Certifying a new electric aircraft is hard. There are several other startups who are trying to do this and they're all struggling.
Certifying a pilotless aircraft is really hard. There are no pilotless commercial aircraft because nobody has created one that can be trusted to never crash. I'm not sure that the FAA even knows HOW to certify such an aircraft.
So logically, certifying a new, pilotless, commercial electric aircraft is likely next to impossible. At least to a cynical bum like me.
Good luck Wisk; I hope you prove me wrong!
The first gen model came out in 2011 and that's probably where the FAA authorization process development started. I doubt they are just starting it now.
FAA doesn't know how, just as they didn't know how to certify the first jetliner or the first light sport aircraft. This is how new regulations are made. In my experience, the FAA is pretty open minded and sometimes excited by novel concepts and will work with planemakers to figure out a certification plan.
Boeing seems to have enough regulatory capture to do this with easily, kill people with impunity, and get the CEO raises and bonuses along the way. If Wisk has their lobbyists and FAA insiders as well it would certainly ease the path.
Oh dear, USA; you have a real problem with your Supreme Court enacting precedents for things that are clearly not in the interest of a succesful USA.
The Supreme Court is supposed to be the last-resort, the fail-safe, the watcher of the US legal system. But somehow it has become infected with partisan BS and now we have to wonder Who watches the watchers? How do we get out of this mess?
The Supreme Court’s job isn’t to enact precedents that are in the interest of a successful USA. Their job is to make rulings regarding whether laws are constitutional and interpreting what laws mean when there is a question regarding how a law should be interpreted.
Neither the constitution or enacted laws are always in the best interest of the USA. If that is the case it isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to change them. That is the job of the people either directly or through their elected representatives.
> If that is the case it isn’t the job of the Supreme Court to change them.
The Supreme Court changes laws all the time. Where is the line between "interpreting what laws mean" and "deciding what laws mean", i.e. changing law and making new law? The Supreme Court has been in the business of changing and making new law for a long time; this sitting court is just the worst example of it.
> If you think this, you need to severely re-examine your biases
My biases are in favor of processes, systems, and laws that produce outcomes that are long-term beneficial to the country and its people, rather than short-term beneficial for a corrupt few at the expense of everyone else. So in that sense, this court is the worst example in the last hundred years, at least. Yes, according to my biases.
RBG believed Roe v. Wade was incorrectly argued, and that the basis for that argument made it easier to attack (which she was correct about in hindsight.) She absolutely believed in abortion as a fundamental right, however, but would have preferred precedent be based on the Equal Protection clause.
No... it's really not. She said the way it was argued (privacy) was not a solid legal ground, which is correct. Roe v Wade the case was not about abortion as a whole (which is still legal in the United States as a whole, since there's no law banning it). Roe v Wade was a case that said the Constitution has a right to privacy that includes abortion, which it does not.
Maybe in the future, someone will attempt to argue an equal rights case. Maybe not.
Either way, that case will not be Roe v Wade. Supporting abortion is not the same as supporting Roe v Wade. Two separate things when it comes to law.
> Finding new constitutional rules in “emanations from penumbras” seems extremely over that line
There's a difference between "finding new constitutional rules," on the one hand, versus recognizing the logical implications of existing rules, on the other.
Mocking "emanations from penumbras" seems to hint at hostility to the Ninth Amendment's explicit rule that not every right and liberty must be explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
For non-lawyer readers, the "emanations" quote is from Griswold v. Connecticut, recognizing a constitutionally-based privacy right to use contraception. The complete quote is:
<quote>
The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy.
The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.
The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy.
The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.'
The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment.
The Ninth Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.'
> There's a difference between "finding new constitutional rules," on the one hand, versus recognizing the logical implications of existing rules, on the other.
A sweeping right to kill fetuses is not logically implied from a right to be secure against warrantless searches. Many legal systems have the latter protection, but the US is an aberration in interpreting it to create some right to bodily autonomy.
> Mocking "emanations from penumbras" seems to hint at hostility to the Ninth Amendment's explicit rule that not every right and liberty must be explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
The Ninth Amendment is just a savings clause. It cannot support conjuring new rights into existence by spring boarding off enumerated ones. Put differently, the bill of rights isn’t a set of legal principles which can be invoked as the building blocks to divine previously non-existent rights to override democracy.
The quoted portion of Griswold is unpersuasive in the extreme. I’d call up and yell at any associate that handed me anything like that. People would be up in arms if the Court used similarly vacuous reasoning to, for example, divine a “right” that was economic or regulatory in nature.
But increasingly that's what the supreme court has been doing. They are vastly overstepping their authority in multiple regards. More recent examples include their stance on the ability of congress to delegate authority to various agencies (See: the EPA restrictions on carbon emissions). It's very easily for the court to subvert the authority of other branches by forcing them to 'redelegate' or re-litigate previously authorized agencies knowing full well that congress has been in deadlock for partisan reasons.
> that congress has been in deadlock for partisan reasons.
If Congress is in deadlock, that means that Americans cannot agree on the rules. In that case, yes... no rules ought to be made, because it's not going to represent American's interests writ large.
You are actually arguing that rules should be made up by unelected bureaucrats while admitting that the representatives substantially disagree on those rules and would not be able to legislate them themselves.
That means you are asking bureaucrats to go against the collective will of democratically elected representatives.
Is the Supreme Court elected now? When did I vote to have the Supreme Court stacked in such a way?
And if your argument is 'congress is in deadlock so no rules ought to be made' then fine. Except the Supreme Court is continuing to make up rules during that deadlock, many of which have a direct and measurable impact on my daily quality of life.
Problem is: At some point, someone has to make rules. The world changes, technology changes, new problems emerge that cannot magically solve themselves. Congress has been nonfunctional for my entire adult life. Consequently, with a few bipartisan exceptions, Federal law is stuck in 1993. Should it be stuck in 1993 forever? Think about it for a minute--should Congress simply stop doing anything from now on because we are perpetually split exactly 50-50 on every possible issue?
This is why, historically, Congress delegates duties to different agencies and empowers them with authority. Both so that experts in their respective fields can do their job, and so that they can continue to make decisions in the wake of congress being nonfunctional.
So what happens when the Supreme Court steps in and says that delegated authority is no longer valid? The answer is that we become more nonfunctional and the intention is clear, because the court has partisan objectives.
> So what happens when the Supreme Court steps in and says that delegated authority is no longer valid? The answer is that we become more nonfunctional and the intention is clear, because the court has partisan objectives.
Given that the overwhelming majority of government workers are themselves partisan in one direction (DC is by far majority democrat, and government workers the same), one can easily argue the opposite: that allowing bureaucratic rule making is itself partisan.
“Congress can’t bring themselves to exercise their powers under the Constitution, so the Supreme Court should allow the President to exercise those powers instead” is a pretty scary argument.
