A lighter engine certainly doesn't hurt, but it's really the batteries that are an issue. The other item often overlooked on the battery front is that most batteries hate the cold. Take your iPhone out on a 20F day and see how long that 100% charge lasts! (Spoiler alert, likely a few minutes).<p>As you go up in the atmosphere things start to get really cold. Until the weight and temperature issues with batteries can be address electrical aviation will be mostly a concept on paper.
You'd think that since the article is about how this motor is a new record in power density (or rather specific power), it would include the specific power in the article somewhere. You would be wrong, but it does include the information needed to calculate it. The SP260D motor they're talking about has a specific power of 260 kW / 50 kg = 5.2 kW/kg. It's not clear if this includes the weight of the batteries or not.<p>The article says the usual motor for the Walter Extra 330L is 315 horsepower, which is 234 kW. The "E" in the model number "330LE" apparently refers to the electric version.<p>To contextualize, motor specific power is actually really important for heavier-than-air flight. The reason Leonardo's helicopter designs wouldn't work is a lack of specific power in the (human) motors he had in mind, more than any aerodynamic reason. (Sufficiently high specific powers can overcome even remarkably poor aerodynamics.) The Wright brothers' main innovations were: a workable system for steering, and a motor with sufficiently high specific power.<p>The bit about the motor's end shield seems to be describing topological optimization, but the description of the process is somewhat ambiguous. It would be nice to see a picture of the end shield and maybe information about how it's made.<p>Maybe a less clueless, though even more information-scarce, article is <a href="http://www.flyingmag.com/extra-unveils-electric-330le" rel="nofollow">http://www.flyingmag.com/extra-unveils-electric-330le</a><p>Other commenters are pointing out that this won't work for long-distance flight. The Flying article I linked above says it will actually only last either 5 minutes or 15–20 minutes (it seems to contradict itself, but maybe I just don't understand it.) So it's adequate for aerobatics only. But it should be better at aerobatics than the standard engine was.<p>Further links from other comments:
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060954" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060954</a> <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/siemens-world-record-electric-motor-aircraft/37048/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gizmag.com/siemens-world-record-electric-motor-ai...</a> <a href="https://newshour.online/2016/07/04/world-record-electric-motor-makes-first-flight/" rel="nofollow">https://newshour.online/2016/07/04/world-record-electric-mot...</a>
This article has almost nothing about the actual motor in the title except this:<p>"every component from previous motors was examined and optimized to lighten this motor and improve efficiency. The end-shield for the motor, for example, was analyzed using a software package that divided the component into over 100,000 elements, each of which was individually further stress-analyzed and subject to iterative improvement loops. Eventually, the custom software spat out a filigree structure that weighs 4.9kg instead of the 10.5kg from the previous design."<p>The rest of the article is basically fluff with no info.
Just penciling in the math that means a quad copter is pretty straight forward with this motor. 200kg for a "megawatt" of thrust. Now all we need are batteries that are 3x as power dense as the current best of class and you'll be able to hop from home to the office in your 'quad'.
I applaud Siemens for venturing outside their comfort (profit?) zone instead of just incrementally improving whatever they did for decades already (and did not sell for having a bad quarter), but they are really overdoing milking this little plane for publicity. An electric motor being lighter, per Watt, than an ICE, who would have guessed.<p>That being said, a hybrid setup could well be worth it, even with the abysmal specific energy density of real life batteries: keep just as much conventional engine as needed for cruise flight only and have some form of electrical assist for the few minutes of a flight that need more power than that. Battery density isn't a problem at all when you don't need endurance.
Already discussed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060954" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12060954</a> ... Some commenters had more info on the engine on this thread.
I wouldn't think even older electric motors wouldn't work well enough in electric airplanes regarding weight and power? The weight of batteries is the biggest problem.
I thought it was the battery, not the engine, that prevented long-distance flight? For energy / kilogram, lithium batteries are around 200 while gasoline is around 13,200.
Nothing at all about reliability, which is going to be the biggest factor the aerospace industry will be considering about this. You can sacrifice reliability for <i>extreme</i> power-to-weight ratio, as evidenced by things like Top Fuel dragsters and even the electric motors in RC planes are optimised more for power than longevity.
better articles<p>WORLD-RECORD ELECTRIC MOTOR MAKES FIRST FLIGHT<p><a href="https://newshour.online/2016/07/04/world-record-electric-motor-makes-first-flight/" rel="nofollow">https://newshour.online/2016/07/04/world-record-electric-mot...</a><p>Siemens' world-record electric aircraft motor punches above its weight<p><a href="http://www.gizmag.com/siemens-world-record-electric-motor-aircraft/37048/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gizmag.com/siemens-world-record-electric-motor-ai...</a>
It seems that this motor's power-to-weight ratio advantage applies just as well to ground vehicles. Are there reasons why that isn't the case? I.e. is this approach somehow specific to heavier-than-air engines? (Also, speaking not necessarily to using <i>this specific motor</i>, but rather applying Siemens' cited optimization techniques for ground applications.)
The most recent episode of Fully Charged [1] looked at a 100% electric racing plane currently in development that uses two electric motors to drive two counter rotating propellers at the front of the aircraft.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1g1JrRRkY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1g1JrRRkY</a>
To what size of aircraft can a motor like this scale? Or perhaps more importantly, motor + batteries? To put it another way, is this technology likely to scale to an aircraft transporting 4 or more people anytime soon?