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Hi, I'm Gary, and this is episode 275 of EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles
and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. And on the show today,
we will be looking at electric aviation.
This
season of the podcast is sponsored by Zatmap, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find
and pay for public charging with confidence. Our main topic of discussion today is electric
aviation. I was at the Farnborough Air Show last year, and one reason I wanted to go there,
other than the fact that I love watching planes, was that there were several companies there who
were providing offerings that are seeking to reduce the carbon footprint of aviation and
flying in general. Now, I've said before on this show that globally we buy four billion
air tickets per year. Now, 2 million of those are for trips that are fewer than 500 miles.
So obviously, there's a huge potential to decarbonize there. The industry have identified
that they have a responsibility to reduce their carbon footprint. Now, for reference to global
aviation industry has a carbon footprint equal to or greater than a large number of countries
worldwide, including the United Kingdom. The main issue is that emissions in the industry
are not reducing despite commitments from the airlines to do so. The other main issue
is that the reason emissions are rising is because air travel is rising. Rising air travel
is resulting in airlines putting on more routes, which is resulting in more planes being bought.
I mean, there were deals for $80 billion worth of new aircraft, struck at the Farnborough Air
Show recently, and this is putting a strain on airports, so more runways are being built.
But it's all a little bit self-fulfilling. A rise in air traffic will put pressure on
airports. But if more runways are built, then airlines will have more slots to fill. If they
have more slots to fill, they'll advertise more, they'll get more customers flying,
offered at ridiculously cheap rates, and the cycle continues. Now, I've talked about this on
the show before. I checked a while back and if you want to fly from London Airport,
any London Airport to any New York Airport, you have a choice of 30 flights per day. Now,
these range from the smallish Airbus A320 through a Boeing 737 MAX, a Boeing 777,
an Airbus A330 and an Airbus A350, right up to a 787 Dreamliner. Now, at one point,
not too long ago, you could take an Airbus A318, all business class, with just 32 people,
from London City Airport to JFK. Now, we no longer fly the huge 747 across the
Atlantic as a rule, nor the Airbus A380. Now, if we flew fewer flights with bigger
planes, would that be better? Should we really be doing transatlantic flights in planes that
only carry 200 people? Well, anyway, that's a discussion for a whole different podcast.
And in fact, I've written about this on the EV Musings sub-stack, if you want to check it out,
and the link is in the show notes. Now, today I want to talk about where we are with
decarbonising aviation in general. And unfortunately, it's not a pretty situation.
If you speak to the airlines, they'll pretty much tell you the same thing.
We're doing our best to decarbonise. We're implementing better routing software.
We're buying planes that are more efficient. We're changing our processes to ensure that they do
things like taxi on one engine to the end of the runway before starting the second engine
for the actual flight. They also mention SAF, SAF Sustainable Aviation Fuel. This is,
ironically, the aviation equivalent of HVO, the diesel substitute. It's an almost
drop in fuel, which is much less carbon intensive to make, can be burned in exactly the same way as
aviation kerosene, and it will result in a huge drop in CO2 emissions from aviation.
And the problem with all these solutions, the processes and the single engines in the SAF
is that they're mostly greenwashing. Here's why. Taxi on one engine to the end of the runway
will count for a miniscule reduction of CO2, especially as the takeoff is the most carbon
intensive part of the flight. Rootings that save a few hundred miles are all well and good,
but if you're increasing the number of flights taking that shorter route,
it's still a net increase in emissions. And SAF is, like hydrogen, a solution which appears
to solve the problem, but in fact it does nothing of the sort. So let's talk about SAF.
Let's talk about sustainable aviation fuel. Now SAF is made from things like woodchippings
and plants, etc. And the logic goes that these plants have already absorbed a certain amount of
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they've grown, and burning them will only release that
CO2 into the atmosphere. Thereby, the use of SAF is carbon neutral. At a theoretical level,
that is, of course, accurate. In practice, however, the production, processing, transport,
they all limit greenhouse gases, thereby reducing the overall carbon reductions.
Now, tests indicate that biofuels developed from non-food crops and forest residues save
91% to 95% of the CO2, and that is commendable. But it runs into the same issue that hydrogen
pilot projects tend to run into, and that is the question of scale. If you're running a
hydrogen pilot project to show that you can source, transport, and use hydrogen for some sort of
transportation role, it's usually quite easy to do that for a limited amount of hydrogen
sourced from limited locations and delivered to limited users. But when that pilot project is then
scaled up to a much larger user base, the issues then start to arise. And this is what happens
with sustainable aviation fuel. As of 2022, some 450,000 flights had used sustainable aviation
fuels as part of the fuel mix. Now, this sounds impressive until you remember that that's just
a small proportion of the total number of flights carried out globally every year. And the key word
in there is part of the fine mix. There are very few flights that have run totally
on sustainable aviation fuel. So SAF is not a solution. At best, it's a salve on the wound.
