The Future of Internal Combustion Engine Light Aircraft - Environmental Globalists are in the control seat

[McMooney]

51 minutes ago, philiplane said:

Simple. Energy density. You need a certain amount of energy to move your vehicle. Batteries have only a fraction of the energy density of petroleum based fuels. Even though combustion engines are far less efficient than electric motors, that is offset by the fact they don't need to haul around an extra 1,000-1,800 pounds of batteries.

And you can fuel your car in minutes, versus hours for your EV. In many cases, your EV charging costs more than fuels do. 

So if we're comparing EV's to combustion engines, the main factors are life cycle costs and convenience. No EV will win the convenience battle. And most will not win the life cycle cost either, since they all cost more than a comparable ICE vehicle up front. 

Much is said about EV's becoming superior once fuels rise above a certain cost. While that is true, the fuel cost they need to rise above, is the same cost that chokes off the economy. Catch 22.

the ev i have on order get's 300 miles per charge, so with a 15 mile commute that's approx 7 days between charges after which it gets charged at the  ***house!!***

 my ic will NEVER approach that amount of convenience. 

I've stopped at a gas station at-least once per week for most of my driving life, this alone makes it worthwhile.

if i take that same vehicle 300miles on a roadtrip after 4 to 5ish hours of driving I stop for 45 mins to charge the vehicle, no where near as quick as fueling my ic but, i was gonna stop for 45mins to an hour anyway; past 4 or 5 hours i'm taking a plane so neither ic/ev has an advantage. 

Houston to Dallas is about as far as I’m driving and with most new evs making that trip, I’m good.; any further I’m taking a plane.

do have to say the minimum range on my IC is 500miles WAY more convenient if i ever drove 500 miles.

everyday use, where I’m home charging and just puttering about the city, at todays rates the EV fuel cost is something like 19$ vs 40$ for the same range.  seems like a win for the ev.  

total lifecycle cost, no clue.  I drive fully optioned vehicles so can't really speak to this

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 18, 2022 by McMooney

[Fly Boomer]

53 minutes ago, philiplane said:

And you can fuel your car in minutes, versus hours for your EV. In many cases, your EV charging costs more than fuels do. 

Who wants that?  That's why we will NEVER stop using gasoline.

[philiplane]

38 minutes ago, McMooney said:

the ev i have on order get's 300 miles per charge, so with a 15 mile commute that's approx 7 days between charges after which it gets charged at the  ***house!!***

 

 

 

 

 

 

When charging at home, you're not paying road use tax. At least until the feds figure out how to charge EV owners for road use, such as an annual mileage fee on your income tax return.

So the comparison is not valid. And not fair to those who are paying the taxes.

And here's the life cycle cost comparison of a base Tesla versus a Toyota Camry in a state with average electricity and gasoline costs. 

Edited May 18, 2022 by philiplane

[A64Pilot]

6 minutes ago, philiplane said:

When charging at home, you're not paying road use tax. At least until the feds figure out how to charge EV owners for road use, such as an annual mileage fee on your income tax return.

So the comparison is not valid. And not fair to those who are paying the taxes.

Many States charge EV road use tax, it’s the States, not the Feds, and some States charge in excess of what ICE pays. They hit you when you buy your tag

The States are not going to pass up another revenue source, trust me.

You can Google that yourself, I used to post a consumer reports article on it, but it’s not popping up,now

Edited May 18, 2022 by A64Pilot

[Shadrach]

On 5/16/2022 at 10:53 AM, Mooney Dog said:

If we're lucky we'll get rid of the internal combustion engine with time. an ICE is only about 11-27% efficient. Electric motors are much more efficient, somewhere around 80-90%. The biggest problem for electric motors are batteries/power sources. Thats why hybrids right now are a pretty big market. 

 

Concern about the future are the same that have been there for year and year. Sadly aviation is expensive and its going to be the "cost to entry" that causes light GA to die. Kind of hard to buy an airplane when you cant afford must more than a place to live. 

 

Electric cars are MUCH more efficient than an ICE car. There's 0 question about that. Again the problem is the batteries. The only way they get better is to keep R&D on the projects. I for one would love an eclectic car though. Much cheaper to charge the battery than fill a tank, even at old gas prices. Gets me around the city where i need to go. Sure the only problem would be a long cross country drive from city to city but i have a plane for that. 

