All Electric 4-Seat Aircraft Sling TSi Takes Its First Flight
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
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Code name the e-Sling Project Alpha. A team in Germany called celcius has Developed a four seater electrically powered airplane. This is basically a Sling TSi but without the Rotax 915 gas engine or airmaster propeller.
During a period of 8 months, 12 ETH students developed a 4-seated airplane with modular battery system as a so called fokus project. The first fokus project started in september 2020 and was called project alpha. Since summer 2021 the new project H2 is ongoing.
Here are some of the specs
Range 60-100 miles
Max takeoff weight 2090 pounds
Wing span 10.4 m
Max Motor power 103 kW = 140 PS
Battery capacity 44 kWh
Cruise speed 115 mph
Battery voltage 714 V
Video and photo credits:
ETH Zürich
12ahead
Markus Metzler
Timo Kleger
Correction. The Cellsius team is out of Switzerland not Germany
Man made climate change is a hoax to consolidate world power.
A fuel cell with liquid hydrogen should be used. No pressure vessel needed. It could have a couple hours of endurance. Liquid hydrogen could be made anywhere with the right machine. Airplanes are the best spot for hydrogen.
Liquid hydrogen is a cryogenic fuel. It's a nightmare to work with and keep refrigerated.
@@virginiahansen320 Understandable. I am just saying if you wanna fly today, long distances with today's technology, it could be done. You could start with one plane that goes between two airports commercially and it refuel before it takes off. The fuel will obviously boil off at some point. The idea came from BMWs new hydrogen/ petro car that uses a combustion engine but use a fuel cell because a combustion engine burns through liquid hydrogen too fast.
@@majorchungus Hello Major
Thanks for your interest into our project.
Liquid hydrogen has also disadvantages, i.e. high energy cost of liquification, slow to fill the tank up (hours), ... . In the end we weighted all dis-/advantages and decided that for the Cellsius project the near term future is in high pressure hydrogen.
Greetings Alex
I have an electric powered Dinghy hanging on the back of my Catamaran. No Flammable gas on board. No spark plugs to foul. No carb to clog.
It has made my life measurably better!
Incredible! kudos to the team that designed, built and now fly the E Sling! Its all about the battery. Imagine what it could do if the battery weight was reduced by 80%
When you are flying your gas powered TSI your total weight is reducing as you consume the fuel. This increases the potential range of the aircraft. The Electric TSI has a constant weight and fewer miles in addition to the battery limitations since the weight of the plan does not decrease. What does the battery pack do when it is hot or cold ambient temperatures. I am not criticizing just stating the facts.
You stated the main engineering problems that need to be solved in order to create electric planes. We need a battery structure that does not change its internal shape in lower and higher pressures/temperatures and by recharging. Although the requirements that you've stated (long range, high altitude) are not necessarily amongst the use cases of these aircrafts. We can use these planes for what they're intended for and we need new inventions for commercial and bigger aircrafts.
Should be hybrid like a Toyota Prius.
"your total weight is reducing as you consume the fuel." Isn't cool how this works?
It also sustainable! Which fuel powered vehicles are not.
@@L6Jeremy Case in point, all motion and vehicles require fuel!
This is really great. Once the battery breakthrough happens (and it will) this instantly becomes a extremely viable airplane. From a maintenance perspective, this is vastly better and will be far more reliable than gas engines. Can't wait until battery tech catches up to allow 3-4 hours of flight time.
You will be lucky to live that long.
@@azcoyote007 Well folks, we've found the technological laggard.
@@kingjamez80 Riiiiiight. The tech is not advancing even remotely quick enough to support claims being made for electric planes. Energy density issues make your pipe dream unattainable without an advancement likely to be unseen in the next 100 years. So like I said. It won’t be in our lifetimes.
@@azcoyote007 You are right, there is absolutely no research being done for developing new battery chemistries with higher energy density. Is your comment intentionally mirroring the New York Times statement from 1903 that men wouldn't be able to fly for 1 to 10 Million years of continuous effort by mathematicians and mechanics? It's surprisingly similar in both content and correctness.