The overstepping of authority argument is brought up by both sides depending on whether the court is deciding how they like or not. It isn’t even a recent phenomenon.
What exactly do you think the supreme court’s job even is? You seem to have it exactly backwards. The framers spent enormous amounts of time and ink creating this system of separation of powers. Obviously it’s the job of the Supreme Court to police that. Much more so than finding new “rights” in emanations from penumbras.
If the Supreme Court continues to get ever more partisan, I wonder if there will ever be a challenge to Marbury v. Madison. Certainly Congress has the power to strip jurisdiction from the court for anything that isn't covered by Article III. They may not have the will, though, given the deep partisan divide and evenly split party representation.
> I wonder if there will ever be a challenge to Marbury v. Madison.
An excellent question. Marbury isn't itself so much a problem as how courts — and the All-Writs Act — have implemented the basic principle. But people have gone along with expansive judicial review for two centuries now, so it's pretty much locked in as "how things are done."
Congress could still limit the reach of Marbury without a constitutional amendment, I think: Under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause, Congress could pass a law saying, for example, some or all of the following:
1. Only SCOTUS has the power to declare an act of Congress (and/or a federal regulation) unconstitutional; a lower court's declaration of unconstitutionality is simply an advisory opinion that has the effect of putting the case in question on hold. (The latter part would need more thought as to the operational details.)
2. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality has no effect unless agreed to by at least a 7-2 vote.
3. A SCOTUS declaration of unconstitutionality can be overridden by, say, a 3/5 vote of each of the House and Senate, subject to the usual rules about presidential vetoes and pocket vetoes.
Is Congress likely to do any of the foregoing? Probably not — but there might be at least some bipartisan support for cautiously shifting more power back to the elected political branches.
I’m not sure Congress can regulate the Supreme Court’s voting rules, but I agree with your first point. We should’ve done that during the Warren court and stripped the Court of jurisdiction to challenge law on social and moral issues.
> We should’ve done that during the Warren court and stripped the Court of jurisdiction to challenge law on social and moral issues.
Without the Warren Court's decisions in Brown v. Board or Cooper v. Aaron ("separate but equal" schools), we likely would have had even more race-related social upheaval in the 60s than we actually did. Robert Caro's books on LBJ recount how he (LBJ) had to work very hard and skillfully to get civil- and voting-rights legislation past decades-long Southern congressional blockades — Southern committee chairman, plus Senate filibusters — and even then it was a near-run thing.
Without SCOTUS- and Fifth-Circuit intervention — back then, the "Mighty Fifth" was far more liberal than today — desegregation would have taken years longer, maybe even decades. The race riots and other violence we saw in the 60s (which I remember very well from childhood, including living in a Washington D.C. suburb during the riots after MLK's assassination) would likely have been even worse.
> I’m not sure Congress can regulate the Supreme Court’s voting rules
For its internal purposes the Court can certainly make any voting rules it wants. But I'd submit that Congress has the power (under the Exceptions and Regulations Clause) to limit what external effect is to be given to Court votes that don't rise to a congressionally-specified threshold.
> Certainly Congress has the power to strip jurisdiction from the court for anything that isn't covered by Article III.
You don't need the "for anything ...." part of your sentence: The Exceptions and Regulations Clause is part of Article III and explicitly gives Congress the power to limit the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction in pretty much all (federal) cases:
<quote>
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. [That is, the Supreme Court is the trial court; in those cases, SCOTUS practice is to appoint a "special master" — typically, a former SCOTUS clerk — to hear the case and submit findings of fact and conclusions of law for the Court's consideration.]
In all the other Cases before mentioned [i.e., all cases where federal courts have any jurisdiction at all], the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
</quote>
(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)
Moreover, because all lower (federal) courts are creatures of Congress from the get-go, there's no reason to think Congress can't limit the jurisdiction of those courts. Congress has repeatedly done this in the past by creating specialty courts, e.g., the Court of Federal Claims and the former Court of Customs and Patent Appeals (merged into the Federal Circuit in 1982).
The constitution sets forth the structure of government with great specificity in a legal document. It’s quite reasonable to conclude that the Supreme Court, which is expressly conferred the “judicial power,” can decide compliance with the terms of that legal document. It’s not enumerated but it’s within the scope of the architecture of the constitution. Not everything needs to be “enumerated.” What is an “unreasonable search or seizure,” what is “cruel and unusual punishment?” The Supreme Court can decide that.
That’s completely different from “emanations from penumbras”—which is just pulling stuff out of your butt. Nothing in the Constitution makes the Supreme Court an Iran-style Guardian Council, the final arbiter on social and moral issues.
It’s no different than any other written legal document. I have a lease agreement with Toyota. That document can be interpreted—it doesn’t need to expressly enumerate everything. But that doesn’t mean you can read it to govern say how I raise my children. Just because everything doesn’t need to be enumerated doesn’t mean that some things aren’t outside the scope of the document.
I think it's farcical that this Court will hold the other branches to the strictly enumerated powers granted by the Constitution and yet restrains itself in no similar manner. "Emanations and penumbras" are just a mid-century aristocratic articulation of the idea that if you exercise multiple protected rights simultaneously, it follows that the sum of that conduct would also be constitutionally protected. People may disagree with the verbiage, or the outcome, but it is in fact quite easy to understand.
The Court isn’t holding Congress to “strictly enumerated powers.” The constitution doesn’t say anything about the federal government being able to enact environmental legislation, but the Supreme Court has widely interpreted the Commerce Clause to allow it.
The non-delegation cases are about whether the elaborate and explicit separation of powers in the Constitution even means anything at all. The notion that you can have executive agencies making “regulations” with the force of law, and adjudicating cases through administrative judges, is already inconsistent with the idea of having three separate branches of government with clearly differentiated powers. The only question is whether that constitutional separation is mostly meaningless, or completely meaningless.
And the “emanations and penumbras” has nothing to do with “multiple protected rights.” If you are carrying a gun while protesting, that’s covered by the second and first amendments and you don’t need anything on top of that. “Emanations and penumbras” is a way to pull “rights” out of your ass that aren’t in the document. It’s classic mid-20th century white guy pontificating.
Isn't it implied by the fact that the Constitution provides mechanisms to amend the Constitution? Why even have these mechanisms if an ordinary law couldn't be struck down on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional?
> The Supreme Court is supposed to be the last-resort, the fail-safe, the watcher of the US legal system. But somehow it has become infected with partisan BS and now we have to wonder Who watches the watchers? How do we get out of this mess?
That's a lot of words for "the court doesn't lean my way, so let us act like the entire system has failed". Extremely low quality bait.
There is open corruption of sitting supreme court justices and our collective response is to yawn. This is not, or should not be, a partisan issue. Corruption is bad, full stop.
> Star Liner has all the same problems that the Space Shuttle had. In an emergency, how do you get the crew out safely?
Starliner has a launch abort system; the Shuttle did not.