 

Governments dont really control gas prices, and even if the gov does push people to electric cars, thats not necessarily a bad thing. Sadly that whole debate gets way to deep into politics and pilots and politics dont mix well. 

 

Plane prices will continue to go up due to lack of planes, increases of cost of materials, and certifications and building of parts.

This is a flawed analysis. It’s not a resource in and of itself. The efficiency of an EV with the efficiency of the power source. In this country, that is primarily coal. I’m not anti EV but it’s not helpful or accurate to suggest that coal powered EVs are 90% efficient, they’re not. Going Nuclear would do more to curb petroleum use than anything else we could do.

as far as globalist control and manipulation goes, I have many concerns… Being able to fly my aircraft is no on my list of concerns for the future.

[A64Pilot]

Guys we have beaten this horse before. I can show you that fuel cost wise it cost about %20 to drive our model 3 than the average US vehicle that gets 25.7 MPG. See other threads. You either believe that or not, just as you can continue to believe it takes hours to charge. I’d attach a screen shot where we were charging at a rate of over 800 MPH, but even though I’ve deleted just about everything I’m over the limit of 19 MB.

Of course there are outliers, some cars get over 50 MPG, but they are anything but performance vehicles, where the EV’s accelerate at least, some will still handle like pigs I’m sure

For those that are buying an EV, it’s better for the battery for you to recharge every night even if you have enough battery to go all week, the shallower the cycles, the more cycles the battery will have. It’s a slightly different mind set than a gas car, like filling up every night, just don’t fill up. Shallower cycles = longer battery life.

Don't fully recharge on a regular basis, unless it’s a Lifepo4 battery, they tolerate full charges better Li-Po it shortens the life, if you need to fill up for whatever reason it’s best to set the car to be full when you leave, you don’t want it to sit at 100%

We use 1/3 of our battery daily, so I charge to 66% and it depletes to 33% daily. Nothing is easier than plugging in the car every day when you get home from work.

A LOT of unknowns about EV’s especially with the new ones coming available. We had a saying in the Military, never fly the A model of anything. Meant of course wait until the bugs are worked out. What are the odds that GM, Ford etc will get it right, right out of the gate? Based on earlier attempts I’d guess not very good. But we’ll see, time will tell. 

Plus it’s likely when the novelty wears off they will get cheaper, and or gas price go down, which may take awhile. Used to be when gas prices would spike you couldn’t buy a Prius, but let it get cheap and the dealers couldn’t give them away, but then about the only attraction to the Prius was fuel milage.

[Shadrach]

On 5/17/2022 at 11:12 AM, Mooney Dog said:

When school like ATP are $100,000 and you still need a 4 year degree (though that requirement is going away) after that. And no one in training can really hope to own a plane. 

 

Yeah it sucks. 

Going away? I didn’t know that it ever was.  I know several ATPs without four year degrees that are actively flying for both major and charter carriers.

[A64Pilot]

28 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

This is a flawed analysis. It’s not a resource in and of itself. The efficiency of an EV with the efficiency of the power source. In this country, that is primarily coal. I’m not anti EV but it’s not helpful or accurate to suggest that coal powered EVs are 90% efficient, they’re not. Going Nuclear would do more to curb petroleum use than anything else we could do.

as far as globalist control and manipulation goes, I have many concerns… Being able to fly my aircraft is no on my list of concerns for the future.

| Looked up the efficiency of electric transmission losses, it’s %2, with another %4 lost in distribution, so even if we only use fossil fuel to generate electricity it’s more efficient to use EV’s That’s transmission, not generation fossil wise natural gas is best approaching %40. However home solar output is I believe unknown, but it not insignificant and it’s increasing, I just can’t make it make sense $$$ wise for me.

However only 61% of power generation comes from fossil fuel, and I doubt coal plants are being built are they?

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

this link says %21 is from coal, that’s hardly primary

Edited May 18, 2022 by A64Pilot

[Shadrach]

9 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

| Looked up the efficiency of electric transmission losses, it’s %2, with another %4 lost in distribution, so even if we only use fossil fuel to generate electricity it’s more efficient to use EV’s

However only 61% of power generation comes from fossil fuel, and I doubt coal plants are being built are they?

