SR22 Electric Conversion

Guest Discussion
21

Hi all,

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Follow up question:

It sounds like the wisdom of the crowd is suggesting:

  • 4 seat electric GA plane
  • Experimental FAA status (Bruce)
  • With IC range extender (Andy) to keep range parity
  • Based on DA40 rather than SR22 (Wally) for improved efficiency
    Is this the plane we should make instead of our original SR22 plan? If this plane existed today, would you (A) sign up immediately, (B) sign up if xyz conditions were met, or © think no, still not exciting?

Thanks again – this is really eye opening.

Jeff

PS: Ross, yes you’re right, sorry about that – I meant a 30% reduction in overall operating costs because of a 5x reduction in fuel costs (assuming fuel costs are 40% of overall opex – is that correct for GA missions?).

PPS: Ken, another good idea – will see what McMaster has in stock and report back :slight_smile:

PPPS: John, clean sheet is in the works – we’re considering this because we want to have something to learn from as a start!

22

You’d have to do the math, but it seems like a better bet.

I’d have to see the specs. If you offered an electric plane of modern design that could carry 400 pounds of payload for 1.5 hours of flying time with an hour’s reserve at 120 KTAS, I’d be interested but not sold. How would I get it recharged for the flight back? How long would it take to get that charge? In any case, it would be non-competive for an SR22 mission, but then an SR22 is not competitive for a bizjet mission either, so you pick the airplane you need. Your airplane concept is different from the SR22/SR20 crowd that frequents this forum. Your market is somewhere else, probably, as this crowd has already rejected the 120K airplanes.

Now if you had an electric airplane that could go 150KTAS with a 400 pound payload for 3.5 hours with an hour reserve, and could get recharged during a lunch break at most places, you’d get more attention from this group.