@@azcoyote007 😂 so much fail in your comment
Generally, your avionics are going to run at a very different voltage than your motor. Most electric cars still utilize a separate traditional car battery for accessories. The shear reduction in systems in an electric plane vs combustion engine would be exciting. As the battery chemistry continues to evolve and energy density goes up, these would be really cool trainers / recreational planes. I'd be interested to see how the weight and balance shakes out from reducing all that engine weight, and sliding it back into the wings.
Hello jungle
The balance was quite a challange for us, as we used the Sling TSi as base and it obviously is designed as ICE aircraft. But with smart positioning of the new componets we were able to keep the balance the same. It just doesn't change over the duration of the flight.
Greetings
I'm very much looking forward to electric GA aircraft - quieter, cleaner. It would be great if the costs to operate and maintain were lower versus gas powered. It's a steep hill to climb, but it's not impossible to get to that 3 to 4 hour flight time, at which point these electric aircraft will be wildly more practical and are likely to be more widely adopted particularly for training.
Thanx for your objective view on this electric Sling TSI. No use of "game changer" and other BS but reviewing it from the IMHO right perspective. Interesting to follow the development of batteries as todays restriction to (environmentally unfriendly) Lion batteries looking out for their project with 'hydro' batteries. Also due the overheating danger of the Lion batteries.
Very smart of these guys to use a Sling TSI, which its good overall performance as a test bed
Hello Dd
Thermal runaway with Li-Ion batteries is a big issue but can be minimized with good meassurments. We had to proof that our system minimizes the risk and warns early if still smth happens. Further we had to show that a thermal runaway doesn't impact neighbourghing cells and the aircraft remains operable during such an incident.
To the environmentally unfriendly comment: Yes Li-Ion is not perfect but in the end an electric dirve train in an overall comparison is better than ICE engines.
Greetings Alex
I usually want a bathroom break every 90 minutes anyway. I'd love to fly this.
This would be super helpful for getting you training hours in. Cheaper than fuel and just long enough to do a couple touch and gos. Great use case for training schools as an alternative to cessnas without over complicating the plane
Hello Sam
Exactly! That is one of the reasons why we do the project.
I'm looking forward to seeing this project developed further. This could be the future of aviation. I'd trust an electric motor over a piston engine. Perhaps we need to consider a hybrid option.
Thanks
I am so looking forward to the future. It is the future
An electric powered Sling at the current state of the art would be excellent for training. The cost for fuel would be significantly reduced.
The future!!! Once power density gets to where these planes can travel 300+ mile trips between charges they will be game changers. I think once the Light Sport changes come you will see adoption for the LSA market.
They need to go how brazil went.
So this thing has actually flown? More than can be said for the fully electric Panthera, or the four seated eFlyer. Kudos to the Swiss team :)
Yes it has. Over a dozen times already.
The weight of fuel decreases as you fly and that's a good thing, with all electric power the weight is always the same. That would be a concern of mine. As far as safety a hybrid maybe? Best of both worlds.
Also the problem with electric is not being able to reduce fuel to increase payload.
Eviation's Alice is doing better, so it's doable; let them make a longer airframe sling with bigger carrying capacity, can be 4,5 or 6 place if need be, but it should be able to go longer than the current tsi electric experimental model. It needs to do 500km. That's the holy grail for electric aviation for now...
It's a complicated issue, but it's good to see work going into it by some smart folks. I don't think aviation is nearly done with internal combustion, but we'd reap the most gains just improving the fuel efficiency of our existing commercial system with new types of turboprop already in development. General aviation has a lot more flexibility to adapt in new technology, but we can still fly even if gas just runs out it looks like. Good to know.
One thing to note is in an ICE engine as the flight progresses your aircraft becomes lighter. With batteries, fully charged or not your weight is the same from takeoff to landing.
Hi Mojo, Excellent Report. Pray You Had A Blessed Thanksgiving.
This is incredible
Very cool, thanks for the video-as always!
I’m a huge advocate for electrification of transport, and I’m optimistic about electric aviation…. BUT!! Here’s the issue I’ve seen with most electric aircraft designs.
Unlike electric cars, I don’t think the optimal solution for aviation will look similar to current petrol powered aircraft designs. The efficient low wing and high wing design paradigms that have emerged in general aviation over the last 60 years all stem from 2 design requirements which don’t apply to electric aircraft - heavy ICE engine up front, and fuel storage in the wings. (With the exception of pusher props, which don’t change all that much).
