WHY HYBRID ELECTRIC? FEATURE BY AMPAIRE

This is a question Ampaire often fields from those interested in why we are not going full battery electric like the Tesla, or why we do not just switch to burning a new type of fuel such as hydrogen. The answer lies in the unique way that aircraft operate and the need to scale to a wide variety of aircraft sizes and missions.

Despite the fact that a Ford Pinto compact car was at one time bolted to the Cessna 337, the first aircraft Ampaire hybridised aircraft are not cars. Unlike an electric car, which has a 200km (125 mile) range and will stop on the side of the road when out of batteries, a cargo aircraft must fly an additional 45 minutes and be able to perform a go-around landing attempt and to be able to divert to alternate airports.

This is sometimes known as 'emergency reserves' or 'flight reserves' and on combustion aircraft, this means carrying some extra fuel onboard that you do not plan to use. Larger planes with more than 19 passengers generally require even greater reserve requirements, especially on overwater routes.

A plane flying at approximately 280km/h (150 knots / 170mph) can complete that 200km route in about 45 minutes, which means the emergency reserves are as long as the flight itself. On smaller propeller aircraft operating commercially, the vast majority of commercial routes are under 200km distance, which means for a typical regional route flight reserves exceed planned flight time by a significant margin. Routes can be as short as 2.7km (1.7 miles) and completed in about 50 seconds, but when you are using fuel on a route like this one, it does not matter much to carry a bit extra.