Another one bites the dust

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MountainDude

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www.seattletimes.com

WA electric plane startup halts operations in blow to green aviation

Arlington-based startup Eviation, which in 2022 flew the first flight of its electric airplane at Moses Lake, laid off most staff and paused operations indefinitely.
www.seattletimes.com www.seattletimes.com

It was a beautiful plane. Not sure why it did not fly more or succeed, after so many promises and PRs.
 
Bummer. That seemed to be one of the more useful and promising electric planes.

While physics and reality are a ***** sometimes, it doesn't sound like that had anything to do with this. Funding in aviation is even harder!

I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing had been putting some money into that company (ie, I don't think their location in Everett was purely by chance), and Boeing's wallet has gotten very thin in short order in the last year.
 
The e-aviation industry is very narrow focused. So where you tend to see "failures" its usually not a design, physics, or engineering problem, but a target market problem. And most conventional attempts like the Eviation aircraft lack any direct commercial applications so the economics of that eventually catch up and they lose funding. Outside of China, there are only about four e-aircraft ventures that are succeeding and have moved into the type certification phase. Only one of those ventures would be considered close to a "conventional" aircraft in terms of design and function but it successfully carved out a viable target market. And while there are still dozens of other e-aircraft out there vying for their place, most will unfortunately follow the same path as Eviation unless they can find a way to compete on the same level as the top 4 ventures.
 
bonefishpete said:
Pound for pound hard to beat JetA
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This, and with this announcement https://summitcarbonsolutions.com/s...ction-and-energy-independence-in-the-midwest/ it looks like a full synthetic jet fuel is going to be manufactured on a massive scale in a few years that can use existing aircraft and infrastructure and not rely on nonexistent battery technology or electric power grid changes. If I had money to invest I know which side I would bet on winning in the end.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing had been putting some money into that company (ie, I don't think their location in Everett was purely by chance), and Boeing's wallet has gotten very thin in short order in the last year.
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Eviation was based in Arlington. 15 nm north of Everett. Close, but vastly different airports.
Flatiowa said:
This, and with this announcement https://summitcarbonsolutions.com/s...ction-and-energy-independence-in-the-midwest/ it looks like a full synthetic jet fuel is going to be manufactured on a massive scale in a few years that can use existing aircraft and infrastructure and not rely on nonexistent battery technology or electric power grid changes. If I had money to invest I know which side I would bet on winning in the end.
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Been holding your breath for 100UL for long?
 
Flatiowa said:
If I had money to invest I know which side I would bet on winning in the end.
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You should have invested in the bio-fuel side then you would be making money now. While the e-fuels are making news now they are still far away from any large scale production, just as bio-fuels are. The down side to e-fuels is the high energy requirements and hydrogen supplies it needs to be produced.
 
As long as gas price stay low or probably lower due to the new administration electric aircraft, not a glowing future.
 
Roller said:
I’d wager science and logistics killed it
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And business reality. It was created by people who first and foremost wanted an electric airplane vs a financially competitive airplane.

It was never going to be better, faster, cheaper.

It was never going to be financially viable to have that amount of capital sitting for non revenue generating hours upon hours recharging.

It was never going to be financially viable with less range and less revenue pound per mile.

Remember, it had to carry all of the weight of all of what was providing the needed potential energy vs a jet A aircraft only having to carry a fraction of it. The energy density of jet A is more than the battery, and the other part it needs - the heavier oxygen - it doesn't have to carry at all as it takes it from the air as it flies. So yes, potential energy density on steroids.
 
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WDD said:
And business reality. It was created by people who first and foremost wanted an electric airplane vs a financially competitive airplane.

It was never going to be better, faster, cheaper.

It was never going to be financially viable to have that amount of capital sitting for non revenue generating hours upon hours recharging.

It was never going to be financially viable with less range and less revenue pound per mile.

Remember, it had to carry all of the weight of all of the needed potential energy vs a jet A aircraft only having to carry a fraction of it. The energy density of jet A is more than the battery, and the other part it needs - the heavier oxygen - it doesn't have to carry at all as it takes it from the air as it flies. So yes, potential energy density on steroids.
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They must have presented a reasonable business plan that drew in $86M in investments. Unless they lied, which is possible but unlikely.
 
Domenick said:
Eviation was based in Arlington. 15 nm north of Everett. Close, but vastly different airports.