And though I will cheer on every effort by the e-sling and e-flyer groups, I think their efforts have shown us that the current design paradigm just won’t work for electric GA aircraft. We just need more volume and mass reserved for batteries than fuel. Which might also mean that the optimal design for electric GA aircraft is NOT ideal as a training aircraft for future commercial pilots. So the business case is harder to make for a truly clean sheet electric aircraft design.
That being said, I think Eviation’s Alice aircraft is a good representation of what a truly clean sheet design could look like. Look at the fuselage cross section, the wing placement and airfoil cross section… there’s no way that plane controls similarly to a Piper Warrior or a Cessna 172, but it’s probably what the future looks like. So should we really be concerned with whether or not an electrified GA aircraft doesn’t translate well to a commercial aircraft experience? I don’t think so.
I think we have a unique opportunity to create a brand new type of aircraft that flies cleaner and cheaper than anything we’ve seen before. But it might not look like what we expect.
Very excited for what the future will bring!
Agreed. I think retrofitting existing designs is neat but not at all the future. Like electric cars, especially the new structural battery Tesla's, the airplanes have to be built from the ground up as electric. We are not quite there on energy density to make electric GA practical but we march closer every day and eventually everyone will wonder how we put up with finicky, unreliable, complicated ICE engines for so long.
The limited battery range makes these planes a better match for flight training; that's the target market for Pipistrel's electric plane.
We shouldn't assume batteries will advance quickly. They've progressed from using lead to nickel to lithium. But lithium is already the lightest metal, so progress may stop .
But also lithium batteries have literally gotten 10x better in almost every metric in the last ten years - energy density, charge time, total lifetime cycles, etc…
So what else is left? Hard to say. But petrol engines took almost 100 years to get 10x improvements, so I’m optimistic.
I figured once they can make batteries lighter where they can pack more or even higher capacity batteries this will be the future
I do enjoy your videos, thank you so much.
Well its just 44 kWh when some EVs are already 100 kWh. They could also add solar power which would add a bit more. At the very least the batteries are using the two physical spaces for tanks, so you might as well have them split using the traditional L-R-BOTH. Maybe the panels charge L while you use R and then switch or something like this. You could also do some regeneration from the motor itself when you want to lose speed/altitude, etc (speed regenerative brake). And while maintenance is lower, so is the the fuel. Unlike a car, its more normal for a plane to remain hours/days parked and could be left charging. I can imagine it to be very useful for island hopping and similar short time flights.
Hello freeculture
for the e-Sling solar panels and their components are to heavy for the added electricity they offer. SolarImpules has show how it can work but for e-Sling we would have reduced the effective range.
Greetings Alex
I enjoy your videos. I might’ve missed it. What would be the cabin db difference from electric to gas? Wondering how quiet it would be in the cabin.
Hello Jeff
Good question. We will test that.
From pure feeling it's clearly silenter but obviously the propeller is still loud.
Greetings Alex
I'd think having a hybrid motor would make the most sense. Reducing a fuel burn, where a plane can fly on 3-5 gallons an hour at say 175kts is a better deal.
A single or twin engine hybrid with a 25 gallon max tank (center, aux, or tip tanks) that gives you 1500 mile range, 1300 useful load, and 4-6 seater would SLAAAAAP!!
Using fuel for the climb, dual electric for the cruise, fuel for the landing. That should be the standard for planes going forward.
Hybrid doesn't do much when you are cruising.
@@majorchungus well, car hybrids maybe. But like a turbo in a car you can adjust the boost, the fuel can maybe be used to recharge batteries while in cruising flight. Hour+ of electric power, then it switches to fuel when down to 10%. Fuel also recharges batteries. When charges, returns to electric. The net average is the fuel savings.
@@thetrendingadvocate2727 my volt can charge the batteries from the fuel, it's a waste of fuel to charge the batteries.
@@majorchungus so how are you going to charge the batteries in the air?