It will help, but it won't cure. So what are the potential solutions we have
for decarbonizing air travel? Well, the only guaranteed way to reduce the
carbon footprint of air travel is to reduce the number of flights. Now, obviously, this
isn't a popular option for a lot of airlines. They want to make as much money as possible.
So to do that, they want to fly as many flights as possible, which means we need to
look at ways to make the flights we do be as carbon poor as possible. And one way of doing this
is by electrifying them. At Farber last year, there were several companies that were working
in the electric aviation space. And the problem is that many of them were e-VTOL planes,
airplanes that were in effect, airborne taxis short range, small number of passengers,
takeoff and land vertically like a helicopter. Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing
bad about that. But if you want to make a serious dent in airline emissions, we need to be looking
at other solutions, solutions such as the aviation Alice. Now, this is a commuter plane,
fully electric, designed to carry nine passengers in comfort over a daylight visual flight
rule range of 250 nautical miles or about 228 statute miles. Now, that might not sound a
lot, but it's enough to replace the shuttle service between London and Manchester, London
and Paris, London and Amsterdam, and London and Dublin. A range like that would get you from
Paris to London to Brussels to Antwerp to Amsterdam to Stuttgart, Cologne, Düsseldorf,
Geneva, Lyon and the Channel Islands. Over in the US, this would get you from Chicago,
O'Hare Airport to Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Lansing, Michigan,
Detroit, Cedar Rapids in Iowa, Rochester in Minnesota, Green Bay, Wisconsin, Cincinnati and
Louisville in Ohio. That's seven states. Unfortunately, and we'll come back to this
later, aviation seemed to have run out of money and development stopped. But that doesn't mean
that electric aviation is dead in the water. And to talk more about this, I want to introduce
Guy Hayden. My name is Guy Hayden and I work for Air Revolt as Chief Commercial Officer.
Right, we're discussing electric aviation today. So tell me your aviation story. How can
you fly? Yeah, my aviation story goes back a little bit actually. So my first job out of college
long before my EV journey was I always wanted to fly and join the Navy to do so. So I did the
selection for Royal Navy pilot selection and then got in and three, four months later after
doing sort of all the fun militarization phase, you know, boots and bergens running up hills
until people are sick and the fun stuff. I was medically discharged because I have a
peanut allergy. So that was the end of my glittering Top Gun career. So that's kind of where the
aviation thing started. And then obviously, as you know, I've been in EV for a long time. So
for it to come back, come back now is, it was a bit full circle, but happily fell into EV
and have been in electric vehicle charging for a long time. But when the opportunity to
join Air Revolt in the very, very early days came up. Yeah, it felt like one of those
sort of serendipitous moments. Yeah, as someone who went through the PPL private training 2007,
it was one of those really, really exciting things. And unfortunately, I'm at the situation now
where when I've got the money to be able to afford to do it, I don't have the time. And when I've
got the time to be able to afford to do it, I don't have the money. So is it the perennial
problem though, right? Oh, it is. Yeah. I want to come on and talk about Air Revolt
and the offering that you've got shortly. But before we go into that, can we just
discuss some of the things in the current aviation space and look at what I will call barriers to
sustainability, because we know that aviation in the big scheme of things, it doesn't have
a huge carbon footprint. But in terms of the rate, the weights going and the small proportion
of people globally who contribute to that sustainability in aviation is a bit of a
challenge. So let me throw a few things out there and give me a thoughts on what we can do
to sort of reduce the footprint or increase the sustainability for frequent flyers, for example.
Yeah. Okay, I'll do my best. Yeah, frequent flyers is something that does get asked. I mean,
it's not essentially, it's not our world of things at the moment with electric aviation
and where it's at. But yeah, frequent flying, I think it's a fact of the economy and the
globalized world that we live in. And depending on your definition of frequent flight,
you do have those that fly a lot for leisure. And perhaps there's more questions around that.
But I do think sometimes frequent flyers that for business or for those that are actually doing
it either to support their families or for economic reasons, I think it is a fact of a
globalized world. And that doesn't make it necessarily right. But I think perhaps the
onus is on more of the system and the infrastructure and the airlines themselves to
sort rather than the individual. And that's not to take it away from, you know, there are
individuals who make pledges not to fly and who fly a lot less and make their own personal
conscious decisions. And I certainly respect that absolutely. I think it's more a case of
there are those that frequent fly, but it's very difficult for them to avoid doing so.
It's interesting because back in a former life, I used to do between 100 and 150
business flights a year. That's quite a few, Gary. Yeah, I was doing between two and three flights
week every week, because I lived in London and worked in Berlin and Frankfurt.
