Clearly a short occurred that wasn't cleared by any kind of protection. I don't think it was a battery failure but rather a design failure.
It would be the analog of a fuel line rupturing in the engine compartment and while the fuel pump kept running something hot igniting the fuel. I think I'd rather run thru a fountain of sparks than a lake of burning fuel, though, I'd sure rather not do either!
That is the beauty of some of those nice battery's they can "Short" internally, and there is no PROTECTION from that. Just wait till ocean liners are packed full of them, and ferry boats, and maybe good old returning propliners as well. But then doesn't the FAA have a ban on aircraft loaded with them? Gas fires fuel lines etc. the good thing is they can be extinguished, and the fumes are no where as toxic.
One particular lithium battery type does that, Lithium Ion. Several other types don't. The type normally used in buses don't. That's another reason that was likely a bolted fault. The batteries just pumped their energy into the fault.
Tesla batteries are the style known to self-zorch. They're also slowly tweaking them so they tend to do that less too.
I don't see that whole event as a much of a negative against e-vehicles. I see that as a reason to not buy from that bus company.
The only licensed commercially available e-aircraft uses Li-Ion batteries.
The plane costs exactly the same price as the IC version.
Fuel price for operation is between 10 and 11 times more than the electric version.
Keith, I assume that's selling, not commercial use? I've been watching Harbour Air, I was thinking they would have the first commercial use e-plane. Using a 70 year old plane for a commercial e-plane project makes me smile.
It is used commercially as a very inexpensive flight trainer since it costs so little to operate. I'd imagine it's popular since a flight services company can probably charge a little less while actually making more using the VELIS.
Seems Pipistrel was just bought by Textron who makes Cessna. Let's hope they don't bury it since they only cost about $200k as compared to smallest Cessnas costing about $1M
Some of the more elegant (IMO) low wing alternatives (piper, beechcraft, etc) can be optioned up over a million without much difficulty.
I think a lot of people also forget that any modern plane, even a 172, has a huge percentage of the cost going to avionics, which wasn't the case in the 70s when you could buy a 172 for roughly the average annual salary of the middle class.