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

I don’t think we’ve built a coal plant in quite some time but it does not change the fact that it’s our primary energy source. China is still building Coal Fire generators as our other Third World countries. I don’t really think it’s fair to tell them that they can’t. West should lead by example but it seems we’re going in the opposite direction.  Even when coal goes from primary to merely significant, that’s still a lot of fossil fuel. I love EVs. I think they make a lot of sense for certain mission profiles. Powering them as well as every other electrical device with nuclear would have a more profound effect on the world’s petroleum usage than anything else we could do.

Edited May 18, 2022 by Shadrach

[A64Pilot]

1 hour ago, philiplane said:

When charging at home, you're not paying road use tax. At least until the feds figure out how to charge EV owners for road use, such as an annual mileage fee on your income tax return.

So the comparison is not valid. And not fair to those who are paying the taxes.

And here's the life cycle cost comparison of a base Tesla versus a Toyota Camry in a state with average electricity and gasoline costs. 

Sure if you compare the expensive Tesla to an inexpensive ICE the ICE is cheaper to own because the cheaper operating costs can’t overcome the cheap purchase price. But if you compare comparable cost vehicles it’s not. Want to really save? Nothing beats a $500 clunker, no loan, no full coverage insurence etc.

‘However you can prove anything you want to on the internet, show me the numbers and maybe you’ll convince me. My favorite was the article years ago that “proved” a Hummer was “greener” than a Prius.

The long range is not the base model Tesla current price has the LR at $9,000 more, but hey that’s what it took didn’t it? Comparing a Tesla to a Camry is similar to comparing a Lexus to a Hyundai

[AH-1 Cobra Pilot]

56 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

However only 61% of power generation comes from fossil fuel, and I doubt coal plants are being built are they?

Generation and capacity are two very different things.  Since coal and nuclear account for almost all of the continuous generation, they do more with less.  The intermittent sources alternate between wind and solar, and natural gas, which skews the results.

[McMooney]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

Guys we have beaten this horse before. I can show you that fuel cost wise it cost about %20 to drive our model 3 than the average US vehicle that gets 25.7 MPG. See other threads. You either believe that or not, just as you can continue to believe it takes hours to charge. I’d attach a screen shot where we were charging at a rate of over 800 MPH, but even though I’ve deleted just about everything I’m over the limit of 19 MB.

Of course there are outliers, some cars get over 50 MPG, but they are anything but performance vehicles, where the EV’s accelerate at least, some will still handle like pigs I’m sure

For those that are buying an EV, it’s better for the battery for you to recharge every night even if you have enough battery to go all week, the shallower the cycles, the more cycles the battery will have. It’s a slightly different mind set than a gas car, like filling up every night, just don’t fill up. Shallower cycles = longer battery life.

Don't fully recharge on a regular basis, unless it’s a Lifepo4 battery, they tolerate full charges better Li-Po it shortens the life, if you need to fill up for whatever reason it’s best to set the car to be full when you leave, you don’t want it to sit at 100%

We use 1/3 of our battery daily, so I charge to 66% and it depletes to 33% daily. Nothing is easier than plugging in the car every day when you get home from work.

A LOT of unknowns about EV’s especially with the new ones coming available. We had a saying in the Military, never fly the A model of anything. Meant of course wait until the bugs are worked out. What are the odds that GM, Ford etc will get it right, right out of the gate? Based on earlier attempts I’d guess not very good. But we’ll see, time will tell. 

Plus it’s likely when the novelty wears off they will get cheaper, and or gas price go down, which may take awhile. Used to be when gas prices would spike you couldn’t buy a Prius, but let it get cheap and the dealers couldn’t give them away, but then about the only attraction to the Prius was fuel milage.

can't believe anyone purchased a prius at any gas price 8)

Edited May 18, 2022 by McMooney

[A64Pilot]

24 minutes ago, AH-1 Cobra Pilot said:

Generation and capacity are two very different things.  Since coal and nuclear account for almost all of the continuous generation, they do more with less.  The intermittent sources alternate between wind and solar, and natural gas, which skews the results.

Read the Government link, coal is % 21.8 and Nuclear is 20 something I think, that’s actual generation as I read it, leaving 60% coming from “Other” so coal isn’t the primary source.

But you know what, I really don’t care, as I told a neighbor I’m no greenie, I don’t care if the thing is fueled with Whale oil.

I’m not trying to save the Earth, I’m trying to save my Retirement and give the Wife a nice, safe, fun car to drive. If it was all about money, we would have kept the Prius, nothings cheaper than a paid for Prius.