@@thetrendingadvocate2727 you don't because having two different powertrains in an aircraft is a waste of available carrying capacity and maintenance will be higher than just running electric or gas alone. Electric isn't much greener than just burning fossil fuels because it takes a crap ton of energy to mine and form the batteries. You would basically be making an airplane with more failure points. Plus I wouldn't want to be in an airplane that has a battery catches fire because they are being put under way more stress than their road counterparts. I recommend an airplane that uses liquid hydrogen and a fuel cell. The energy density would be way higher than a battery and the hydrogen could be jettisoned in an emergency. You would be able to fly for hours with today's technology and not be polluting and you wouldn't need to mine half the earth for the nickle, cobalt, and lithium.
Awesome video. My only concern is the additional 200 lbs in the wings. That's a lot of extra load.
Hello Pilot Peego
The weight of the batteries in the wing does not exceed the limitions of the wing structure and is actually quite close to the maximal amount of fuel the Sling TSi can hold.
Greetings Alex
I happen to know a fair bit about electric drive, including engineering the electronics to run it. The range weakness is far more critical than it is for electric cars that are already beating ICE cars. Planes wont be the same and converting the sling will result is training only range. What you can do though is build a plane specifically for electric drive where a very large part of the weight is batteries and in a glider style shape. Think U2 or extreme range designs like the globalflyer that did 40000km without refueling. You might be able to do a design that can do 1000km on a charge with current battery tech and that's a workable range for a lot of use but even that would still be niche and quite expensive for what it does.
The advantage of electric drive is that it's much more civilized and agile. What you see competition drones do is hard to do with combustion engines. And it naturally lends itself to dual engine design and they can be ducted at the rear like a jet instead of the colonial front noise maker we still suffer under. It also works well at high altitude and could even work under water.
As a market segment you might see battery planes but electric flight likely wont take over before we have open contact with ETs and we use field propulsion and nuclear reactors. Which will be in our lifetimes short of an apocalypse. It's closer than you think.
Mojo, it's in Switzerland, not Germany !
The success will be in better and lighter batteries to run a decent range. Evolution is slow on batteries however there are teams around the planet working on that challenge. Would be easier than H2 at now
I'm concerned about Ligthering strikes, Would that be a factor in flight. Although you mentioned that it can only fly using Visual and not Instruments.
Question about hydrogen power. Doesn't the heavy high-pressure tank needed to store the hydrogen make it difficult to adapt to aviation? Hydrogen is low in density, requiring a bigger tank than for comparable energy as gasoline.
Hello Penultimate
Exactly that is the challenge that we are facing in this years Cellsius project and plan to overcome.
Greetings Alex
Very nice. Can't wait till it comes out. Hope u enjoyed ur holiday wit ur famlay & friends. #salute my gud brotha!!!!!
Is is developped in SWITZERLAND, not Germany ;-)
Why can't you have solar panels as the plane's sheeting. Maybe use it as a taxi service. One hundred miles station to station type of travel. Limited to warmer climates.
we are in the middle of the battery revolution .....so just wait and see
Needs to be able to fly 2 hours under normal flight operations.
This could be used as a trainer
correct
My brain turned off after he said the range is 100 nm. I’ll wait
just like your wife's sex drive after the first minute of your attempts
I know it says it's a four seat airplane, but they have a 110kW motor in there with only 50kWh of batteries. So at full power you've only actually got 27 minutes of flight - that's not even enough for VFR reserves. Obviously you'd only use full power for a couple of minutes while you climb to altitude though so maybe you burn 5kWh getting to 2000ft. The question is now how low you can keep the power to the engine and still keep at altitude. If you throttle back from 110kW to 70kW your remaining 45kWH will give you 38.5 minutes of flight remaining. So overall total flight time is a shade over 40 minutes.
Obviously anything you can do to extend flight time will be useful, and you'll be able to spend less energy getting up and staying aloft if you're not at gross weight - so with so little energy available, why would you fill the back seats with people? Seems like they could have made a much more useful airplane by removing the rear seats and putting batteries in there instead.
That's not to dunk on the team that did this - great work by them - but it seems odd to prioritize number of seats when the endurance is so low.
Nice info .great feedback
My wife and I each have electric cars. The money we save on gas pays for her car. They are reliable, easy to drive, and fun. Im never going back to gas. For planes, we have to reduce the weight of the batteries. It will happen over time. We have to start somewhere.
