Diamond announces an electric DA40

Any DA40 related topics

Moderators: Rick, Lance Murray

User avatar
Rich
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 4592
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:40 pm
First Name: Rich
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: N40XE
Airports: S39 Prineville OR
Has thanked: 145 times
Been thanked: 1180 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Rich »

Personally, I would love to be able to drive strictly electrically-driven vehicles. But the realities of range limitations make that infeasible. I don't see that changing - certainly not in my lifetime.

Simple example: So you fly from LA to SF. Does SF have the requisite charging apparatus to get you back home? Note the Diamond solution right now has a special recharging vehicle as a solution.

For electrical vehicles (cars or planes) to completely replace combustion-driven ones, the realities of long-distance travel need several "miracle happens here" events. This includes technological and infrastructure advances, Assuming that some sort of secondary (rechargeable) battery is the industry norm, we need all of:

1. Much better battery energy density. This includes volume and weight. Tripling at a minimum.
2. Improvements in the speed with with such batteries would accept a recharge.
3. Increases in the temperature range over which batteries operate well.
4. Standardization on charging interfaces and capabilities. Currently there are 4 different plugs and charging rates vary from as little as 7.4 KW to 350 KW.
5. Wide availability of standardized fast-recharge stations equivalent to what is currently available for fossil fuels.

If somehow we flipped a switch today and all gasoline powered cars and planes were instantly converted to electric and fulfilled 1-4, #5 is a humdinger. I did a rough calculation. The total energy content of all gasoline consumed in the US is about 25% more than the energy of all the electricity generated in a given time period. (This doesn't include diesel, which increases it further.) Electricity distribution to point of use consists of multiple parts, each of which is highly efficient, delivery from generation to spinning the wheels or propellers involves something like 6 steps of transport. At 95% efficiency in each of those steps, electrical power generation would optimistically need to be increased by about 35%. (Far and away the bulk of this is ground vehicles, as Aviation gasoline use is like .1% of this entire number. Nevertheless we compete for this energy.)

That 35% assumes this increase would be readily available to all the necessary recharge stations when and where it is needed. There is the nebulously referenced "grid" to consider, all the way down to remote airports and spots along dark and lonely highways.

A specific power example (assumes 100% efficiency): 135 HP for one hour = 101 KWh. To recharge in 20 minutes requires 303 KW. At 240 volts, that's 1,259 amps. Not exactly your standard extension cord.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
User avatar
Boatguy
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 1827
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:48 am
First Name: Russ
Aircraft Type: DA62
Aircraft Registration: N962M
Airports: KSTS
Has thanked: 1328 times
Been thanked: 1163 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Boatguy »

The hypothetical you pose could have been posed in 1910 as the argument for why gas powered cars would never replace horses. The argument is as irrelevant today as it would have been then.

I have had only electric cars for seven years. I've traveled as far north as Victoria (via the Olympic peninsula) and south to Phoenix and never had a problem. Go to plugshare.com and you will quickly learn that high power charging stations are far more common than you think and growing very very quickly. No they could not support converting every gas car to electric today, but anyone who buys an electric car today need not have either "range anxiety" or concerns with charging availability on long distance trips. Charging stations are definitely keeping pace with the adoption and manufacture of electric cars.

Given the relatively tiny size of the GA market and small number of GA airports, in comparison with cars and trucks, the the adoption of electric airplanes will not be constrained by any technological issues with regard to deploying charging stations. There is money to be made selling electricity to airplanes and it's far easier to deliver than 100LL or Jet-A. There will be the usual chicken/egg issue, but it will pass just as it has for cars.

GA is dying because piston singles, and light twins, are firmly anchored in 1938 technology. The rules have no changed; adapt or die.
User avatar
Colin
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 2006
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:37 pm
First Name: Colin
Aircraft Type: DA42
Aircraft Registration: N972RD
Airports: KFHR
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 527 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Colin »

I'm with Russ. My wife has been driving fully electric since 1999. All of the talking points ignore the progress made and how markets change. In general, they are pushed by astroturfing interests on the petroleum side, which seems foolish to me because there is money to made in the transition.