From what I understand, they use a very powerful rocket (much more powerful than Crew Dragon) to get the capsule far away from the booster. I guess it can get far enough away that NASA is satisfied that falling bits of burning SRB aren't a danger to the parachutes.
During the Starline abort test only 2 of the 3 parachutes opened, and that was a pad abort test - no SRBs!! NASA not only calling that a "success", but a sufficient success to move onto crewed testing was about the moment I lost all faith in Bridenstine being different. Immediately after leaving office he picked up a cushy consulting type gigs for various aerospace/defense companies (aka Boeing et al). Shocker.
For those who might not know SRB = solid rocket booster. Boeing uses them, SpaceX doesn't. An SRB is basically like a giant firecracker. You light it and it starts burning and doesn't stop until its done. It poses substantial safety concerns in the case of an accident where you need to abort the flight. But they're cheap, extremely powerful, and relatively simple contrasted against liquid fuel engines.
While I share your reservations with solid rockets as a main propulsion system on a manned rocket, it turns out they are well suited for launch escape systems themselves for some of the same exact reasons: they’re simple and powerful.
> While I share your reservations with solid rockets as a main propulsion system on a manned rocket, it turns out they are well suited for launch escape systems themselves for some of the same exact reasons: they’re simple and powerful.
Interestingly, both Crew Dragon and Starliner have eschewed SRB based LES/LAS systems for liquid fueled hypergolic ones. You can tell this because neither capsule has a "puller" on the nose like Apollo/Orion does.
Yeah, that is an interesting decision, especially since hypergolics represent a completely different set of risks. But they are extremely reliable for this application.
Well we shall see I suppose. SRB's go back to the Apollo era and NASA safety qualifications often come down to 'are you doing what we've done before'? Hence them refusing to even consider SpaceX retropulsive crew landings, even though that would be a huge step forward.
I would also observe that NASA has a relatively poor safety record contrasted against the Soyuz (which has not lost crew since 1971 in spite of flying more manned missions), and one of the few completely catastrophic crashes we have had, Challenger, was directly related to the SRB. In either case, I expect variance is playing a much larger role than most might appreciate.
Didn't the shuttle have this harebrained thing where the crew were supposed to climb all the way to the exit hatch in their pressure suits, extend a boom along the wing in full flight and then parachute out along it?
I thought I read about that. Of course that's effectively no actual escape system lol. They'd be long dead by the time they managed all that in an out of control shuttle.
Yep. That's supposedly for them to ditch in the event that the main engines fail but the shuttle is controllable - they don't have enough energy for a trans-atlantic abort, so they glide and bail out over the ocean.
How far did this plan go? Just because it was discussed and documented and thought through does not mean it was something that was actually going to happen. Was this actually developed and the parts&pieces put into place with procedures written up in the flight manual?
> Did the astronauts believe that it's likely that the system would save them? Probably not.
Yeah personally I would have taken my chances ditching the craft, tbh. It would probably ditch pretty well considering it doesn't have huge engine pods under the wings.
The home-computer wars of the 1990s have always confused me. There's seems to be a kind of tribal-allegiance that computer-buyers participated in when they became computer-owners. I've never understood why it had to be PC vs Amiga or Nintendo vs Sega or whatever.
My best guess is that a lot of the buyers were young kids who did'nt have the maturity yet to see the world in a more flexible way. I was certainly guilty of that back when I was a teen.
It was because there was a lot of difference between the systems then, unlike today where they are all the same technology with a different sticker on the front of the case.
If you cared about games, the system you bought would be completely different than if you cared about business.
In the 8-bit era, if you wanted business you got a CP/M system with 80x24 text. If you wanted games, you got an Atari 800 or Commodore 64 with colors, hardware scrolling and sprites.
In the 16-bit era, there was the IBM PC for business, the Mac for people who wanted ease of use, the Amiga for games, 4096 color graphics and stereo sound, and the Atari ST (512 colors, mono sound) if you couldn't afford an Amiga. That said, they could all do games but obviously some were better than others, and they could all do business, but the perception was that game systems weren't good at business so business apps weren't made available.
Many things were platform specific at that time. You didn't have major game titles or business applications widely available across platforms. Folks who used PCs/Apple/etc at work/school were more likely to buy similar for the family at home etc.
In my family I get the impression we chose our home computers based on merit/value. That meant starting with the commodore 128 in the mid 80s and led to my brother buying an Amiga 1000 [with his hard earned teenage burger king min wage $] in 1987.
In the 90s the advent of Windows 3.1 running on cheap PC clones left Commodore in the dust. The value for the money shifted to PC, even if it was inferior at first.
It was really sad that Amiga did not continue to innovate - the hardware was astonishing which can be seen by looking at the demo scene output and games front he time relative to what was possible on other platforms.
I think it was mostly because $1000 items were a bit harder to come by back then so kids would do a lot of reading and day dreaming before getting enough cash to pull the trigger. By the time they could actually afford a computer/monitor/printer/software they had talked themselves into how great the product was.
"But in June 2023, Musk said at an energy conference that "there just weren't enough batteries" for Tesla to reach "volume production" of the truck."
It looks like battery production is the major constraint on Teslas endeavours. Someone at Tesla clearly did the math on ROI-per-cell and decided that Semis just don't pay as well as Cybertrucks or Powerwalls. That's why they're starving the Semi operation until they can spin up more battery production.
I expect this news to have a positive effect. I wonder if an individual might own so much stock that they can overwhelm the short market for small durations. The price jump yesterday made no sense to me.
Vendors missing deadlines on contracts is a valid reason for contracts being terminated, renewals being cancelled, and even litigation over breach of contract or even misrepresentation (depending on how angry the customer is).
There's a reason why PepsiCo partners are moving to Daimler now.
The argument that it's just "missing deadlines" which as true as it is, is also a strawman.
Musk hasn't just "missed deadlines". He's outright lied.
For example, in 2016 he claimed Tesla already had self driving capabilities it hasn't shown today, 8 years later.
He lied about bulletproof windows on the CyberTruck. His own demo disproved this.
He lied about the solar roofs. The entire demo was false and staged and the tiles on the roofs were not solar tiles as the demo strongly implied. And testimony showed that he personally knew that it was a lie.
Musk doesn't just miss deadlines. He blatantly lies. And that raises the legitimate concern that a lot of "missed deadlines" weren't just deadlines that were missed, but deadlines that were never feasible and he just lied about.
I do think it's amusing what the other guy says. Forums like this will be full of "Why software estimates are so hard and we shouldn't be forced to stick to deadlines" and the explanation will be "because each React form is like brand new R&D - more akin to Marie Curie's discoveries than a surgeon's work" and then suddenly a brand new kind of vehicle that has never been mass produced before has to hit deadlines or it's sign of obvious incompetence.