Absolutely right. After driving exclusively electric for the last 5 years it's such a drag to have to go back to a gas car. The same thing will happen in general aviation piston engines in a relatively short amount of time (in aviation time at least). When I have to put gas in the Cessna, prime the engine, watch oil pressure and EGT, it just seems so archaic after being used to the superiority of electric motors in my cars.
At what cost to the environment to build the batteries and what generates your power source.
@@dallasjolley1 Yawn, Facebook wants its red-herring argument back.
Who said anything about saving the environment? I'm happy to have that debate ( my power for my cars comes exclusively from solar on my roof, my cost for the energy to drive after installation is equivalent to about 30cents/gallon... yes 10x less than buying gas from dictators in the Middle East). However, there is zero need to debate environmentalism.
Electric motors are vastly superior to internal combustion engines.
Full stop.
Electric motors weigh less for the same HP, cost less, are not affected by altitude or temperature (within reason), have a far better torque profile, are vastly smoother from a pilot comfort perspective, and most importantly have dramatically fewer parts and have much much longer lifespans than ICE.
The ~only~ reason they haven't taken over GA is that batteries lag in energy density, and lag badly. If (when) battery technology gets even remotely close to the energy density of AVgas or JetA then ICE engines in new GA aircraft will simply vanish.
There will always be a place for jet's, especially in the supersonic domain, but for sub-sonic flight, electric MOTORS are un-deniably better.
@@kingjamez80 So, when are buying an electric chair?
@@dallasjolley1
Bingo. It is called virtue signaling.
Batteries are build out of thin air and recharge with unicorn urine.
Intriguing.
The day has finally come Can adding solar panels play a role ?
Hello James
for the e-Sling solar panels and their components are to heavy for the added electricity they offer. SolarImpules has show how it can work but for e-Sling we would have reduced the effective range.
Greetings Alex
@@AW95 Thanks For Getting Back To Me. You are definitely one company innovating the Future of Aviation, I can't wait to see what's next. Keep Up the Great Work !!!
This looks like ETH Zürich which is in Switzerland not Germany
The are off to a good start. But the energy density of batteries is not as good as gas, so it will be difficult to provide the level of energy to sustain ado a 4-6 hour flight. A reasonable option is to develop fuel cell, or a diesel/gasoline that can use a sustainable carbon neutral fuel.
Fuel cells or new fuels doesn't help in the regard that you need an expensive aviation rated engine to then be developed to use those fuels. Especially if it has to be redesigned from the ground up and not just be a small mod to existing engines. So for the amount of risk/reward and the production volumes and costs, it just makes sense to stick with already proven aircraft ICE engines and fuels. At least an e-motor is fairly easy to build, even if it has to be built custom, and can conceivably be affordable. Seems like the tech to build lightweight electric motors is fairly-well already there. The only limitation is battery density, and if that could be improved much at all, we've arrived at a good solution.
I wonder if a propeller can be fashioned out of carbon fiber and aluminum to cut down on the weight.
Hello Rube
the airmaster propeller is already a carbon prop.
Battery power shortcomings WILL BE OVERCOME. Solid state batteries are being used in Toyota cars as we speak. 500 mi range/ 10 minute recharge, half the weight. The pluses of electric powered planes are incredible.... no loss of power with decrease in air density. Two moving parts.
Instant torque. No carb ice, Or clogged injectors.. Electric is very well suited to aircraft except for weight/ range, which is solved with solid state batteries. At this time solid state are expensive and hard to mass produce. That will change.( c’mon Elon!)
I would trust an electric motor to be more reliable than any internal combustion engine but the rest of the battery and power management systems seems a little less reliable.
Very nice, but I truly believe hydrogen will be in use before they perfect the electric engine! And Happy Thanksgiving!
Not likely. Hydrogen is nice in theory but an extreme pain in practice. It's tanks are huge for any practical capacity, takes up way too much room in an airframe.
Really Great Overview!! Thanks and looking forward to it down the line
Great project. I'll be a party pooper and point out Li-ion batteries present a significant risk of fire, would be catastrophic if one occurred while in flight. Not a concern for a single prototype. In mass production, it is much more likely to happen.
Right, because AVGas is known to be so fire-resistant.
