in between Jandakot and Dale River, so this was important. On the ground, we could track Rob's flying in real time with an iPhone app, which I thought was pretty cool. After a while, we had a visual, and he touched down shortly afterwards. I asked Rob about the

Starting point is 00:09:21 flight, and he said that he was worried because the plane was climbing too fast due to an unusually strong headwind. This was a concern as the battery tended to drop quickly under these conditions because of the extra power used. So at this stage, the plan was to recharge the plane using the portable generator. Unfortunately, for an unknown reason, the generator couldn't handle charging at the full current and shut down immediately when it was tried. It was funny because it was supposed to take this rating. When at half power, the generator would work for a while before conking out. It needed to cool down for about half an hour before we could try again. After a few hours of frustration in the hot sun, we finally got enough energy into the batteries to make a safe flight back to Jandakot,

Starting point is 00:10:01 and this completed the first cross-country return flight in Australia with an electric aircraft. And for the truth being told, this situation vividly highlights the limitations of electric aircraft at the present moment. For cross-country flights to be more practical in the future, you wouldn't want to depend on an old generator, and you would need a supercharge of three-phase power system readily available. Until this infrastructure is in place and battery energy density improves. For now, it's only really flight training that is the optimum use case for electric planes. I see longer flight applications being about two to five years away. So all in all, it's an interesting state that we're at right now. We're definitely at the beginning of something new.

Starting point is 00:10:40 Anyways, that's going to do it for this video, and I do have a special treat for you if any of you happen to live in Perth, or do you want to see the Alpha Electro in person and fly it. I've teamed up with Electro era for this video. If you use the discount code Cold Fusion, you can get $50 off your first flight and I'll leave the appropriate links below. As a side point, Electro Air are actually doing some other pretty cool things. One of them is a patented design for electric propulsion systems which has won the company some big contracts. So thanks for watching guys. If you're new to this channel, feel free to subscribe. Let me know your thoughts on electric aircraft in the comments section below.

Starting point is 00:11:13 This has been DeGogo, you've been watching Cold Fusion and I'll see you again soon for the next video. Cheers guys. Have a good one.

ColdFusion - The Truth About Electric Planes

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