I think this is a pretty clear misrepresentation. The entire point of those forum posts is that software engineers are angry at managers promising timelines that aren't connected to reality: they want the unpredictability of the task to be transparent. That is actually entirely consistent, and arguably the exact same frustration, that they have with Musk -- a manager-type promising outrageous deadlines, repeatedly, with apparently zero ability to learn from past misses. The anger is with continuing to promise these outrageous deadlines, and furthermore the frustration of being called out if you are skeptical of them, not with the fact that he misses them. It's a one-to-one, 100%, absolutely identical complaint.
Software estimates also need to be hit, but Sales, Product, and Engineering leadership will fight to prevent the brunt of that from hitting ICs, but at some point if a large contract does churn, plenty of IC engineers will have their head on the chopping board.
I've been on both sides so I get it, and the only solution is to have blunt and honest communication from all sides - Field Facing teams need to not overcommit, and Internal teams actually need to execute and COMMUNICATE why they cannot.
As an employee, we are all working to make the company more money. That's the only goal.
That doesn't absolve them of the fact that they underdelivered on a 8-9 figure deal by 66% over 7 years.
The fact that PepsiCo leaked this to Reuters itself means they are on the warpath right now (eg. probably trying to strong-arm a significant refund and cost reduction, or setting up the paper trail needed to begin litigation over breach of contract).
> doesn't absolve them of the fact that they underdelivered on a 8-9 figure deal by 66% over 7 years
I mean, it almost might. The problem isn't the underdelivery. It's Musk's loss of credibility. When he says it's about battery production, it might be about battery production, or it might be that he randomly changed the design at the last minute.
That's a good point, but leaking this tidbit to Reuters seems like a nuclear option (like Tesla's customer retention program failed and PepsiCo is trying to break out of the contract now).
Like I've had customers pissed off about missed deadlines, but they didn't leak or churn because we tried to keep them happy.
As is usually the case with these things, I think the key to reading them is buried at the end of the article:
> PepsiCo investor Green Century Capital Management has reservations about the company's time table for rolling out the Semis.
>
> "The fact they're running behind schedule is concerning," said Andrea Ranger, a shareholder advocate at Green Century. The investment firm has followed PepsiCo's use of electric vehicles and is pushing the company to consider its impacts on biodiversity at its annual meeting in May.
Green Century (as its name implies) has a "three-pronged approach combines a fossil fuel free sustainable investing strategy with award-winning shareholder advocacy and support of environmental nonprofits to deliver impact in a way other mutual fund families can't" (quote is from their homepage). My guess is that Green Century are the ones feeling the heat here -- they need to have their fund's emmission figures come out right yesterday, and Pepsi can't make them right unless they get their EV fleet, whether via Tesla or someone else.
If you read between the lines, you'll notice that no one at PepsiCo says anything bad about Tesla per se, only that they're committed to deploying more EVs and a bunch of other green systems. The rest of the article is other supply & logistics companies pointing out that they're having good results with trucks from other manufacturers and/or that they're also unhappy with Tesla's timeline, then someone from GC saying they don't think Tesla can hit their schedule. With the review coming up in May ("the investment firm has followed PepsiCo's use of electric vehicles and is pushing the company to consider its impacts on biodiversity at its annual meeting in May.") this is probably GC trying to convince Pepsi to stop waiting for the bloody Teslas and just get whatever EVs will get their fleet going this year.
> I keep hearing about competitors, but I never see any of their EVs, new or used. I see Teslas everywhere.
Around these parts, we see a lot of non-Tesla electrics. Many of them are not obvious at all, until you realize that an SUV has a Clean Pass sticker, and no tailpipes.
But there are also many 3s and Ys. I think, for a time, Tesla was the biggest-selling brand in the US.
Ford lost money because they went all in too fast for how late they were to the game.
And frankly it seems to be greed. They have proven hybrid and PHEV tech yet deny the US market the hybrid ranger, 'because US buyers can get the maverick'.
> I wonder how many deadlines that people miss here, and that's usually just pure software
That's not the flex you think it is. Software is pretty unique in delivering products that the companies don't want to stand behind--think of every software license that basically says "if this software doesn't work, it's YOUR FAULT".
In most industries, missing deadlines is generally grounds for your customers to get very cross with you, especially when your customers are businesses and not consumers.
> Man the critics here about deadlines is astounding.
> I wonder how many deadlines that people miss here, and that's usually just pure software, no materials.
Look... I'm an investor in the Tesla IPO ($4k -> $200k+). I own a Tesla vehicle.
Current Elon has run off the deep end into conspiracy theories and utter nonsense. Buying Twitter because he was butt-hurt over some of his tweets being punished is just asinine. It is also a massive distraction on something utterly trivial.
There was absolutely a massive whisper campaign to say that EVs would never work. Elon did a lot of great things in the beginning. Some of those things include making lofty promises even though delivering on those promises took a lot longer than he thought. The most important thing in the beginning was proving EVs could work to the early adopters, ensuring Tesla could survive long enough to reach volume ramp-up. Volume means parts suppliers start returning your calls and economies of scale improve everything. Doing things differently got them noticed. Making cars fun was a brilliant marketing strategy... does anyone really need the Toy Box stuff Teslas can do? No... but it makes a lot of people (me included) smile. (My kids think Emissions mode is hilarious on our drive to school drop-off and now consider all other cars to be inferior because those cars can't make fart sounds. That's mind share you can't fucking buy even with unlimited money.)
Passing into the volume phase has killed a lot of companies. There are many more opportunities for things to go wrong and mistakes cost you a lot more. Your company also transitions from "we need exposure at any cost" to "we are a brand leader who has set expectations".
During this critical time Elon has failed to change his messaging. He is still in "we need exposure" mode, making outlandish promises and starting too many projects at once. In the end it is all a self-own. There was no need to get into semi-trucks. They have enough trouble scaling up Model Y and even shipping the Cyber Truck. They still haven't really delivered on FSD, despite charging for it and continuously increasing the price. It was 100% unnecessary. Focus on execution, leave the semi-truck idea for a few years down the road. You have enough irons in the fire. Your #1 focus should be a Model Y refresh since it is by far your top seller and is what is generating all that cash making Tesla an ongoing concern.
tl;dr: Tesla is no longer in survival mode but it is in a critical phase of its growth. Elon should have stopped making outlandish promises some time ago and focused on execution. His thin-skin about Twitter, resulting in trying to get a board seat, on a whim turning into buying the company has been a massive distraction that hurts Tesla at a time when it needs strong leadership and the traditional automakers are still fumbling on EVs.
The craziest thing is, regardless how people feel about politics, Musk has achieved a lot for technology yet people in technology forums disparage him. I guess politics trumps technology.
I wouldn't call it crazy to point to someone with a documented history of lying and say that their word can't be trusted. Rather, that's called basic pattern recognition.
