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Thread: Pipistrel $1.3M prize

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    Pipistrel $1.3M prize

    1. If I read ONE MORE article that describes an electric plane/car/boat/motorcycle as “zero emissions”, I’m going to find the author and strangle him/her.
    2. 75% of our electricity is generated by coal and gas.
    3. Therefore, electric planes/cars, etc. are coal-powered vehicles.
    4. Electricity generation and transmission are perhaps 30% efficient (similar to a car engine). Therefor, electricity is NOT cleaner than burning gasoline.
    5. Electric planes/cars, are not any more “Green” than a 2012 Ford Mustang.
    6. The government likes electric vehicles for the same reason they like income tax withholding. It makes it easier to hide the taxes!
    7. The cost of “going Green” is around $120 billion per year (1% of GDP). Get ready to pay 20 cents per kilowatt hour for the luxury of accomplishing nothing.

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    Seerjfly
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    Last edited by Seerjfly; 12-31-2011 at 08:08 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TTSS View Post
    1. If I read ONE MORE article that describes an electric plane/car/boat/motorcycle as “zero emissions”, I’m going to find the author and strangle him/her.
    2. 75% of our electricity is generated by coal and gas.
    3. Therefore, electric planes/cars, etc. are coal-powered vehicles.
    4. Electricity generation and transmission are perhaps 30% efficient (similar to a car engine). Therefor, electricity is NOT cleaner than burning gasoline.
    5. Electric planes/cars, are not any more “Green” than a 2012 Ford Mustang.
    6. The government likes electric vehicles for the same reason they like income tax withholding. It makes it easier to hide the taxes!
    7. The cost of “going Green” is around $120 billion per year (1% of GDP). Get ready to pay 20 cents per kilowatt hour for the luxury of accomplishing nothing.
    I largely agree with your points, but IMO, the benefit is that coal powered vehicles don't consume petrol and/or its byproducts. I think that's good, because I'd like to conserve petrol for uses where electricity/coal is not practical.

    Electric vehicles reduce our oil imports and trade deficit. That's good.

    It is likely that there will be continued improvements in solar, wind, and other alternate sources of electrical generation. As that technology matures, I'd love to be able to run a reasonable portion of our transportation network on alternate energy, where economically justifiable.

    IMO, the Pipstrel e-flight program is an excellent project to stretch the bounds of electric power.

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    steveinindy's Avatar
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    IMO, the Pipstrel e-flight program is an excellent project to stretch the bounds of electric power.
    As much as I get accused of being too negative about electric aviation, I would tend to agree with you there. Research is always a good thing as long as it is done in a valid and scientific manner.

    That said, I am really getting tired of politically based threads like this on here. I'm reasonably certain that when the switch was made from whale oil to electricity, those with a stake in the whaling industry put out all sorts of negative commentary about their competition. Nothing new under the Sun.

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    If the US would move toward more solar/wind electricity generation, then the emissions of these type of vehicles begins to approach zero. Until politicos stop taking money from coal/oil/gas producers, nothing significant will change. The other thing that has to happen: citizens have to step forward and accept the new technologies. Yes it may cost a bit more in the present, but the payoff will come down the road when the cost to produce equals what we are paying today and we lower our environmental damage.

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    Boeing B-17G 42-231465's Avatar
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    Always ironic how everybody is so against nuclear power, when coal plants put out 1,000's% more radiation than nuclear power. You get more radiation from your spouse in bed than you do a nuclear power plant. See going green doesn't require solar panels, or windmills, both produce limtied amounts of power, at high cost, and the latter kills thousands of birds - whats so green about killing our little birdy friends? See, natural gas is cheap, and cleaner than gasoline; with teh keystone pipeline, we'd have the natural gas to power fleets, and consumer vehicles over time. By replacing coal plants with nuclear ones, we have cleaner power, more power, and the ability to produce hydrogen so those fuel cells could actually work, and plug-in hybrids would work on a large scale too. This alternative energy they speak of in nonsense! There's no magic alternative to fossil fuels, it generates more power than any other fuel source, leave nuclear of course. Nuclear is the safest and best form of electricity generation, and those skeptics should know that the massive glowing orb in the sky just happens to be, along with that molten ball of metal under our feet, God's first nuclear reactors for us. The earth and sun give us more radiation than a nuclear power plant, so does a banana, or most anything on this earth that's alive, since everything that lives produces amounts of radiation. Eventually, gasoline will be replaced by natural gas (if all goes to plan), with natural gas powered-fleets and consumer vehicles; hybrid-electric natural gas vehicles and fuel cells will all be possible with the conversion to nuclear power.
    -Peter J. Carlson
    © 2011 Peter J. Carlson, All Rights Reserved
    "The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? - it is the same the angels breathe." ~Mark Twain

  8. #8
    bwilson4web's Avatar
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    The Pipistrel is not the first electrically power airplane. The Japanese built and flew a battery powered one at least four years ago. Then there is the manned, solar power aircraft that the Swiss flew overnight. NASA also has an unmanned, solar power plane. Then there is the German, multi-rotor, electric platform described in Sport Aviation.