Now back then, because of the nature of the work that I was doing, it was very difficult to avoid
doing that traveling. In the late 80s, early 90s, where we didn't understand about the
impact or the potential impact of flying at the time, the nature of the flying that I did
after that became a little bit more, well, you need to fly out for a meeting in Madrid and you're
going out in the morning, you're coming back in the evening. And I think a lot of that nowadays
could be offset with some of the technologies that have come up, particularly since COVID with Zoom
and things like that. So I think there are definitely options available for certain members
of the frequent fly community. Yeah. And I would equally agree that, you know,
if you look at Europe, particularly, and unfortunately, I have to remove the UK from that
bracket. But if you look at mainland Europe, there's a lot to be said for very good public
transport systems and the train systems are, you know, particularly excellent on sort of
continental Europe. In the UK, we all know we suffered from an overloaded, overly expensive
public transport system that is not good enough, frankly. So it's very difficult, I think, to
do business in the UK or even in outside of the UK without using, without flying or without
using private transport. So the next one to talk about is private jets. If we look at private jets,
the consensus seems to be for the people who have private jets. Well, I need it because
it saves me time. It saves, I'm not sure whether it saves me money, but it allows me a level
of convenience and privacy that I can't get using commercial airlines. Now, if we look at
somebody like let's pick a name from the ether, Taylor Swift, yeah, one of if not the most famous
people on the planet, I can fully understand 100% why she would want to go everywhere in a private
jet. And then you get down to some of the Formula One drivers, et cetera, et cetera. And I can kind
of go with that. But you know, there is a guy on YouTube who just happens to be quite a wealthy,
I wouldn't even say industrialist, he owns a tool and die company or something like that.
He's got his own private jet. He travels all around America to, you know, sometimes to visit
places that he's doing business with, sometimes to go and watch. Sure, I don't know the
Formula One Grand Prix in Austin. Now, at some point, if we accept, yes, Taylor Swift should
probably have a private jet. Where's the point at which you draw that line and say, well,
hang on, your man there who's just using his plane because he can afford one,
should he be included in that? Where's the demarcation line for people who should or
shouldn't have private jets? Yeah. And I think depending on who you ask, you'll get different
answers from nobody should have a private jet all the way down to anybody who can afford it
should be able to have a private jet. And essentially, you know, the reality of the
world we live in is anybody who can afford it can have a private jet. The question there
comes down to how do we long term decarbonize that as an industry and as a service to
individuals and to businesses that use it. And it also comes down to, for now, we don't have a solution.
So how best do we mitigate against that? Things like carbon offsets and putting money into projects
that are reducing carbon and doing good. I think it's a difficult one because, you know,
if you look at certainly big corporate America, and if you look at corporations around the world,
the private jet is a useful tool in terms of time and in terms of getting things done,
but B is also seen as kind of a symbol of that corporate world. And I'm not saying that's right,
but I think it's a difficult one to legislate against. And I think the answer is more around
regulation, whether that be in terms of what is possible on private jet use or in terms of
what mitigating steps have to be taken. But I think those measures will be an interim
to a future where you have private jets that can be electric, hydrogen, hybrid, sustainable fuel,
all those types of things are possible. And now we are starting to see it. I mean,
if you look at electrification now and what's available from battery technology,
it's entirely feasible that up to perhaps a medium 15, 20 seat private jet,
in the medium term future electrification is fully possible with the tech we have now.
So I think there's answers, but yeah, what the answer is right now. I don't have a silver,
but unfortunately. Just to round up or round off this sustainability aspect here,
what's your view on the code aviation situation and sustainability. Now, I know you and I attended
a meeting, a conference earlier on this year of Pharma about sustainable aviation. And there was
a lot of talk about sustainable aviation fuel. Yes. And I kind of class this alongside hydrogen in
road vehicles. It's really, really easy to put together a nice pilot project that can show
that it works. But when you try and scale that up to the level that's needed,
there could potentially be issues. What's your thought on sustainable aviation fuel
for decarbonising aviation? Yeah, I mean, I will come to that. But firstly, I suppose just to
echo a wider point on the industry. If I'm being completely honest, there's a lot of talk
and not a lot of doing. And that's the issue. And I think a lot of industries have suffered
from this at various points. But aviation at the minute, you go to a lot of conferences
and a lot of seminars where the conversation is, we need to do more on sustainability and we
need to do more on sustainability. And let's talk about staff and let's talk about hydrogen.
And a little bit of let's talk about electric. But there are companies out there doing things.
But in terms of mass global movement in the industry, it still feels like it's at
a talking stage and people need to start putting their money where their mouth is.
In terms of sustainable aviation fuel or SAF, yeah, right? It could be a great part of the answer.