He successfully marketed and monetized an industry that already existed and would continue to exist without him, then reinvested in that industry to make himself more money. The way you and some others talk about him you would think he invented batteries and was the first one to discover you can use electricity to make a car move.
The parroted introduction has me reading this comment in bad faith, but I'll bite anyway. What are some of his personal tech achievements? Emphasis on personal.
both are true. he's achieved amazing things, seriously pushing technology forwards
he also makes outlandish public claims which are ridiculous at the time and get worse with age. you can appreciate what he's done while simultaneously believing 0% of what leaves his mouth
He has a notorious habit of overpromising and underdelivering. I thought that habit of his was well established even before he became so vocally political.
You have to wonder if working for four or five different companies while, allegedly, being on _all the drugs_ has an impact on his performance.
If Musk ran Apple we'd still be waiting on the iPhone XS, though he'd insist it'll be ready by "end of year", a phone that launched around the time Musk was crowing about these trucks.
It was, but it was the politics that swung the opinion pendulum from pathological "admire wins, ignore losses" to pathological "ignore wins, disparage losses."
But Musk himself has said that American EV makers can't compete against Chinese EVs without trade barriers. Barriers that western governments have been more than happy to establish.
> "If there are no trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world," he said. "They're extremely good."
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s that the dude spews whatever out of his mouth and the broader public and media take him at his word when time again its been seen that his word doesn’t mean shit.
As a counterpoint, we tried to get a tesla roof. Their repeated broken promises meant that we went with competitors (you can only delay installing a roof for so long...), and we simply don't trust Tesla to do anything at this point.
Most people I know are buying LG (small system) or Enphase (large system) batteries instead, or going with other competitors (Anker announced something that looks pretty sweet).
Also, Powerwalls are notoriously unreliable compared to those other brands; our local Tesla installer said they refuse to install them except when they are acting as a Tesla subcontractor, and pushed us to enphase or generac.
For semis, they took deposits then didn't deliver, so marquee customers are complaining publicly and buying semis from competitors.
For solar roofs, we talked to their competitors, and they were all backlogged because they were absorbing cancelled tesla contracts.
Tesla is great at marketing and making the sale, but then letting their competitors close out the deal.
Yes and: Perhaps the Semi uses cells which are supply constrained. The Limiting Factor does updates on which models use which cells, where those cells are made, their current chemistry, and how cell supply might impact vehicle production numbers. Analysis based on data gleaned from public data, so uncertainty is stated as needed.
What batteries are in the semi-trucks? I would assume it isn't even Tesla's battery but the LFP batteries from BYD and CATL for faster charging, and longevity. Powerwalls are LFP batteries.
Tesla fans are like horses with blinders. In this submission alone you have multiple people acting like commercial-sized electric vehicles are something the world has never seen, let alone mass produced, so we need to cut Tesla and Musk some slack (some even feel free to throw in a puerile, childish, "feel free to do better yourself or show us what you've done").
200 bucks for an e-scooter is really really cheap. Don't expect to get anything worthwhile for that price unless it's some kind of sale. The realistic price for a basic, entry level one is more like $500. A decent one is $1000 and a good, dual-motor one will be $1500.
I have an electric scooter with 3000kms on it. I use it for commuting to work several times a week.
I much prefer it to driving; you get to experience the open air; it's exciting, there's no traffic and it's often faster than driving. If I look at the money I've saved in gas & parking, my scooter has paid for itself almost 3x so it's cost-efficient too.
I heartily recommend that anyone with a commute of 30km or less per day try one out. Especially if you live in an area with good cycle-lane coverage. It really hits that sweetspot of efficient, enjoyable and cheap transportation.
- No insurance required
- No registration
- Can use both bike lanes and sidewalls where I live
- Park anywhere I can lock it to something
- Nearly maintenance free (tires and bearings only)
- Saves unnecessary wear on my vehicles; could replace them entirely if I wasn't a motorhead
I have absolutely no regrets about my dual motor scooter
Helmet and eye protection is what you wear on a regular e-scooter or bike. You wear motorcycle gear if “keeping up with cars” is a meaningful concept for your vehicle.
You can die from getting hit by a car while stopped at a light. People wear helmets on low speed vehicles either because their personal risk assessment or the law convinces them.
I don't know about where you live but where I'm at, no adult wears a helmet on a <20mph escooter.
I said wear a helmet and eye pro because at 25-35mph and above the wind is so strong you can't keep your eyes open and clear without it, hahaha
Where I live, e-scooters have a speed limit of 25 km/h (15.5 mph). Any faster and it needs to be registered as a motorbike, where a helmet is mandatory. Some people take the risk and ride unregistered fast e-scooters, but they’re surprisingly aware of the danger and usually wear full moto gear.
Yeah they’re super enjoyable. To think, when I was a child I would have considered it a toy, and now I can ride it around while having fun and feeling good about it?
Outsourcing production sounds great conceptually; "It's great! Production issues are someone elses problem now!" Until you realize that producing EVs is hard and when there are problems you now have many layers of management between your customer services and the people who can actually fix the problem.
People bitch and complain about Tesla all the time, but their vertical integration means that they can fix problems with their cars relatively quickly.
Didn't they just legalize unleaded avgas very recently? After a multi-decade regulatory review process?
Seems odd that they were so hesitant to legalize it and now that they did, it becomes the only option!
They don't "need" lead any more than pre-70s cars "need" lead. They were designed to run on leaded fuel, but there are lead replacement additives which are able to fulfill the same technical requirements. TEL is just cheap, effective, and well understood for legacy applications. It isn't the only option to boost octane, by far.
The only issue I had on my 240z was the valve seats were some super soft brass like material, those needed to be swapped as they were beat to up and did not seal. The 75+ heads, all have steel seats.
I’ve actually never experienced the, “California gas sucks” issue that car people from the mid-west talk about, have never had an issue with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe my understanding is incomplete, but AFAIK the "California gas sucks" thing is just because the highest grade you can find at most pumps there is 91, while we get 93 in a lot of other states
Not that it matters when everything made for "premium" is tuned for 91 from the factory anyway, not 93
California actually has different gas that produces fewer emissions - it's part of the reason gas is more expensive here. It's called CARBOB grade, c.f. RBOB/CBOB.
They are, however, manuals and documentation for US market vehicles will be specified in AKI (aka '(R+M)/2') regardless of who manufactured them. Some manuals also specify both AKI and RON, and that can be a source of confusion.
I'm in Europe and here it would be "98 recommended, 95 allowed with possible degradation in performance", as it's the case for my 2006 car. More modern small volume turbocharged engines should be even more sensitive to octane number due to higher compression ratios than common American engines of twice the volume for the same horsepower. The engine ECU will reduce boost pressure and fuel charge based on feedback from the knock sensor.
California 'gas sucks' for a couple reasons which are easy to miss if you're in California.
1) Few refineries make it, so it's MUCH more expensive. But if you're living in California, it is easy to miss because EVERYTHING is much more expensive.