    Quote Originally Posted by TTSS View Post
    1. If I read ONE MORE article that describes an electric plane/car/boat/motorcycle as “zero emissions”, I’m going to find the author and strangle him/her. . . .
    It has been my experience that there is an inverse relationship between quality, award winning engineering, and the use of threats and/or 'political' laments. In General Electric, I called them "electro-political" problems meaning a technical solution rejected for "political" reasons. This was always the stink of intellectual rot that let me know it was time to find another place where people want to get something done . . . not waste time in idle BS. So to lament about oil, coal, or natural gas powered plants with "strangulation" begs a reply in kind:

    My target is the "strangulation" threat.

    We have two, Prius hybrid electrics and both get 52 MPG in ordinary driving. When towing a modified, pontoon boat trailer with an airplane, 28 MPG:

    Around town, I use the 2003 Prius because it has higher clearance. On the 600 mile tow, I used the 1.8L Prius:

    Yet since the first month of owning our Prius, ignorant, foolish, 'political idiots' have made it a point to tell me what is wrong. So six years, 90,000 miles with the 1.5L Prius and two years, 26,000 miles with the 1.8L we are still getting lifetime averages of 52 MPG at the pump. MY money paying for that gas!

    There are technical challenges with practical electrical airplanes and cars. But "strangulation" is not a technical discussion. As for emissions, I'm old enough to have experienced:
    • carbon monoxide poisoning from open flame, gas heaters in 1960
    • eyes teared up to blindness on an off-ramp in Riverside CA in 1972
    • idiots who rip-out their emissions systems and de-tune their pickups, 2011
    I really don't care about emissions anyone else prefers to ingest. So when a Sarah Palin claims,"I love that smell of the emissions!" I am thinking she hasn't had enough.

    Efficiency is the best emissions control and that is what our Prius deliver. In like fashion, I choose my plane because of efficiency. But I'm not converting it to a hybrid electric . . . at least not yet. There are 'low hanging fruit' I need to test first.

    So let's do this . . . swear off 'strangling' and I'll just practice at the range. If you don't like a technology, perhaps it is time to take the advice from Disney, "If you can't say something nice about someone, say nothing at all." It is better to be thought ignorant than to post and remove all doubt.

    Bob Wilson

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    steveinindy's Avatar
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    whats so green about killing our little birdy friends?
    Not part of the low and slow club then eh? I often wonder how much of an effect fly-ins like Oshkosh have on the local songbird population....

  10. #10

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    Steve, for several days after they can be seen flying in long rows and waggling their wings before landing on three regularly spaced locations, and their songs turn into low octive rumbles.


    This is replaced by furious pecking in a rectangular area, which ornathologists have posited might be a means of expressing their frustration at the high price of water, squirrels running around too fast in no-squirrel zones, and the overabundance of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey.

    [edit]

    I ain't touching the transferrance of pollution from one site to another in the gas-vs-coal-generated-electricity with a ten foot cattle prod! Nor will I address the much gas one can buy with the difference in price between hybrids and gas only cars...

    I firmly believe that if someone has the means and the desires to purchase a thing and it does no harm to anyone else it's really not my business. I would fail the Beanie Babies - discuss essay question, for example. Then again I wouldn't fare much better on the WWI Scaled Replica - discuss one, either!

    However, without big prizes for aviation firsts big advances in aviation would have come much slower. I'm thinking specifically about long distance prizes that lead to pilots wanting to fly at night and in low visibility....which lead to instrument flight, radio beacons, etc.

    IF there was an electric option that had the power, weight, and range of petrol engines that were also economically viable I'd probably bite. We're not there yet.

    But grousing about how it's unfeaseable won't ever make it happen.
    Last edited by Frank Giger; 01-03-2012 at 05:44 AM.
    The opinions and statements of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.

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