Depending on who you ask, sustainable aviation fuel can deliver anywhere between 98% carbon savings
or all the way down to 20% carbon savings, depending on who you ask. And the issue we've got
is being able to produce it at the scale it's needed. It's very easy to say,
I'll just do that. But what you have to remember is the whole aviation industry and indeed,
you know, most industries, transport industries, they're built on decades and decades and decades
of supply chain that's been built up. It's not one simple answer. So,
SAF absolutely can be part of the solution. And I'm not a SAF expert, but my question,
I mean, if they were an expert in the room now would be, how do we produce it at such
scale? And I think that's a question that remains unanswered. Absolutely. So moving on,
talk to me a little bit about some of the electric aviation success stories that are
currently out there. Yeah, you probably know quite well the Pipistrel. Yeah, the Pipistrel,
we own one, we fly one about. So the Pipistrel Velis little two seat train,
our 450 kilo small aircraft, right? Long wingspan, small aircraft, very capable
in terms of what it does. That was the first commercially available electric aircraft
you could go and buy. And still right now is if you want to go and buy one today,
that is, that's the only, the only game in town. And the Velis is a two seat trainer,
essentially. So it flies for about an hour, has good capabilities, modern avionics,
nice inside, easy to fly and delivers a lot to the pilot and flight schools that are
using it certainly like it. And absolutely, it's been successful in what it intended to do,
which is prove electrification and stimulate the market. Some of the people listening might know
and some may not. I did nine or so years in car charging. And so when that first Nissan Leaf came
out, that was kind of when I entered the industry. That's where we are at now in aviation.
And the Pipistrel I always say is a pretty good comparison to the Nissan Leaf. It was a
demonstrator of what's possible. It wasn't overly weird or overly different. Yes, earlier
doctors were the ones who went for it. But it really proved a direction of travel. And from
there things began to snowball. So the Pipistrel very successful aircraft and a spurred on what
we're seeing now, which is all the others that are coming to market.
So talk to me about the others. One of them I sort of had a quick look at earlier on was
the Alia from Beta Technologies. Are you aware of that one?
Yep. Beta, the Beta Alia. They're pretty much, I'll say one of,
depend on who you ask, but I would say they're pretty much the leaders in terms of what's
happening in the world of EVTEL or electric vertical takeoff at the moment. So the Beta Alia
can take off vertically and fly kind of like a regular airplane, if you imagine. And they
land vertically equally. It can land like a regular airplane. And what's very interesting
there is not only have they built something and they flight tested it and it's working,
but they've actually started to deliver to customers. So there's a couple of customers
one in Norway, one in New Zealand who actually hands on with those aircraft right now. It's still in,
let's say, what would be from a regulatory standpoint termed experimental phase because
it's not fully certified, but customers are already becoming familiar with those aircraft
and their order books are false. So that's really good from an electric vertical takeoff
perspective. But equally in the fixed wing, which is frankly is the easy bit because we've
already got lots and lots of small two, four, six-seater aircraft flying around. And we've got
in the next year, another two or three electric aircraft going to market, one we're very excited
about is the Bristol B23 Energic, which is another two-seat trainer, but it will be the first
aircraft that you'll be able to do a full PPL, private pilot's license, on it has all of the
capabilities to do that. So we have a close relationship with Bristol who built the
airframe and also with H55 who built Powertrain. So they've come together to build this next gen
trainer. And yeah, we're excited about that. In fact, we've got a couple coming our way.
Whatever happened to, because when I was, I kept my eye on for quite a while, was the aviation
and their Alice thing, which had the potential to be really, really good. Does that
effectively look like a private jet? Have nine seats and what was it, three, four, five
hundred mile range, and then suddenly kind of disappeared? Have they gone bust?
I believe they went bust. Don't cry about that. I have to do some googling, but I believe,
essentially, it'd be completely plain. Building aircraft is really, really expensive and takes
a really long time. So they've built some excellent tech. And I think it could be,
hopefully it's with, Lilium is a European example. Lilium built an electric vertical
takeoff aircraft and we're moving forward and had built some very good tech underneath it.
Ultimately ran out of money before they got flying. And now there is a company interested
in buying the proprietary tech and buying kind of the work that had been done there.
So hopefully we'll see the, the aviation Alice flying in some form at some point,
but yeah, commercial realities, unfortunately. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's been the same with electric vehicles. Generally, there's been quite a few
that have been lauded as the next big hope and they've just run out of money and gone
into liquidation and disappeared off the face of the earth. It happens, doesn't it?
It does. Yeah, it does. But again, in a lot of cases, that tech can then be utilized. It's,
you know, in some ways, it's all bricks in the wall. It's all good things that are being
built. And yeah, I also hope that we can see a future for the Alice because that was a very
exciting aircraft. And that's exactly, as you say, it's an example of the type of aircraft
that can be used to replace business jets. You know, and there's other examples, but yeah,
what's the space? Let's move on, discuss air revolt itself.
What was actually behind it? You know, why did you decide that this is something you
wanted to focus on? Yeah, well, we talked a lot about planes and stuff that flies.