2) Mileage is generally poorer, due to the mandatory ethanol mixes. But some places also usually mix in ethanol, and the difference is usually in the 10-15% range. So unless you have a good A/B comparison going, it's also easy for it to blend in with all the stop and go driving, and terrible road conditions.
3) Mandatory Ethanol means generally very poor storage characteristics. Which considering how much driving happens in California (and how dry the climate is in the populated areas), most people won't notice.
So does it suck? Comparatively, definitely! Is it likely to be noticed unless you're very aware and have experience with other options? Nope.
I understand that additionally in some vehicles (not necessarily aircraft) predating ethanol dilution the evap systems may begin to malfunction at high elevation and temperature due to the lower initial boiling point of ethanol.
In the case of my vehicle it results in low/rough idle and positive fuel tank pressure which otherwise do not occur either at lower elevation or with ethanol-free fuel at elevation.
Once you've replaced those valve seats with hardened ones, you don't have to worry about adding lead substitute in every fill up. You do still have to worry about getting the right oil additives though, as the old flat tappet engines need more zinc than modern oil blends have in them. Ethanol in the gas is also a concern, but any conscientious classic car owner has hopefully replaced all the rubber and plastic bits in the fuel system to ethanol safe ones.
I think (don't really know) alloy steel valves and hardened seat were pioneered by the aircraft industry and appeared in cars by the 1950's. So really lead wasn't needed to extend the life of valves after that. Also my experience with some shitty 1960's cars was the valve guides would wear out before the seats. Compression is fine but engine burns oil and fouls the plugs. You could see it with older cars when going downhill, they'd be blowing oil smoke.
No idea about 240z specifically, but at least things designed for sustained high performance (like aero engines) tend to use valve seats made from some wear and temperature resistant alloy like stellite or brightray.
Legally, they need to run a fuel which is approved on the type certificate data sheet for their engine (and the engine-airframe combination).
The recently developed G100UL unleaded fuel requires a change to the type certificate of the airplane (by serial number) and engine(s) (by serial number) to be legal.
Until that supplemental type certificate existed, these airplanes did legally need leaded fuel.
No, G100UL is a full drop in replacement that meets the standards off AVGAS which is what is required by the certificate. Fully legal on all engines with no change to the certificate.
It does not meet the composition standard of 100LL, which is why you need to buy an STC (Supplemental Type Certificate) from GAMI to use it legally in an aircraft. (It is a drop in replacement from a performance point of view, but does not meet the original type certificate fuel standard.)
I would imagine that the gelling problems ethanol can sometimes cause in automobiles is magnified when used for aircraft due to the thermal dynamics present in aviation (the temperature drop while in-flight) that aren’t a factor for most automobiles. That’s just my intuition, I’m sure there are better informed people here who know better.
Yup, also, there are specific chemistries used in some composite wet-wing designs that can be damaged by ethanol. It's the final reason I became less interested in the DarkAero 1 while following its development.
That's part of it. Ethanol is incompatible with materials commonly found in airplane fuel systems.
Another aspect is that many piston airplane engines need high octane because they have relatively high compression ratios: WWII era engines need 130 octane to develop full horsepower (they can be operated at reduced manifold pressure on currently available 100 low-lead gas), and even many post-war civilian engines require 100 octane.
Still another aspect is that the FAA is relatively conservative and doesn't want to approve something that might lead to, for example, vapor lock or fuel freezing issues.
>airplane engines need high octane because they have relatively high compression ratios: WWII era engines need 130 octane to develop full horsepower
I mean, high octane and compression relative to other 1960s engines. The common engines in nearly any single prop cessna have about a 9:1 compression ratio, which was massive back when it was built, but laughably bad compared to anything manufactured after the advent of Fuel injection and better piston geometry.
Modern cars regularly have over 12-1 compression ratios on 87 octane.
1960s era carbs and top ends were just abysmal and did a terrible job of mixing the fuel and air charge and controlling the flame front, because we just didn't have the kinds of computer controls and fluid dynamic simulations we have now, to dynamically prevent knock.
Rotax engines are modern and can reach identical performance figures or better, with the same weight or lighter, simply by using modern techniques like fuel injection or a small turbocharger. They do this while running on 91 octane
Except none of that can be used until someone goes through the millions of dollars to do all the design work, safety testing, and mountains of FAA paperwork. Oh, and take on the liability of a mistake killing a bunch of people.
In the mean time, rebuilds have to meet the existing design. Which has specific standards.
It's not like Cessnas themselves can't be wildly improved on in general!
As an old Boeing engineer friend of mine used to say 'when the weight of the paperwork exceeds the gross weight of the plane, it will fly.'.
1) Regulations (vehicle fuel comes from sources/supply chains generally not willing to do the paperwork)
2) Lack of solid quality control relative to aviation fuels (see #1)
3) Power to weight ratio matters a LOT in aviation, and aviation engines run at typically far higher elevations for at least part of their flight time. So aircraft engines generally push things harder, have higher compression, and can be damaged more easily with 'junk' or contaminants.
From memory octane levels have a huge bearing on engine performance and that affects take off distance. Aviation has had a much higher octane rating than your typical car gas.
Sure, and any petrol engine can run on 78 RON fuel to. It's just that if you try to run it at full power you'll blow it up. Wee bit of a problem on takeoff.
Same thing with running certain large piston airplane engines on 100. They blow up.
> There are several options that involve no lead, generally substituting with ethanol
Ethanol is corrosive to aluminum. Thankfully airplane designers have never used aluminum in airplanes...
We can't use ethanol because of phase separation amongst other reasons but this is true considering we've been using stuff like toluene probably even longer than tel.
Yes, but it's not currently legal to use in anything.
You still have to apply for and buy an STC for your specific airframe's serial number and engine's serial number. Then you have to add some paperwork to the logbook and POH and add placards to the fuel fillers and cockpit.
In theory you should be able to automatically get it for anything which was approved from the factory to use 100LL, but the STC application form (here: https://stc.g100ul.com/aircraft/) does not allow you to select most mid-century large radials (which were usually originally certified on 130) or the airplanes they were installed on.
To be clear, this is a great thing, but you can't legally just fill G100UL in any random airplane.
Exactly. Remove the STC requirement. If the fuel is unreliable that it won’t work in every 100LL aircraft, then it shouldn’t be forced upon us. If it is completely safe, then an STC should be unnecessary.
What about something in-between? The fuel is reliable in almost every design, but there's some design out there that -relies- upon lead depositing to engine surfaces to be reliable (as opposed to the octane effect).
I don't think it needs to work in every conceivable 100LL aircraft: just almost all. Every is a high bar.
You can’t realistically support both leaded and unleaded avgas, and this is why adoption is so low.
Airports don’t always have the space for a second avgas tank (if this is the in between option), and if they did don’t necessarily want to spend money on setting up that infrastructure. So the current catch-all is to provide leaded which is cheaper and guaranteed to work in everything.