@@kingjamez80 What you're missing is that Li-ion batteries can spontaneously catch fire without being damaged. A gas tank has to have physical damage before its contents can burn. If we use cars as an example, it's electric cars that are causing fires, so much that the Korean automakers were advising people to park their EVs away from their home.
@@ChildSpaceMethod Electric cars have a lower fire rate than gas cars.
I was swayed by the numerous reports, especially the fire aboard the ship carrying bentleys and porsches. In fact, any fuel system leak could lead to a fire on a gas-engine car. Does someone have the number of fires of the two types weighted by the number of vehicles sold?
What is the inverter for?
Hello Kwasi
The inverter converts the DC power from the batteries to AC power for the motor.
I just don't trust EVs of any flavor given that the outside temperature can fluctuate 60-80°C between summer and winter. Summers can be above 30°C, winters as cold as -50°C... although those winters are rare with -30-40 being much more commonplace, and staying there for weeks on end.
Just another concept airplane.
The key is development of new type of battery. That is not done by a bunch of students but specialized laboratories with some serious money behind them. Im certain we the humans will figure it out somehow....but for now it is a hurdle that makes electric planes not that usefull rly.
👍
Add a alternator, good battery charge controller and a/b battery bank switch select you can do better go further. ..
Building those batteries requires 500,000 pounds of mining ore, 300 plus barrels of oils, etc. It takes 6-7 years before a tesla is carbon neutral and most electricity is made with fossil fuels. Electric vehicles are dirty before a driver pushes the electric go button. There is a hybrid plane that shows promise.
Time is not ready for electric flying. In a neighbour airfield 50km, they have a new Pipistrel e-trainer, lots of publicity, they sell the flying hour 230€ which gives only a very little revenue. The battery is guaranteed only 1000 decharge/charge cycles and then 20000€ for a new one. They are afraid to fly to our field, about 17flying minutes in a Gyrocopter, because there is no possibility to charge, ok, safety first!!! 🤣🤣🤣😎🇫🇷
100 mile range or 1 hour of flight = 100mph….slow
An extra 250k for the same plane would buy a lot of gas as well. Not quite hitting the jackpot.
Still need some combustible energy to fly … electricity is ok for short flights
This would work better in an Autogyro
Would be interesting to see electric ones as well.
I think hydrogen would be more viable for airplanes as the size of a chemical batteries not only provide range but also determines the amount from energy the motor can pull from it at a given time which is alot more continuous load compared to a car.. now with that in mind a used electric plane how would one gauge the life of the battery vs a gasoline powered aircraft say each is at 50% life .. now half engine life is guaranteed a certain amount of hour before TBO a battery at 50% capacity is it even safe?? as the ability to pull power and run time is reduced ??
Spand that money on your tyson teeth first
No way will electric ever take over .
who said it would? You out here making up shit in your doodoo head
100 years ago or so, someone said the same thing about the car when compared to the horse and buggy. Technology’s advancement never stops…
100 years ago they had electric cars , steam cars, petroleum then and petroleum now is the cleanest ,cheapest most abundant fuel there is . Electric is a pipe dream that will never be realized . How about nuclear,they spoke of that too.
Just like all good progressives , you are more evolved than the rest of us trolls . We sit on an ocean of oil , the earth never stops producing it . The cow must be milked , the oil must be used . Cheap,abundant ,clean . Can’t say that about electricity.
Battery powered planes is a cute but unreasonable concept for current tech. Slow recharge times. Heavy battery packs. Energy requirements that cannot be supplied by the grid and no airports with charging stations. Vast majority of electricity is created using fossil fuels making the whole endeavor a ridiculous pretense at being green. Embracing Jet-A would be infinitely better for the environment.
I’m sorry, but electric airplanes aren’t the future. Batteries are heavy and poor vessels for harnessing power. Look at the years of the airframes in GA today. If it were viable, it would take 150yrs for this to work.
love your stuff BUT the AFRICAN NOSE THING has gatta GO...takes away from credibility
actually....nothing great about battery power period....the mining of the raw materials and the shift of economies is braking mankind's back for a few gross profiteers.
Totally stupid application of inappropriate technology!
I’ve been trying connect with you. How do I do that? This is concerning AIRMOJO.
A RANGE of 100 miles means the plane can fly 200 miles. 100 out, 100 back.