What I do care about is that electricity for me is 14c per KWH, and you know what? It was 14c before gas prices went crazy too, now why is that? How come gas price goes crazy and electricity doesn’t even bump? I guess no electricity is generated with petroleum?

I don’t know, doesn’t pass the sniff test to me, but then I’m a conspiracy theorist anyway.

[A64Pilot]

5 minutes ago, McMooney said:

can't believe anyone purchased a prius at any gas price 8)

At the time she was driving her CTS-V 100 miles a day to work as a school teacher. Well what it cost me to fuel the CTS-V and keep it in tires etc, plus the wear and tear. I don’t think we were making any money with her teaching. Figure 5 gls of Premium a day and at least $1,000 in tires per year

Then out of the blue the cash for clunkers thing was announced and I happened to have a Z28 sitting in the hangar unused, so I pulled the Nitrous out of it and drove it to the Toyota lot and cashed it in on a Prius.

it took the cash for clunkers, plus having an eligible car we didn’t drive to make it happen, and the fact we drove over 25,000 miles a year for it to really make sense, probably more as it had 279,000 miles when it was 12 years old and the Daughter had it as her College car for the last three so she didn’t drive it much.

But for what is is, which is an economy car, it’s actually a fine automobile and more capable than I ever imagined, with a lot of cargo space, considering, and it made a good College car for our Daughter. 

[AH-1 Cobra Pilot]

11 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

How come gas price goes crazy and electricity doesn’t even bump? I guess no electricity is generated with petroleum?

Because electricity prices are tightly regulated.

Up until about 1970, more electricity was being produced by coal.  In order to cut 'pollution', many plants were converting to oil burners.  After the 1973 oil embargo, most were converted back.

[AH-1 Cobra Pilot]

17 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

Read the Government link, coal is % 21.8 and Nuclear is 20 something I think, that’s actual generation as I read it, leaving 60% coming from “Other” so coal isn’t the primary source.

If it were strictly an economic decision, coal would be over 60%, nuclear could be up to 30%. and gas would be most of the remainder.

Note by the chart, that a small portion even goes back into reversing hydro power at dams to act as energy storage; a very inefficient battery.

[A64Pilot]

Apparently I can’t even quote now

Anyway as I understand it many plants can’t throttle power generation very well, so there is an excess at times, so while pumping water back into the lake may not be real efficient it’s better than not using power that’s being generated. They pump the water at night when the demand is low and use it during the day to make power during high demand times.

In theory that’s why Solar works, it’s making power during high demand times and isn’t during low demand times.

I believe natural gas plants as the use turbines can vary output well. Used to be natural gas in the US was underutilized, I don’t know about today, it’s been 40 years since I was in the oil patch

[philiplane]

1 hour ago, A64Pilot said:

Sure if you compare the expensive Tesla to an inexpensive ICE the ICE is cheaper to own because the cheaper operating costs can’t overcome the cheap purchase price. But if you compare comparable cost vehicles it’s not. Want to really save? Nothing beats a $500 clunker, no loan, no full coverage insurence etc.

‘However you can prove anything you want to on the internet, show me the numbers and maybe you’ll convince me. My favorite was the article years ago that “proved” a Hummer was “greener” than a Prius.

The long range is not the base model Tesla current price has the LR at $9,000 more, but hey that’s what it took didn’t it? Comparing a Tesla to a Camry is similar to comparing a Lexus to a Hyundai

I selected the cheapest Tesla because it is the only EV that compares to a base Camry in size, capabilities & range. All the others, like the Chevy Bolt for example, are smaller that the Camry. We need to compare equal size cars, as buyers would. The extra cost for the base Tesla 3 is simply the differential cost of the EV. Toyota doesn't make a comparable EV to the Camry. Ford makes the Mustang Mach E, which is comparable to their Escape ICE car. Run the comparison on those two, and it's identical to the previous Tesla 3/Camry match. Any EV equivalent to an ICE car will cost much more, 30 to 50 percent more. 

Compare a new F150 to the F150 Lightning EV. The EV is nearly a ton heavier than the ICE version. That translates into heavy tire wear, shorter life of suspension components, less payload, etc. And this after automakers have switched to aluminum and plastics in the effort to save weight and increase economy. Now throw 1800 pounds of batteries back in. 1800 pounds of batteries to do the work of 162 pounds of gasoline. Add in the higher purchase price, and how does it make any sense? 