I think it’s great we are getting this forced through - it will make the approval process streamlined (like loda was) and removes a major reason people used to push airport shutdowns.
> Airports don’t always have the space for a second avgas tank (if this is the in between option), and if they did don’t necessarily want to spend money on setting up that infrastructure.
Lots of airports are owned or regulated by local governments which might want to move that single tank to just unleaded. E.g. Santa Clara County banned 100LL at local airports.
Forklift upgrades suck, too. You're best off getting some of the way along and then forklift. Arguably we're reaching that point.
Which is why it is taking so long. Because if an engine grenades on takeoff, it's almost guaranteed to kill someone. If that was because of the fuel switch, that's a real problem.
What's the FAA incentive to change the type certification (and STC) rules here? There's a perfectly workable STC path, that's not even that expensive [almost rounds to $0 in the scope of private aircraft ownership expenses).
The TC says you must run 100LL. The STC says you can freely mix G100UL in any ratio. The legal/certification problem is solved.
The beauty of G100UL is you just need an STC - just paperwork - to be legal with GA aircraft. All gasoline powered aircraft and engines in the FAA’s type certificate database are covered by the STC for G100UL... which is amazing.
I'll be doing it, as soon as our home base carries it for my 56 o200.
Can't upvote this enough. This is going to kill small operators that might not be able to comply. Why not just let the leaded fuel users die from attrition naturally?
Because pollution is an externality cost that the market does not take into account. The only way to solve it is with regulation. These regulations are justified on the basis that it is wrong to poison others, or pollute their right to shared public resources.
Regulation does not solve externality problems. It makes them worse. For example, the government's increasing regulatory requirements for ethanol in fuel (of which this is an example) cause food to be more expensive and have caused food shortages (because corn is grown to make ethanol instead of for food). Yes, air pollution is a concern, but people who are starving for lack of food don't live long enough for air pollution to be a health concern for them. And nobody asked them whether they were OK with the government making that tradeoff.
The vast majority of regulations don't work. At least not if your definition of "work" is to actually solve market externalities. But they're great for job security for regulators and politicians.
> The market can never solve market externalities, by definition.
This is not correct. Markets can solve externalities, through market transactions that shift ownership so that the externalities are internalized. The main thing preventing this is government regulation that raises transaction costs so that the necessary adjustments cannot be made. This has been known at least since Ronald Coase published his famous theorem.
In other words, government regulators prevent markets from solving externalities, and then complain that markets can't solve externalities so government regulators have to step in.
It's true that there are cases where there are no market transactions that can internalize an externality. But in those cases, regulation can't solve them either; there are no solutions for such cases. Welcome to the real world.
An industry that fails to regulate itself is regulated by the government. We've had more than a decade to transition and literally zero progress. Everyone knew this day was coming since congress mandated the transition back in 2009. Crying about it doesn't solve anything — it's well past time to rip off the bandaid.
Anyone commercial already has to go in for 100hr inspections all the damn time. The STC is unlikely to cost much relative to that, nor to add much additional hassle.
Anyone private can deal with it, they own their own plane and knew it wasn’t going to be a cheap hobby going in.
G100UL will cost a bit more than 100LL but it seems likely this will change a bit as it becomes more widely used.
I guess it puts people operating midcentury radials that haven’t yet been certified for G100UL in a weird spot.
>Will I have to modify my engine or aircraft to use G100UL avgas?
>Other than placards, no modifications are required. A small placard is attached to the engine and "stick-on" placards are applied to refueling ports. In addition, there is a short POH supplement added to the AFMS.
Beautiful. The main sticking point was the (possible) need to re-certify existing planes. This is peanuts in comparison; probably why it took so long for such a fuel to get developed and approved.
Unlike lead, we've only recently had the technology to measure and quantify tire wear pollution. For example, we didn't realize until 2020 that 6PPD - already toxic to many aquatic organisms - can oxidize become 6PPD-quinone, which is acutely toxic to coho salmon and some other fish species. This solved a 20 year old mystery of so many coho salmon died after a rain storm.
That's in addition to the particulate pollution from tire wear. ("Research from Emissions Analytics shows that particulate mass emissions from tire wear is thousands of times greater than those from tailpipes, which have been vastly reduced in recent years by high-efficiency exhaust filters." - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/16/world/tyre-collective-mic... ).
We of course need to regulate them better because electric cars are heavier, so tire particulate pollution is expected to increase over the next few years.
There's also brake pad pollution, like the EPA's Copper-Free Brake Initiative to remove copper, "mercury, lead, cadmium, asbestiform fibers, and chromium-six salts in motor vehicle brake pads." https://www.epa.gov/npdes/copper-free-brake-initiative . That's a voluntary program, but California and Washington have mandatory requirements.
I trust that you support these efforts to reduce car pollution, and are not simply using the lack of discussion about them in this thread in order to score internet points for implied hypocrisy?
Both tires and brakes have the advantage that they are replaced every few years/decade, so regulations can target manufacturers. An aircraft engine can have decades of life, so any costs of switching away from leaded fuel are felt directly by the owner.
They’ve also been known as a class as a problem (along with catalytic converter particles) for well over 30 years.
There have been multiple studies linking proximity to freeways with asthma and decreased life span, serious health issues like COPD, and even significant increases in sudden unexplained deaths.
45 million Americans live within the high risk zones (300 feet or meters, I forget), countless new daycares, old folks homes, and residential high rises get built there every day, and almost every American is exposed significantly due to being in vehicles on average of an hour a day with insufficient filtering.
The issue here isn’t that aircraft engines last ‘decades’.
It’s that aircraft owners are only legally allowed to use fuels approved by the FAA for their aircraft, and per the various authorizations for their aircraft. Which vary. The engines may get rebuilt, but without a very expensive type change and approval (often from the manufacturer) they’re the same design as the original. Which has the same limitations.
So until there is a viable authorized replacement (per the FAA), literally they can’t use it except in emergencies. Which only just became available. And they can’t change engines either. And they can’t just YOLO it legally.
Because fuel is a major cause of crashes that kill people already (usually contamination, or wrong fuel causing engine failures/flameouts).
And despite the FAA knowing of the risks of lead (or more precisely, knowing the various factors), they only recently did authorize a replacement.
So it’s as if that study on those plastics happened 30 years ago, and we’re just now getting around to it. Which essentially is what has happened with cars and the various pollution.
So raking anyone over the coals when a far larger, more damaging, and widespread crisis has always been going on for even longer and gets ignored? Yeah I’m pointing out the hypocrisy.
It’s always about resources in proportion to risk, and arguably the FAA has dumped far more resources and mitigated a far less damaging risk (in many concrete ways) far faster with this leaded fuel issue than one near and dear all of us.
> There have been multiple studies linking proximity to freeways with asthma
Which also drives the call to reduce car use, wherein someone is also likely to point out that driving is not a right but a privilege.