So lots of people are building planes and stuff that flies, which have batteries in them. I mean,
eVTOL, we've name checked, but there's over a thousand registered designs of electric
vertical takeoff aircraft. And if you look across the OEMs in the fixed wing world,
they're all either flight testing right now with electric powertrains, building electric
powertrains into their aircraft or have plans to do so. Even Robinson Helicopters announced last
month that they wanted by next year to have their first R44 version of their helicopter flying
electric. So there's a lot going on on the on the side of the aircraft.
We kind of took the view wise, nobody doing charging. And when our founder Phil
saw the Pippus Drell, tried the Pippus Drell, liked the Pippus Drell, said, how do you charge it?
They wheeled out essentially like a little trolley charger. And that's,
that was the solution at that point. And Phil, you know, the immediate reaction was, well,
what happens if you want to fly anywhere, right? Can't take it with you. So somebody needs to
build a network. And it was literally as simple as that. There is so much going on on the OEM
side. Why is no one building a network? So air revolt, that's what we set out to do. So
we're building currently the world's first public network for electric aircraft.
How's that going?
How's that going? Well, it's been a, frankly, it's been a tale of two stories really, you know,
there's a lot going on in the OEM world, as I say, and the airports are aware of it.
So what that means is with very, very limited funds so far, we've been able to realize
seven sites, they're live, people are flying in and out of them, we've got flight schools
using them. You rock up, tap a card, charge your plane, exactly the same as you would charge a car.
So that's very positive. And we've built a software stack that sits behind it where you can do things
like book your charging, can even book aircraft through there. And we're integrating that with some
of the biggest flight planning tools in the world, some of the biggest aviation avionics
providers in the world. So there's some really good software side plugins that we've done
that make the AeroVolt network an easy switch, let's say, for a pilot who's never flown electric
before. And they can kind of, they've got the pieces of the puzzle to make it straightforward for them.
Business development and software development good. And our pipeline now of airports is more
than 350 across UK, US, Europe and Australia. And we've got a number of other territories
that want us to go and install in. The issue we've got is not having the sites
to go and install having the interest to go and put our kit in the ground. It's been,
like many other businesses, frankly, it's been fundraising. And that's what we've spent a lot
of the last, certainly the last 12 months doing is fundraising. I can't say too much on
that front, obviously, but I will say we're getting to the point now. And I think,
I think most people would agree that 2024 fundraising was a nightmare. I could use
a lot of words, but 2025, particularly sort of post Q1, things have really picked up. And so we are,
we're getting close to realizing, certainly realizing a number of things that will bring
some money in and equally some additional fundraisings. For us, I can't say much on fundraising.
We're hoping soon to be at the end of that road and be able to put lots and lots of
stuff in the ground. But yeah, things have, things have been going very, very well for
us. I mean, we have some leading names count someone because they're partners. So yeah,
just the magic ingredient now, Gary. The dilemma that people in your industry have,
i.e. providing charging, is you've always got the two-edge sword of, do we put charges in
in order to induce the demand? Or do we wait until the demand is there and then we
put the charges in? Now you've just talked about the rights that you've got in the UK
and the potential sites worldwide that you can put in. And which of those two sides of that
sword have you actually fallen down on? Are you putting them in where people are buying
Pippa's Drells or are you finding the sites and putting them in in the hope that the flying
schools that are on those sites will then go and get a Pippa's Drell to be able to use your
network? Well, it's both really. So you're right. And it needs to be a measured approach. You
can't. Pippa charges everywhere and in the hope, but we do have very close relationship with the OEMs
because we're kind of the only people doing this proactively at the moment. Because we work closely
with them, we know how many and where they have orders for aircraft. So certainly part of our
build out that's come in will be working with the OEMs for where they're flight testing because
there'll be lots and lots of flights going on there, as you can imagine. It will also be
working with the OEMs for where they already have orders. And I mean the sites in the US, for example,
that have ordered 10, 15 electric aircraft already for particular flight schools. So people are
ordering. Absolutely. And once these aircraft are built, they're going to need charging facilities.
So part of it will be done in partnership with the OEMs. We know whose orders we know
where charters go. Equally, when it comes to, let's say they build it and they will come
approach. If you look at flying schools in the UK, in the US, in Europe, in Australia,
and everywhere else that are forward thinking, that want to move to electrification,
absolutely we want to work with them. We want to be talking to them about getting charging
in ahead of time. Equally, if you look at airports that have a very forward thinking view,
airports that are investing, airports that accept this as part of what they want to
be doing in the future, those are the airports that, again, will take the view that it's worth
putting in those chargers because it is those airports and those flight schools that will
attract electric aircraft to come. It will attract pilots who want to learn on electric,
et cetera, et cetera. So it's kind of finding those, I suppose, those elements of the industry
that are inspired enough to see it and working with them. And what is your actual offering?
