CAE announced at the Farnborough International Air Show that it is working with Piper Aircraft to develop an electric propulsion conversion kit for the Piper PA-28-181 Archer. The company says it plans to convert two-thirds of its Archer training fleet along with creating a curriculum to train new pilots on electric aircraft operation. Development of the conversion kit is part of CAE’s Project Resilience, through which the company, in partnership with the Government of Canada and the Government of Quebec, is investing C$1 billion over five years to “develop aviation and cross-sectoral digital technologies of the future.”
Next there will be one dissing the “so-called environmental crisis”.
CAE’s remaining 1/3 ICE birds will do the long XC work but I see no reason the 2/3 can’t handle local <2hour flights on voltage especially if the conversion incorporates quick-change battery trays [as my next homebuilt will]. Will there be a "Ludicrous" button for go-arounds?
The Canadian influence is already showing up in the revised spelling of that Vero firm's name in Para 3. [Imagine Peter Sellers pronouncing it as Inspector Clouseau: "pee-pee-yay!"]
I’ll agree with William: What is CAE for those of us that don’t live in Canada?
And what about some target performance specifications? Without them it does sound like someone’s pipe dream.
the long term ownership costs of electric propulsion could be a real factor to make this a practical option. the cost of maintenance for an IC engine is a substantial factor in the operating costs. for training situations where the average flight is in the order of an hour or so Electric could be a real solution for the training fleet. especially if they can solve the quick charge problem. a company that is developing a large Vtol aircraft for short range package hauling uses a battery bank to recharge its batteries in a few minutes. a retrofit is a good option for this niche as there is a huge pool of quality airframes that can save a substantial amount of money compared to building new aircraft.
Even most of those questions are variable with ICEs. Range depends on what power setting you use, and often environmental conditions (weather, temperature, etc). Weight is variable with how much fuel you carry, and even the weight of the fuel itself varies depending on temperature. And over time, ICEs start to lose power as components wear out. And fuel can leak into the cockpit and fuel tanks can rupture in crashes, spilling fuel and causing a fire hazard.
And ironically, internal combustion engines are literally vaporware (it’s the fuel vapor that burns, not the liquid form).
ICEs have over a century of development, and we’re just starting to reach the peak of their development. Electric propulsion has really only been developing over the past 30 or so years, and there’s no reason to think further developments wouldn’t push the technology farther. It is inevitable that ICEs will eventually be replaced with something else.
Kudos to those who are potentially paving the way to the future, just as those who paved the way for powered heavier-than-air flight had to fight against the naysayers who said it was impossible.
Change is always hard. Fully autonomous passenger carrying drones will be arriving about the same time as the volt powered Cherokees (which will be obsolete when they arrive). In 10 years rated pilots will be sharing the airspace with non-rated drone pilots. In 20 years one of the family cars will be replaced with an autonomous drone. Yup your drone will be a Ford , KIA etc.
The really big question is why CAE isn’t pushing to teach primary flight training in simulators. This is the future of flight training, not “sparky the wonder-Cherokee”. Why not do 80% of the PPL in the box? Negate the need to convert the Cherokee…eh…
New things are often poorly designed, expensive, over-hyped, …
Some of us have seen it all before, have scars.
And read history of how long it took new things to succeed and become widespread - the ‘fax’ machine method of transmitting documents over telephone wires - very slow and expensive so only sizeable offices used them. Years later almost every office could afford oe and transmission time was roughly 1/10th of original.
Lead effect around airports has been disproven by actual measurements.
The scam that humans are causing runaway climate warming has been disproven both by FAILure of every doomsday prediction in the past half century, and by many scientists: https://clintel.org/world-climate-declaration/.
I would love to have such a conversion on my PA28-180. The Safran ENGINeUS 100 produces 200HP peak power and weighs only 66 pounds (with fully integrated controller). That’s 216 pounds lighter than the dry weight of an O-360 (before accounting for oil and other accessories like exhaust, oil cooler, fuel pumps, etc.) Not to mention, no more oil changes, no more spark plugs, no more magnetos, no more alternators, etc. High performance, very low maintenance, no vibrations, and no more expensive 100LL! I know it will be 10 years before this will come our way, but I’ll be first in line when it does. And by then we may have Li-Sulfur batteries with energy densities 5x of current Li-Ion, so those 1hr flight times will grow to 5hr.
Of course the AvWeb peanut gallery isn’t going to like this.
CAE is in the pork barrel pocket of Quebec Canada.
Long established maker of flight simulators, now worldwide and surprise! into initial training. Plus maintainers and ‘rear crew’ which I think means operators of military surveillance equipment onboard and F/A’s (website links to detail don’t work). Offerings vary with location around the world.