“After three years of intensive studies covering the entire lifecycle of an all-electric aircraft, Tecnam has concluded that the time for P-Volt is not yet ripe, although research activities will continue to explore new emerging technologies,” said a company statement.
The Tecnam P-Volt commuter/regional eletricallyer power airliner has been under development with Rolls-Royce.
“Since the beginning of the P-Volt development, Tecnam’s focus has been to provide operators with the ability to fly an all-electric passenger aircraft profitably, efficiently and sustainably in terms of operating costs, emissions, performance, turnaround and time to market. At present, Tecnam believes that these can only be achieved by extremely aggressive speculation on uncertain technology developments,” it continued.
“Tecnam has a deep understanding of electric flight, gained from previous projects such as the H3ps hybrid aircraft based on the P2010 four-seater, and today we have looked closely at the state of the art in energy storage and realistic five year developments, excluding technological revolutions that no one can speculate on. One of the conclusions was that an aircraft with a battery pack at the end of its life would not be the best product for the market, but certainly the worst in terms of Net Present Value (NPV).
“The proliferation of aircraft with “new” batteries would lead to unrealistic mission profiles that would quickly degrade after a few weeks of operation, making the all-electric passenger aircraft a mere “Green Transition flagship” rather than a real player in the decarbonisation of aviation. Taking into account the most optimistic projections of slow charge cycles and the possible limitation of the maximum charge level per cycle, the real storage capacity would fall below 170Wh/kg, and only a few hundred flights would drive operators to replace the entire storage unit, with a dramatic increase in direct operating costs due to the reserves for battery replacement prices.
For more information
https://tecnam.com/tecnam-to-postpone-the-p-volt-programme/
