This has all the hallmarks of a classic Silicon Valley pump-and-dump investment scheme. The biggest downside for all of us is that the press generated by this company will be the main way that the average Joe will learn about sport aviation.
Ercoupe, Mooney with “PC”. Same thoughts…I guess.
No way is he going to be able to get the price down to $100K unless he is talking about automobile typical volumes. Even now cars and trucks are already pushing the $100K price point.
$500K is a more realistic price point.
Fred Weick would be proud, except that affordability is not one of the advantages of this design. Nor will there be, in the near term, any lowering of the FAA requirements to “drive” this vehicle (ask Ercoupe owners). I’d be interested to know what fallback there is for any sort of electrical failure.
So now they are adding ‘envelope protection’ to the fly-by-wire system.
I’d like to know how the aircraft is able to remain aligned with the runway on landing, with no rudder control.
The linked article mentioned landing with a crosswind, so was it in a crab.?
Since landing requires to most attention of the pilot, how does their system monitor the short approach, round out and flare to a touchdown on the mains ?
It would require a radar system to know the height above the runway.
I again ask about any brakes, with no rudder pedals ?
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All the above questions are valid, but with the ever-growing capabilities of electronic flight control systems and the imagination of a bright engineer, I have no doubt there are answers to those questions. It will be fascinating to see what they come up with, even though I’ll never be able to afford one.
The car manufacturers are using electric window operators now, since they found that it’s less expensive than a hand crank mechanical system.
But, this is way less important than a flight control system.
Using motors to move the control surfaces, the electrical control system and multiple computers is a very complex design, vs push rods or cable and pulley.!
Existing autopilots use servos to operate the cables, so why go to full fly-by-wire.
The FAA will be looking very closely at their system before approving the design.
I’m a SlingTsi builder, so this caught my eye at Oshkosh in 2023. After spending about an hour asking them a ton of questions of what they are trying to accomplish, I couldn’t find one thing that they were doing that the Garmin suite already does - and at a premium price over and above the Garmin costs.
The only way something like this succeeds is if it does everything the existing systems do and costs less or do it so much better that it’s worth the additional costs and from what I could tell they failed on both accounts.
I think innovation is great. I really would welcome a solid challenger to Garmin and the other avionics that push Garmin along, but from what I could tell this isn’t going to be it. The added risk if going to 100% fly-by-wire concerns me in something this small. If I lost everything in the plane, the push rods will still be connected and I could at least put down somewhere within reason. With this being 100% electric and depending upon servos, I’d feel pretty exposed.
Should they stop? Nah - keep trying. That’s how innovation works. But they have a lot to improve upon before I could even consider something like this.
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Good post, Brian. Especially this; “The only way something like this succeeds is if it does everything the existing systems do and costs less or do it so much better that it’s worth the additional costs and from what I could tell they failed on both accounts.”
Isn’t the joy of piloting an aircraft the actual piloting of the aircraft?
Why would a pilot want to advocate this joy to a machine?
If a person wanted an airplane for transportation, and that’s what this would reduce it to, that’s why God invented seat 18B on Delta.
While driving on our local speedway after work, a car pulled into traffic three vehicles ahead of me.
My adaptive cruise control slowed the car down, pre-charged the brakes, applied them, and activated the anti-skid system—all faster than I could have reacted. That was nice.
Garmin has a good product, but I’m glad to see others taking advantage of as of now, basic technology.
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Supplemental technology additions to cars has greatly enhanced the safety of driving on our highways. But, 30,000+ folks still die on our highways.
Airbags, antilock brakes, stronger door beams, etc. have all allowed folks to walk away from a crash.
The technology Airhart is developing is a major change in the way of controlling an aircraft, not additive technology, like our GPS nav capability, autopilots that can follow a gps course.
Fly-by-wire is a requirement on commercial airliners weighing 500,000 lb, where human effort cannot move the control surfaces without hydraulic assist.
But applying this to light GA aircraft is an unnecessary complication of the control systems, and reduces the reliability of them.
A wild guess: To scale production to 10,000 units annually and lower the aircraft price from $500,000 to $100,000, Airhart Aeronautics might need $100 million to $200 million in investment for tooling, facility setup, and labor. Reaching full capacity could take around 4 to 7 years, depending on construction and production ramp-up times.
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10,000 units annually is pure ganja nonsense. It would not lower the unit cost at all since in today’s world all that would do is expand risk and liability.
Agree. That’s my point, in addition given the limited market demand, high investment requirements, existing competition, and safety and regulatory hurdles, the feasibility of Airhart’s vision is highly questionable. Even if the company manages to achieve mass production, the overall demand for such an aircraft will not justify the investment.
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Airbags, antilock brakes, lane keeping and adaptive cruise control are also unnecessary and add complexity. However, they allow some of those 30,000 accidents to be relatively injury free and maybe, something even harder to measure, prevent an accident in the first place.
Reliability can be measured and appropriate controls put in place to enhance and harden the system.
Envelope protection has been around for some time now. This simply might be the next step.
All true, Raf. There is no mention of any sort of “force feedback” or stick-shaker to the pilot, to warn of impending aerodynamic danger. And good luck finding a CFI to check you out in one.
But I think everyone’s missing the true motivation for this design: it’s cool (to the gamer generation) and the engineer/owner wants it. All the blather about production for a prospective market is merely justification, if for no one else, his wife.