We don't need triple the energy density in the batteries. My current car goes 300 miles and that's plenty. I stopped for fifteen minutes on the ride from Boston to NYC, a stop my wife requested anyway, and we continued on. (We could have made it without the strop, but she likes to have a little margin for a sudden getaway when we hit the city. I'm like that with the airplane's fuel tanks.)
Colin Summers, PP Multi-Engine IFR, ~3,000hrs
colin@mightycheese.com * send email rather than PM
http://www.flyingsummers.com
N972RD DA42 G1000 2.0 s/n 42.AC100 (sold!)
N971RD DA40 G1000 s/n 40.508 (traded)
User avatar
Rich
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 4592
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:40 pm
First Name: Rich
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: N40XE
Airports: S39 Prineville OR
Has thanked: 145 times
Been thanked: 1180 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Rich »

I'm not saying it'll never happen. But there's a lot more to it than just building the vehicles. Example: The 4 gas stations here on the main highway through Prineville were all in simultaneous use today as I drove through town. Easily 12 cars and trucks at a time. The existing electrical delivery capability in this stretch is nowhere near capable of handling this kind of simultaneous load, so someone would need to invest in the infrastructure to supply all these vehicles. A typical refueling cycle with gas or diesel is maybe 5 minutes apiece. At 550 miles I refueled my Prius today in this time span.

The tripling is a minimum for aircraft. Did you actually look at the Diamond presentation and see the size of the battery pack? They're looking at a useful load around 400 lbs. with a max weight on par with the NG. Keep in mind that the reason 100 LL was developed was because FBOs could no longer afford to provide three different grades of avgas as they once did.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
User avatar
Boatguy
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 1827
Joined: Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:48 am
First Name: Russ
Aircraft Type: DA62
Aircraft Registration: N962M
Airports: KSTS
Has thanked: 1328 times
Been thanked: 1163 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Boatguy »

Rich wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:57 pm I'm not saying it'll never happen. But there's a lot more to it than just building the vehicles.
You have an airport in Prineville because the federal government supplied the funding to build it to encourage the adoption of aviation, and continues to provide funding for maintenance and improvements. If building airports had been left to the private sector we'd either have very few airports, dramatically higher landing fees, or both.

There might be an analogy here to another new means of transportation.
User avatar
Rick
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 1575
Joined: Tue Jul 06, 2010 10:09 pm
First Name: Rick
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: NONE
Airports: KROA
Has thanked: 107 times
Been thanked: 297 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Rick »

Something else just occurred to me. With fuel tanks, you can choose to trade useful load for fuel when needed. But if your electric DA40 comes with 400 lbs useful load, that's all you're ever going to have! To me, that would be a serious limitation.
Roanoke, VA (KROA)
User avatar
Rich
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 4592
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:40 pm
First Name: Rich
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: N40XE
Airports: S39 Prineville OR
Has thanked: 145 times
Been thanked: 1180 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Rich »

Boatguy wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 9:09 pm
Rich wrote: Fri Oct 15, 2021 7:57 pm I'm not saying it'll never happen. But there's a lot more to it than just building the vehicles.
You have an airport in Prineville because the federal government supplied the funding to build it to encourage the adoption of aviation, and continues to provide funding for maintenance and improvements. If building airports had been left to the private sector we'd either have very few airports, dramatically higher landing fees, or both.

There might be an analogy here to another new means of transportation.
The most likely scenario for installing charging stations is subsidies by the automakers. The airports around here have their roots in WW2 flight training. Capital improvements are largely (not entirely) funded federally (via federal aviation fuel taxes). But the various airport services and operations at Prineville are funded by fuel sales, land lease fees and State and local government. Here's something you may not know: We recently had the main runway somewhat modified, the threshold at one end moved and the runways renumbered. This required replacement of the RNAV approaches. The airport was charged for this rework of those approaches.

Bend airport is looking to install a control tower. The City and County need to find the funds to build the tower. The FAA will apparently supply "contract" controllers but I'm unsure who pays for the tower equipment and the controller salaries and such.
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
User avatar
haykinson
3 Diamonds Member
3 Diamonds Member
Posts: 114
Joined: Thu Apr 19, 2018 8:32 am
First Name: ilya
Aircraft Type: DA40NG
Aircraft Registration: N724LA
Airports: KSMO
Has thanked: 36 times
Been thanked: 48 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by haykinson »

I think that we're putting the cart before the horse. This transition will be slow, and — yes — many changes will need to happen before we've got eGA. Battery efficiency will need to increase, both to increase range and to support greater useful load. Charging infrastructure will need to start growing by a lot. More electric airframes will need to ship, to entice buyers.

