Tecnam puts plans for its BEV aircraft on hold
Aircraft designer Tecnam is postponing the launch of its electric aircraft indefinitely. The nine-seat P-Volt was initially scheduled to launch in 2026. As the reason for the decision, Tecnam cites uncertainties in battery development.
Tecnam initially announced the launch of the P-Volt in the spring of 2021. It wanted to develop the electric aircraft alongside engine manufacturer Roll-Royce and Norwegian regional airline Widerøe. Take-off was scheduled for 2026 – but the company is now pulling out of the deal.
“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,” Tecnam says. The company adds that even if it considered the most optimistic forecasts for slow charging cycles and the possible limitation of the maximum state of charge per cycle, the actual storage capacity would fall below 170Wh/kg. Flights operators would then have to replace the entire storage unit after only a few hundred flights, leading to a “dramatic increase in direct operating costs” due to the battery replacement price.
The company concludes that the prerequisites for commercialisation are not in place and that the time for the P-Volt has yet to come. The two project partners, Rolls-Royce and Widerøe, are not mentioned in the statement.
Commenting on the move, Fabio Russo, Tecnam’s chief R&D officer, says: “It has always been our culture to commit to achievable goals with customers and operators, and we intend to keep that promise. We hope that new technologies will make businesses viable sooner rather than later, and we have real confidence in our partners’ ability to bring highly valuable products to the zero-emission powertrain and energy storage arena.”
The project builds on a research programme launched in 2019 between Rolls-Royce and Widerøe that focuses on sustainable aviation and an existing partnership between Rolls-Royce and Tecnam to build a propulsion system for the all-electric P-Volt. The latter duo also recently worked on the modification of the Tecnam P2010, which received a parallel hybrid-electric propulsion system as part of the H3PS1 project.
Tecnam mentions the project in the current announcement, saying it has “a deep understanding of electric flight, gained from previous projects such as the H3ps hybrid aircraft […]. Today we have looked closely at the state of the art in energy storage and realistic 5-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”.
0 Comments