Been holding your breath for 100UL for long?
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I don’t think an approval on a new formulation of fuel being Maybe worked on by a few small companies, and a chemically identical synthesized fuel based on technology that was being done at an industrial scale in the 1940’s applied to a multibillion dollar investment infrastructural development that has full funding, already permitted, and granted the power of eminent domain are even playing on the same field.
Bell206 said:
You should have invested in the bio-fuel side then you would be making money now. While the e-fuels are making news now they are still far away from any large scale production, just as bio-fuels are. The down side to e-fuels is the high energy requirements and hydrogen supplies it needs to be produced.
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Come to iowa some time and see how often the windmills are not turning, despite the wind blowing. It’s very rare the vast 30 plus mile long rows of 400 foot tall turbines are all turning. There is no buffer to equalize out power production and demand, the fuel burning plants can’t ramp up and down to compensate for variable wind days, a giant electrolysis plant generating hydrogen can with out affecting base load voltage in the transmission grid. At best they currently supply a small base load and are not close to producing a fraction of their potential energy generation (in my opinion). I will go one step further and say that converting that potential excess energy into a readily made, energy dense, drop in replacment usable with existing infrastructure makes more logical sense than trying to creat a science of batteries that doesn’t currently exist beyond maybe science lab experiments with serious scalability issues and exotic material requirements. Fischer and tropsche were simply to far ahead of their time, but now it’s coming full circle.
 
Remember, now, the first iteration of the Eviation Alice?

It started out looking like this:

1739657284891.png

And then it turned into this:

1739657316098.png

Did it fall onto its tail when the batteries were installed? Taildragging it is no way to fix a serious CG problem. There is so much airplane behind the wing that there MUST have been a CG problem.

How does one land a taildragger in a crosswind without slipping it one-wing-low and not chew those props off the tips? How does that tailwheel not flick FOD up into the tail propeller?

And how would we expect the same engineers that did this to create something successful after this thing caught fire and was abandoned? Remember that the final version made ONE very short test flight, and then no more at all. Was it a scary ride?
 
Dan Thomas said:
Remember, now, the first iteration of the Eviation Alice?

It started out looking like this:

View attachment 138164

And then it turned into this:

View attachment 138165

Did it fall onto its tail when the batteries were installed? Taildragging it is no way to fix a serious CG problem. There is so much airplane behind the wing that there MUST have been a CG problem.

How does one land a taildragger in a crosswind without slipping it one-wing-low and not chew those props off the tips? How does that tailwheel not flick FOD up into the tail propeller?

And how would we expect the same engineers that did this to create something successful after this thing caught fire and was abandoned? Remember that the final version made ONE very short test flight, and then no more at all. Was it a scary ride?
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That could not have ever been a serious design for real use.

First off not many speak tailwheel

If you can get pax to fly in it, they ain’t going to like being at a angle between takeoffs and landings

With an inexperienced tailwheel pilot and how far out those outboard engines are, going to be a hand full for most when it’s on the mains and you have a V1 cut.

I haven’t even touched the tons of issues being electric yet

Sometimes I think these things are just a scam to get money from gullible investors
 
Not to mention the moments of inertia by placing engines/motors at the wingtips in spin recovery.. “good luck with that” and “make sure they install a huge drouge chute on tail first” would be the best advise I could give the test pilot for a spin test..( in my uneducated opinion).
 
I think most of the investors of these e-planes must have scored very low in math, science and physics. No way a high school student with a basic understanding in these areas of study would throw a single nickel of his milk money toward one of these ventures.
 
MountainDude said:
They must have presented a reasonable business plan that drew in $86M in investments. Unless they lied, which is possible but unlikely.
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Brad Smith said:
I think most of the investors of these e-planes must have scored very low in math, science and physics. No way a high school student with a basic understanding in these areas of study would throw a single nickel of his milk money toward one of these ventures.
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The business plan must have been reasonable, because $86 million was invested. Premises are that it was rational to invest and investing means business plan was reasonable. IMHO those premises are not true. Also somewhat a circular logic.

If all investors and investments were rational and correct, no investor would ever be on the loosing side of a bet. And there are as many if not more bad investments vs good ones.

I believe in this case it was probably a combination of a good looking presentation, investors heavily biased by wanting a green energy plane, Fear of Missing Out, and taking cues from government that electric everything was taking over - regardless of real economics, in part because it could all be be subsidized and mandated.
 
WDD said:
The business plan must have been reasonable, because $86 million was invested. Premises are that it was rational to invest and investing means business plan was reasonable. IMHO those premises are not true. Also somewhat a circular logic.

If all investors and investments were rational and correct, no investor would ever be on the loosing side of a bet. And there are as many if not more bad investments vs good ones.

I believe in this case it was probably a combination of a good looking presentation, investors heavily biased by wanting a green energy plane, Fear of Missing Out, and taking cues from government that electric everything was taking over - regardless of real economics, in part because it could all be be subsidized and mandated.
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That brings up a good point

By “investing” did they get some goverment check or tax break because it’s “green energy”

That would make sense
 
Flatiowa said:
I will go one step further and say that converting that potential excess energy into a readily made, energy dense, drop in replacment usable with existing infrastructure makes more logical sense than trying to creat a science of batteries that doesn’t currently exist beyond maybe science lab experiments with serious scalability issues and exotic material requirements.
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My reply was mainly in context to the investment side. While you are correct that a drop-in SAF like e-fuel is a better option, the biomass based SAFs have the jump. So I think a good indicator of how e-fuel will play in the market is to compare its progress to the biomass side since 2008.