But in my opinion we should welcome the current developments with open arms. I'd been driving an electric car of some sort for about 10 years now. My first one of these was a Nissan Leaf, which I bought in San Diego and then had to drive to Santa Monica where I live. I had to go extra slow on the freeway, and had to hop a curb in the middle of the night to get 4 hours of charge at the ONLY level 2 charging station that there was on my route; it was at a Nissan dealership which had already closed, so I basically had to plead with the night guard. The same year, we organized an LA-wide electric car parade and managed to get about 70 cars to drive down a thoroughfare. It was big deal.

Compare this with today's world, where — just 10 years later — there are tens of thousands of L3 stations in the US, including hundreds in the LA area alone. I can probably encounter 70 electric cars within 15 minutes of driving around town.

Why did this happen? In some small part, because people 10 years ago were willing to sell cars even though the surrounding infrastructure was woefully insufficient. The cars were also woefully under-capable, but some people were foolish enough to buy them, and in the process help establish norms and needs, and also serve as evangelists of the upcoming change.

None of this is to say that the automotive story is going to happen in aviation. We've got a drastically different story surrounding us: much lower aircraft volumes, much less incentive to invest in infrastructure, much longer development cycles. And yet if we don't get the early adopters to buy these early airplanes and somehow hobble their way to some limited success, we will probably not have the long term solution either.

I think it's not as bad as everyone says. Most airports already have commercial power delivered to them. Installing a slow charger (equivalent of an L2) might not be that difficult. It's not going to be great, but neither was trying to charge a car 10 years ago. It will limit missions, and thus limit the kinds of people willing to accept those missions, but some will do so. We already have a lot of FBOs that grew out of flight schools, so it's not unreasonable to imagine that some of the folks who buy the electric Diamonds will eventually want to provide charging services to anyone else flying in with a compatible system.

So, yeah, this will take decades. Yes, it will be awkward as heck to fly these airplanes, and quite possibly the vast majority of people will not want to get one for a long, long while. But we should encourage the ones who _are_ willing to take the plunge, we should lobby our local airports to install basic charging infrastructure to start to attract those (relatively) cleaner visitors, and eventually we may see this all pay off in electric aviation becoming viable for a measurable percentage of people.
User avatar
Colin
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 2006
Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:37 pm
First Name: Colin
Aircraft Type: DA42
Aircraft Registration: N972RD
Airports: KFHR
Has thanked: 319 times
Been thanked: 527 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Colin »

I never flew my DA40 with anything other than full fuel, but it was the forty gallon tanks.

Our first electric car had 60 miles of range. At the time GM did a bunch of research and figured out that it would work for 94% of the two car families in the United States. No, it was not a car you were going to drive to Vegas with from Los Angeles. Maybe not even from Boulder City. But that was the FIRST car.

Diamond is working on the second plane, as far as I can tell. I don't expect it will work for a lot of pilot-owners, but I expect it will be useful. And by the time I have to stop flying my DA42 I expect to have an electric something, hopefully from Diamond, that I can fly instead. No one is saying the entire solution is coming next year, just that this is the direction things are moving. Just as they are moving toward JetA and a replacement for 110LL.
Colin Summers, PP Multi-Engine IFR, ~3,000hrs
colin@mightycheese.com * send email rather than PM
http://www.flyingsummers.com
N972RD DA42 G1000 2.0 s/n 42.AC100 (sold!)
N971RD DA40 G1000 s/n 40.508 (traded)
User avatar
Rich
5 Diamonds Member
5 Diamonds Member
Posts: 4592
Joined: Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:40 pm
First Name: Rich
Aircraft Type: DA40
Aircraft Registration: N40XE
Airports: S39 Prineville OR
Has thanked: 145 times
Been thanked: 1180 times

Re: Diamond announces an electric DA40

Post by Rich »

Generally this is a violent agreement we're having and it requires a number of things to come together. The reason I say I don't expect it my lifetime is simple: I turned 75 yesterday :shock:
2002 DA40-180: MT, PowerFlow, 530W/430W, KAP140, ext. baggage, 1090 ES out, 2646 MTOW, 40gal., Surefly, Flightstream 210, Orion 600 LED, XeVision, Aspen E5
Post Reply