> So it’s as if that study on those plastics happened 30 years ago, and we’re just now getting around to it. Which essentially is what has happened with cars and the various pollution.
Yes. And lead wasn't banned for interior paint until decades after some other countries. The US regulatory system is strongly weighted in favor of business over health and environment.
> raking anyone over the coals
As if! This is finding. The EPA must then "propose and promulgate emission standards", which the FAA must then turn into regulations.
It sets no deadlines, it makes no policy changes other than for the EPA and FAA.
I suspect it will take years before the first regulations appear, and with years to allow a changeover.
In the last 60 years the government and the FAA have killed civil aviation for anyone that isn't obscenely rich. This environmental bullshit is just one more way to keep the plebs out of the air.
Good. It's nothing but a rich boy hobby anyhow. And anyone who can afford, or even has a pilots license these days is getting paid well over 6 figures, usually as entry pay. The days of underpaid, entry level pilots are a thing of the past. This isn't the 1990s. Grow up.
Mostly because the use of lead in fuels is something to avoid at all costs. I know a lot of GA people were VERY happy to hear that they approved G100UL. Leaded fuels aren't just toxic, but they also cause issues with airplanes such as lead fouling.
>> Didn't they just legalize unleaded avgas very recently?
More specifically, I believe they certified that a particular fuel as suitable for use in ALL engines that previously relied on leaded fuel. Until that happened there was a somewhat legit concern about banning leaded fuel. What people are afraid of now is a monopoly on the new fuel leading to higher prices. But there's already a near monopoly on leaded avgas.
It would be really cool if someone developed a new aircraft engine suitable for replacing all the old models and able to run on a wide range of fuels (this may actually exist). But even then its a slog to get that engine certified for all the planes you'd want to use it on.
> What people are afraid of now is a monopoly on the new fuel leading to higher prices
If you can afford private aviation, the price of the fuel is not going to be a big concern. It's already $7-10/gallon and that is a pretty small component in the all-in hourly costs of operating an aircraft.
> It would be really cool if someone developed a new aircraft engine suitable for replacing all the old models and able to run on a wide range of fuels
As a recent article here talked about, nobody is making new aircraft for general aviation. Or at least, nobody is making anything innovative for it.
But there exist plenty of engines that are good enough for planes and can run on a wide range of fuels. They are just not getting into GA planes.
There is some interesting stuff happening in battery-electric aircraft as trainiers. You can only fly them about 45 minutes and within a local radius of the airport but they are good for people learning the stick-and-rudder basics of flying.
Gliders are even better for learning flight basics, do a better job of teaching you to anticipate and work with turbulence, and have a variable time limit.
Glider hours aren't going to count towards any useful type certification though? Unless you think someone is going to be qualified on a Twin Otter because of 1000 glider hours?
The problem is that they won't approve engines for general aviation that use unleaded gas. All the engines used in general aviation are basically 60 year old designs. General aviation is not a major concern for the FAA. It's an afterthought. And so they don't devote any time to approving new, modern engines and make it as difficult as possible.
Many, or even most, of the engines are indeed old designs. But e.g. Rotax offers certified version of some of its 900 series engines, which are a relatively new design, some with fuel injection, FADEC, etc.
The FAA legalized unleaded avgas recently, yes. The EPA (the agency this article is about) was waiting for a legal alternative before banning leaded avgas. Since the EPA can't authorize a fuel for use in aviation (that's the FAA's jurisdiction) they had no choice but to wait on the FAA approval. Since the EPA can now ban the leaded fuel.
Availability of the new unleaded fuel is extremely limited. It is also very expensive. I also believe there may be a fee involved per airplane to use it (one time for an STC). The fee I heard is nominal $250.
I have never flown to an airport with it yet. i have probably landed in over a dozen different airports in the last few months with a leaded gas engined plane.
You still have to purchase the STC for your airplane serial number and engine(s) serial number. What the FAA did was approve that all-model STC as being valid/legal to sell and "install" (which is just placards).
The problem is, "legalizing" it is like 0.1% of the work. The hard part is all the testing/certification you have to do for every single aircraft and engine design.
> The FAA signed on September 1 supplemental type certificates that allow General Aviation Modifications Inc.’s 100-octane unleaded fuel (G100UL) to be used in every general aviation spark-ignition engine and every airframe powered by those engines.
All piston engines and aircraft are certified for G100UL.
It’s actually very easy if you are the government; you just say from 5 years from now, using lead fuel is banned. And then someone else has to do the work.
Dick move to ban am additive that we've known for over a century has terrible toxic affects on people and the environment from a machine that would release it into the air? Maybe there isn't an alternative, but maybe it doesn't matter?
The amount of lead taken up from leaded avgas in the community is so close to zero
(compared to other sources) that it hasn't outweighed the damage done by essentially banning general aviation. Which is what banning leaded avgas would do without an alternative.
It's already nearly choked to death by regulation, but that was a step too far.
But they also clearly have been working to mitigate it, and now that they have an alternate are banning leaded avgas and launching it.
"General aviation" is the standard name for the part of aviation that is neither commercial, law-enforcement nor military.
If general aviation were to be banned, then as commercial pilots die off or retire, it would be difficult to hire new commercial pilots with as much experience as new commercial pilots have historically had.
This NIH study shows it as ‘small, but significant’ - accounting for anywhere from 2.1-4.4% of the lead found in children’s blood near piston airports.
Less than 5% of the amount of lead total in their blood from that source, literally for the highest risk segment you can find. Even if completely eliminated, the other 95% isn’t going anywhere.
Even if you don’t average it out across the population, it’s hard to argue that isn’t so close to zero that nearly any significant benefit anywhere else would make it not a rush.
Most airborne lead pollution now is industrial anyway, and that is clearly the calculus there. As is the #1 and #2 sources of lead ingestion for children, old paint and old pipes.
I’m glad they’re getting rid of it, but I’m not going to complain they didn’t drop everything to rush it. Especially since if they did, they’d almost certainly kill more people in the resulting plane crashes.
Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut. I loved watching all his ISS videos where he did wacky experiments and nerded-out about capillary flows, static attraction and similar stuff.
He's also a renowned photographer and has taken some of the coolest space pictures from the ISS. He actually refined the guidelines for shooting pictures thru the glass windows of the station.
I hope that they fly him again soon; I can't wait to see what he'll come up with next!
Certifying a new electric aircraft is hard. There are several other startups who are trying to do this and they're all struggling.
Certifying a pilotless aircraft is really hard. There are no pilotless commercial aircraft because nobody has created one that can be trusted to never crash. I'm not sure that the FAA even knows HOW to certify such an aircraft.
So logically, certifying a new, pilotless, commercial electric aircraft is likely next to impossible. At least to a cynical bum like me. Good luck Wisk; I hope you prove me wrong!