Large scale production of either one will take years or even decades to eclipse conventional jet fuel production. I believe the biomass SAF production is still less than 1% of all jet fuel production and they’ve been going at it for about 15 years or so.

Regardless, don’t sell battery advancements short. Its driven by a whole different dynamic and will serve a much greater market than just powering aircraft electric engines. At best, aviation applications will simply pick the best options from across a large field of new developments.
 
Bell206 said:
Regardless, don’t sell battery advancements short.
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I don't. But to me it's like investing in Nuclear Fusion energy. Someday it will work and be economical (probably). But it's not ready. So let's not build nuclear fusion power plants yet. In the meantime, let's use what works to get us the electricity we need.

When batteries come around, whenever that might be, great. But it doesn't make sense to build a battery powered airplane when the batteries aren't there yet.

It's not competitive and doesn't make things better by building something that isn't better, cheaper, and faster than what we currently have.
 
MountainDude said:
They must have presented a reasonable business plan that drew in $86M in investments. Unless they lied, which is possible but unlikely.
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What modern investment scheme makes you think that?

Heck, drop the word modern.

Technically, it is not a lie if you have no perception of reality.
 
In reply to post #26
Fair enough, but I am not sure you are grasping the scale of the project I linked earlier. It is something I have followed very closely (including reading every submission to the governing board in iowa) for a number of years as it’s final route of one of the main pipelines ended up falling 1 mile north of my acerage. From these public available filings and extrapolating the route maps over locations of extremely large/industrial scale livestock grow operations I predict that there will be additional “feeder” plants gasifying the manure/waste from those facilities to make an additional feeder source of carbon. This is kinda a very specific interest to me, close to 20 years ago I did a very extensive buisness viability analysis of converting poultry litter into diesel fuel, but it was unviable without extreme scale levels of investment. Capturing the carbon from ethanol distillation hadn’t crossed my mind, but I foresee the base concept being applied, and the pipeline locations being very well suited to intigration of my initial concept from so long ago.
 
WDD said:
But it doesn't make sense to build a battery powered airplane when the batteries aren't there yet.
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Agree. But there are a number of e-aircraft where the current battery tech and capacity are more than enough to handle the mission requirements. As I mentioned, so long as those e-aircraft developers understand their market and capabilities, they won’t end of like the OP venture

Flatiowa said:
Fair enough, but I am not sure you are grasping the scale of the project I linked earlier.
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I grasp it. Had the opportunity to work some aircraft hybrid-propulsion development that used only SAFs for fuel. As I recall, the e-fuel side was still at the “prototype” stage and there is only one small pilot e-fuel production facility operating. While it may seem like a large scale ops locally, when compared to the current international SAF production industry it pales in comparison.... and it only accounts for less than 1% of all jet fuel. However, I think if the e-fuel process ultimately does find an economical way to produce hydrogen, my bet is that hydrogen will end up powering a hydrogen fuel cell than end up in an A320 or B787 fuel tank.
 
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670,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year as feed stock (I’m not going to break out the periodic table and subtract the oxygen weight, replace it with the hydrogen weight as it recombined into long chain hyrocarbons, then convert it to gallons but..) for a phase one is a heck of a lot of fuel, with extreme potential for a possibly ten fold increase in production if the feed sources along the routes are tapped and a nuclear power plant is built close to the conversion facility.
 
GoFly said:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve met some pretty foolish millionaires.
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I've met some pretty smart ones who got sucked into incredibly bad investments by people who talk a good game but can't actually produce anything but bovine fecal deposits. I've met (and worked for) the latter as well.
 
Venture capital operates on the premise that one big hit can more than offset dozens of misses. They control their risk by not throwing good money after bad, and are pretty ruthless at pulling the plug on ventures that fail to meet stage targets. That's probably what happened here.
 
I can’t help but think of the scene from the movie brewsters millions when the iceberg made money..
 
WDD said:
I don't. But to me it's like investing in Nuclear Fusion energy. Someday it will work and be economical (probably). But it's not ready. So let's not build nuclear fusion power plants yet. In the meantime, let's use what works to get us the electricity we need.

When batteries come around, whenever that might be, great. But it doesn't make sense to build a battery powered airplane when the batteries aren't there yet.

It's not competitive and doesn't make things better by building something that isn't better, cheaper, and faster than what we currently have.
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Haven't you heard? Batteries with 5-10 times the energy density of current iterations and able to recharge in 30 minutes or less are on the cusp of production. Any day now the Problems Will Be Solved.
 
3393RP said:
Haven't you heard? Batteries with 5-10 times the energy density of current iterations and able to recharge in 30 minutes or less are on the cusp of production. Any day now the Problems Will Be Solved.
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Right after we get bi-partisan, effective, responsive government that everyone agrees with.
 
DaleB said:
I've met some pretty smart ones who got sucked into incredibly bad investments by people who talk a good game but can't actually produce anything but bovine fecal deposits. I've met (and worked for) the latter as well.
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Agree there as well
 
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