Do you go up and say, right, you're going to bring electric planes in. We'll provide the
charger and some software to do it? Or is it a little bit more complex than that? Do you have
relationships with flight schools, with the airports in terms of them providing the land,
then providing the power to go in there? What's the actual offering that you've got?
Are you able to tell us a little bit of detail about that?
Yeah, I can tell you some things, of course. So we don't sell anything. So if you own an
airport, I come to you and I want to lease a bit of your land and I want to be there for a
long time providing charging services. It costs you nothing. Some of our business is
direct with flight schools. We will operate on a flight school owned bit of land, for example,
and sub-lease off them. It may be direct with the airport. That's kind of the lion's share of it.
Equally, there's a number of what called FBOs, fixed base operators who do things like ground
handling and looking after aircraft on there on the ground. Those are equally partners for us
and we're talking to a number of them. So there's no kind of one hard and fast rule for who we're
going to talk to. Equally, when it comes to power, it's a case of the gold standard. What we'd really
like is our own separately metered grid supply. But if we have to work with the airport to come
off their supply, then we can do that too. You know, airports are very different in how
they're set up and how they do things and in what's possible. So yeah, there's no one answer.
And are you having power issues at some of the places that you're putting in? Are you having to
have other constraints on what you can do because of the power that's there? Are you able to get the
power in that you need? Yes and no. Again, much like car charging, it's a case of some sites,
really easy, loads of power, how much do you need? There you go. Other sites, there's absolutely
nothing because they were built during World War II and have enough power to power a kettle
and a few lights and that's it, right? So it really does no one answer. And equally,
if I'm putting in car chargers, the power might have to come 10, 20, 30 meters from a road perhaps.
If you're putting in charging on an airfield, it could be 500 or 1000 meters in that direction
and you're going to have to wait a number of years for it. So it's almost like the problems
are a bit magnified in our world because of the distances. And equally, there's a point around
there's not much optionality. If I can't put a charger in ex fast food retailer there, I can go
to Y coffee shop 100 meters down the road and put one in there instead. In airports, there's not
another one next door generally, you have to go quite away. So there's very little optionality.
So there's a lot more we have to do to try and realize a site. And actually, we tested that and
proved that when we installed a dunk as well, which is near Exeter. That was one of our early
installs. The flight school was taking electric aircraft. We wanted to work with them,
you know, prove the concept, and we couldn't get the power we needed. So there we installed
a 300 kilowatt hour battery system, which trickle charges off a small single phase supply,
and then dumps the power out into the charges as needed. That now in fact,
they've upgraded the site supply and we have another answer now. But that to say,
essentially that, yeah, sometimes you have to do clever things.
As with all sorts of charging, absolutely. Yeah. Now we made reference earlier on to the fact that,
you know, one of the reasons that I don't fly anymore is because when I've got the time,
I don't have the money. When I've got the money, I don't have the time because it is
an expensive pastime. So talk to me about how electric aviation is going to potentially reduce
the costs. Well, if you look at flight training, well, I mean, the art of the possible is what this
is about. So if you look at the aircraft, you can go by right now that you can use or in the
coming, let's say six to 12 months, you can get delivered and be using in a real setting.
Those are 2C trainers, right? And the cost of running those is maybe a third of the cost
of running a traditional piston engine. And they are a lot simpler to maintain. That's the
biggest difference. So the cost of running it, yes, of course it's cheaper, but the maintenance costs
and the fact that there's so little to maintain around an electric aircraft versus a piston,
that's where the flight schools are going to see the biggest difference.
And I know when you've got a piston engine playing, you have to monitor the number of hours
and when the engine gets to a certain number of hours, it's got to have a complete overhaul
or even a replacement. Is that similar to the electric motors that you put into an electric
plane? Yeah, that's right. There are limited in terms of a number of hours and piston are a lot
more limited. To give you an idea, if you take the Pippa Strel versus a current flying piston
aircraft, it's about 10 times the range you were allowed to fly before you then have to do
any kind of legislated overhaul maintenance type stuff. Because again, there's a lot less.
There's a lot less that can go wrong. There's a lot less to it essentially.
Now you mentioned that you've got charges in it. I think you said nine sites in the
seven of the minute. Seven of the minutes. Yeah. Just so that the listeners or indeed the viewers
that are watching on YouTube can sort of understand this, under ideal circumstances,
what's the longest journey I could do purely on electric power between the sites that you've got?
Yeah, so do you mean you're happy to stop, right? Ari, is that what we're saying?
You're happy to take charging stops. Yes.
So the furthest two points on our network currently would be Lid Airport, which is
Dungeon S, that area. The coasting Kent, yeah.
Down there, coast to Kent. And then the furthest away from that, that's let's say flyable
in one, in various hops, would be done as well in Exeter.