Edited May 18, 2022 by philiplane

[A64Pilot]

25 minutes ago, philiplane said:

The cheapest Tesla is the only EV that compares to a base Camry in size, capabilities & range. All the others, like the Chevy Bolt for example, are smaller that the Camry. We need to compare equal size cars, as buyers would. The extra cost for the Tesla is the differential cost of the EV. Toyota doesn't make a comparable EV to the Camry. Ford makes the Mustang Mach E, which is comparable to their Escape ICE car. Run the comparison on those two, and it's identical to the previous Tesla 3/Camry match. Any EV equivalent to an ICE car will cost much more, 30 to 50 percent more. 

No, the Tesla is a performance Sedan with an astonishing safety rating, so you compare it to other performance sedans in its class as in size and performance with I assume similar safety ratings, closest is the BMW 3 series, or the Audi A4.

Those are the cars the car mags compare the Model 3 to, not a Camry.

Again, they didn’t use the cheapest Tesla, the used the mid range one with is almost $10,000 more than the cheapest.

I’d also be curious to see what they were using as utility rates, insurence rates and loan interest rates. My loan from USAA is 1.89%.

I can cherry pick numbers and prove just about anything, that is why when using comparisons, I use the average fuel milage for US vehicles 25.7 MPG and my utility rate which is .17c higher than the US average. Average utility rate is 13.87c  per KWH, I use 14c.

Also average cost for a US vehicle is now over $47,000, we paid $42K for our Tesla, so purchase price is a wash as I’m sure a model 3 base is real close to average price.

So if you don’t Cherry pick, but use averages then it all makes sense, if you Cherry pick, you can prove anything you want to.

A Tesla model 3 is no more expensive to purchase or insure than the average US vehicle 

and a whole lot cheaper to operate than the average US vehicle. Sure an economy car is cheaper, that’s in the name. 

Edited May 18, 2022 by A64Pilot

[jaylw314]

FWIW, don't forget that most electric cars (and a few hybrids) are transmission-less, so have fewer drivetrain losses, which is not insignificant.  My AWD subaru loses more than 20% of hp in drivetrain loss.

Of course, our Mooney's are nice that way  

[Mooney Dog]

5 hours ago, Shadrach said:

This is a flawed analysis. It’s not a resource in and of itself. The efficiency of an EV with the efficiency of the power source. In this country, that is primarily coal. I’m not anti EV but it’s not helpful or accurate to suggest that coal powered EVs are 90% efficient, they’re not. Going Nuclear would do more to curb petroleum use than anything else we could do.

as far as globalist control and manipulation goes, I have many concerns… Being able to fly my aircraft is no on my list of concerns for the future.

The engine, not the thing making the electricity. The electric motor is incredibly efficient 

 

5 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Going away? I didn’t know that it ever was.  I know several ATPs without four year degrees that are actively flying for both major and charter carriers.

I was talking ATP the flight school, not ATP the rating. Up till covid, it was very heavily encouraged to get your 4 year to work in the airline 121 world. It was changed on United's website after covid from required to preferred as well. 

Edited May 18, 2022 by Mooney Dog

[carusoam]

“Light Aircraft - Environmental Globalists are in the control seat”
 

show me what environmental globalists do….?

What are their solutions ….?

 

or is this a straw man political statement that gets so much appreciation around here…

-a-

[Fly Boomer]

5 hours ago, philiplane said:

1800 pounds of batteries to do the work of 162 pounds of gasoline

I think the 1800 pounds can be used thousands of times, while the 162 pounds is a one-time shot.  Up in smoke.  Or CO2.

[A64Pilot]

1800 lbs? Sure for an inefficient EV, my battery is 1,000 lbs.

Actually 1 gallon of gas is equal to 38 KWH of electricity, so that 1000 lb battery is equal to about 8 lbs of gas, or to look at it another way. I can drive for 270 miles on the energy of roughly 1.3 gls of gas.

Edited May 19, 2022 by A64Pilot

[philiplane]

2 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

I think the 1800 pounds can be used thousands of times, while the 162 pounds is a one-time shot.  Up in smoke.  Or CO2.

the point is that you have to haul around that extra weight continuously, where liquid fuel vehicles do not. This is the main limitation with electric applications in aircraft. Speed and range improve as fuel is burned. Speed and range are forever limited if you haul around heavy batteries. Where an electric motor is more efficient than a gas engine, the battery is far less efficient at energy storage than a gas tank.