When Chip Yates started working on his electric airplane in 2012, he wasn't trying to make conventional, gas-powered aircraft look slow. That hasn't changed, he says. “That was not the design goal.”
But he's happy to point out his plane is as fast or faster than its competitors that run on single piston gas engines. The five world records Yates set last year for electric planes were finally officially verified by the Fédération Aéronautique International (FAI) last week, and now he can officially claim bragging rights.
Yates, a pilot and motorcyclist with an appetite for tackling challenges others deem crazy or impossible, flies a highly-modified Rutan Long-EZ, called the Long-ESA. Fitted with a battery that produces 258 horsepower (193 kW) instead of the 118-hp engine it came with, it can hit 220 mph and fly up to 14,701 feet. It goes from a standstill on the runway to 3,000 meters (9,843 feet) in 5 minutes, 32 seconds.
That's the equivalent of running a quarter mile in 45 seconds, but going straight up into the air instead of staying on the ground. The Long-ESA is the fastest electric plane ever made, and is more powerful than two other well-known battery-powered aircraft, the Airbus E-Fan and the Solar Impulse (which flies huge distances at uninspiring speeds).
Trumping other EVs is easy. It's more impressive to see the Long-ESA's numbers next to those posted by the Cessna and Cirrus aircraft that dominate private aviation. Yates' aircraft posts a top speed unmatched by the Cessna 172 or 128, thanks to the plane's light frame and its extra horsepower. The Cirrus SR22-G2 is more powerful and faster, but it can't climb as fast as the Long-ESA. In five and a half minutes, Yates' plane can go a lot higher:
That's because just like cars powered by batteries, electric planes offer performance benefits over the gas guzzlers. Engines need to pull in oxygen to work. The higher a plane flies, the less oxygen there is to use, so climb rate drops as altitude rises. That’s not the case for battery-powered aircraft. Yates’ plane will climb at 2,000 feet per minute until it runs out of power, he says.
Which brings us to the downside of all electric vehicles: range. The aircraft can fly for a bit under two hours at a conservative speed, if it doesn’t change altitude too much. At full power, it drains the battery in about 15 minutes. That shortcoming is actually the reason Yates built the plane in the first place: He’s using it to develop a way to recharge the battery in midair. His ultimate goal is to fly nonstop across the Atlantic as fast or faster than Charles Lindbergh did in 1927.
That dream is still a ways off, though Yates is planning a demonstration of the system in late 2014 or early 2015. For now, the world records and the pride of saying battery power can indeed beat gasoline should keep him happy.