Okay. To fly across the south coast. I don't know how many miles it is.
It's going to be about four hours and a half driving, something like that.
So you can save yourself some time. Absolutely.
We do have one in Snowdonia as well because of the testing.
They test some electric aircraft there, but that currently we need to link up to the rest of the
network. That makes sense. That makes sense. That's not bad actually.
One of the big issues that people have with public electric vehicle charging is obviously
the price because a lot of people do that thing, which they shouldn't really do,
but they do, which is say, well, I can charge at seven pence a kilowatt hour overnight.
And it's, you know, pick your figure 75, 85, 95 pence a kilowatt hour on public charging.
Now, the reason that kind of comparison to be made when you're looking at
charging an electric aircraft, there is obviously going to be a price aspect to this.
So how do you actually price the charging within the air vault systems?
So the moment is roughly comparative to car charging.
And so we have some sites currently are about 59 pence a kilowatt.
The highest we've currently priced anything out is a pound a kilowatt.
But, you know, if you compare that to public charging now at 80 odd pence,
I think most places generally for a rapid, I think it's roughly comparable.
As I say, versus avgas and aviation fuel, that's a lot cheaper.
So it's not the same level of price sensitivity in this market.
The price of our network will change, definitely.
But I also think it's a case of we know that for the foreseeable future,
the price of charging needs to be kept as competitive as low as possible,
because we want people to be flying electric.
We want flight schools to see this as a really good alternative.
So yeah, it's roughly comparative to car charging at the moment.
Now, we're coming to the end of the discussion.
There's two things that, well, one thing in particular I want to talk about,
which is that I believe you're involved with Porsche and a couple of the ex-top
gear guys in a little stunt in this year.
Do you want to, or actually with the back end of last year beginning this year,
do you want to tell us a little bit about that, please?
Yeah. Was it that long ago?
Time really flies, doesn't it?
It was last year, it was actually filmed and released in...
It was meant to be back end of last year.
We ended up doing it, I think it was April-May.
I'd have to check my dates.
Anyway, it's on YouTube.
Yes, do go watch it.
I think we're up to about 3 million views now,
probably due to the fact it was with James May and Richard Hammond.
It is on the DriveTribe YouTube channel.
Yeah, and that came about because, again, we're the first of something
and if you put in aircraft charging to Google, all the first page is Aerovol.
I don't know what's on page two because it looks like page two of Google, obviously.
That's the graveyard, right?
But all of that is us.
Anyway, so that means we get weird phone calls and unexpected phone calls,
like one we received sort of back end of last year from Porsche.
And they called us up and said,
we have a new Taycan coming out.
We've seen your network and your plane.
Would you like a race?
And we said, yeah.
So fast forward to a meeting with the Porsche marketing team
and we cooked up this idea.
I mentioned that I remember James had a pilot's license
because he flew in a couple of Top Gear episodes, if you remember.
And fast forward to, yes, we ended up doing a race with James and Richard,
which was the world's first electric car versus electric plane race.
Oh, where did it go between?
What would you start and end point?
We started at Henstridge Aerodrome,
which is kind of north of Devon, not quite Devon,
but north of Devon, that area on terrible geography.
No way UK, certainly no way UK counties are.
Anyway, so we started at Henstridge and we finished at Dunsfold
and went via Thruxton.
So it was Henstridge, Thruxton, Dunsfold, Thruxton,
great airport, great racetrack, long history and motorsport,
a lot of money being put into Thruxton, actually a really exciting time.
So it was worth visiting them.
And then we went on to Dunsfold,
which most of you will better know as the old Top Gear test track.
So that was obviously why we finished there.
And yeah, it was a very good race, good race.
The weather did impact the race somewhat and I will leave it at that
and you'll have to have a look at the results yourself.
Yeah, I'm not going to spoil it,
but you obviously would have sat down the maths and said,
well, this is not going to be plain sailing for one or the other.
It's obviously going to be very, very...
We knew it would be close.
It's just, you know, if we'd have done it in Florida,
it would have been a different outcome, I think,
but you know, British weather being what it is.
Oh, well, but yeah, excellent video.
I will link that in the show notes
and recommend people to go out and have a look at it.
Appreciate it.
Guys, is there anything else you'd like to say
about electric aviation before we pop up?
Yeah, I suppose my message on electric aviation is,
most people are surprised when I tell them,
people that say that don't know me,
people from outside the industry,
people ask you what you do.
And when they end up talking about
building a charging network for electric aircraft,
most people are astounded that A, that's a thing,
and that B, we have electric planes.
And I suppose the message would be,
yes, we do have electric aircraft currently flying.
And B, it's a lot closer than you think.
I think people are the wider industry of aviation.
Going back to really the start of our conversation,
I think people have a view that it's going to be
really, really hard to decarbonize it,
almost impossible.
And we need to kind of stop flying.
And the aviation industry gets a bit of a flogging.
I would respond to that by saying,
if you look at the art of the possible with current tech,
yes, it's smaller aircraft.
Yes, it's flight training.
But that accounts for a lot of hours.
80% of aviation is general aviation,
which doesn't, that doesn't mean the commercial stuff.
People flying around in small aircraft.
And there's already decarbonization strategies
and options in place to do that.
So there's a lot of possibility and hope
in the world of aviation.
Yes, the bigger stuff remains tough to decarbonize.
But there's a lot of people with much bigger brains
than me building realistic solutions for that.
It will take time.
But I suppose the message is there's a lot of hope
if going back to the conference that you and I attended,
if there's action.
And I think it comes down to people and businesses taking action.
But yeah, we can get there.
Absolutely, 100%.
Guy Hayden, thanks a lot for your time.
Very much appreciated.
Cheers, Gary, thank you.
So a few quick takeaways from this discussion with Guy.
Now Guy is obviously passionate about aviation
and his approach is slightly less radical than mine
and I appreciate that.
But he is working in a sector that understands
and appreciates that electric aviation,
even with the limitations that exist at the moment,
is something that will develop as we move forward.
More powerful batteries, larger planes,
better charging infrastructure,
especially in the general aviation world,
will ensure that you can do the same sort of flights
you do at the moment in a Cessna,
but for far less cost and a much lower carbon footprint.
Guy mentioned that the longest electric flight
he could do at the moment in the UK
is from Lid in Kent to Dunkerswell in Devon,
which is a distance of 181 miles,
it's approximately 300 kilometres in a straight line.
And just for reference,
that's the same distance as Lid in Kent to Amsterdam.
So whilst electric aviation has a way to go,
there's definitely signs that it's starting to experience
the sort of uptake that EVs did back in the day.
Guy's reference to the Pipistrel aircraft
that his company owns has been like the Nissan Leaf of the day,
it actually boasts really well
and I quite like that comparison.
So what are your thoughts on electric aviation?
Let me know info at ebmusings.com
Now it's time for a cool EV or renewable thing
to share with your listeners
and in keeping with the electric aviation aspect
of this episode,
the cool thing relates to something
that we did actually mention in the discussion with Guy,
which is the Beta Technologies
who have successfully completed their first passenger flight
of its electric Seatol,
conventional take of a landing aircraft,
the Alia from Long Island to JFK Airport.
This 45 minute flight had four passengers on board
showcasing the potential for quiet
and emission free air travel.
The flight marks the significant step
towards commercial operations
and it supports efforts
to reduce carbon emissions in urban areas.
Now obviously this is just the first of many steps
towards full passenger certification
but with a range of around 300 nautical miles
on a one hour charge,
this aircraft certainly has a lot of potential.
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I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.
It was put together this week
with the help of Guy Hayden.
Thank you very much to Guy for his time.
If you have any thoughts, comments,
criticisms or other general messages
to pass on to me,
I can be reached at info at evmusings.com.
On the socials I'm on Blue Sky
at evmusings.bsky.social.
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Now if you enjoyed this episode
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Go to coffee.com slash evmusings
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Now check out the links in the show notes
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Now I've spoke to a few of you
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Now thanks as always to my co-founder Simon.
You know I always thought
his electric unicycle thing
was just a pastime
something he did to get out of the house
out into the fresh air
but it seems I was wrong
he sees it as something bigger
especially if it becomes
a little more widespread
and accepted.
I'm not here in the UK obviously
but if you look at Mainland Europe
there's a lot to be said
for very good public transport systems.
Thanks for listening.
Bye.
you
About this episode
Exploring the challenges and progress of electric aviation, this episode dives into the environmental impact of traditional air travel and the potential of electric planes to reduce carbon emissions. Guest Guy Hayden from Air Revolt discusses the current state of electric aircraft, charging infrastructure, and the hurdles faced by the industry, including funding and power supply issues. The conversation highlights promising developments like the Pipistrel Velis trainer and Beta Technologies' eVTOL Alia, while addressing the limitations of sustainable aviation fuels and the need for systemic change in aviation. A unique electric plane versus electric car race with James May and Richard Hammond adds an entertaining twist.
Original notes
In this conversation, Gary discusses the advancements and challenges in electric aviation with Guy Haydon from Aerovolt. The focus on the development of the Aerovolt network for charging electric aircraft.
Guy highlights the importance of partnerships with flight schools and OEMs, the cost efficiency of electric planes compared to traditional aircraft, and the pricing strategies for charging.
The conversation also touches on innovative public engagement strategies, including a race between an electric plane and a car, and concludes with a hopeful outlook on the future of electric aviation and its role in decarbonization.
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
Links in the show notes:
Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk
(C) 2019-2026 Gary Comerford
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The EV Musings Podcast
Gary Comerford
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47:29