Electric-powered flight records smashed - worth a watch (and with a Mercedes-Benz link ...)

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Interesting and well-made video ... well worth a watch despite not being in HD (why??!!).

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Need to bear in mind that the aeroplane is in fact an 'off the shelf' American airframe - it's a Nemesis NXT racer designed for a flat 6 Lycoming engine (hence the flat/wide nose). The registration G-NXTE is also a bit of a giveaway! AFAIK Rolls Royce sub-contracted pretty much everything to specialists, and actually had minimal (if any) technical involvement. But still.

The Mercedes-Benz link is that the motor came from UK-based YASA ... they became part of MB last year, and will provide the electric motors for their new "AMG.EA" platform (high performance, driver-oriented) vehicles.
 
Interesting and well-made video ... well worth a watch despite not being in HD (why??!!).

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Need to bear in mind that the aeroplane is in fact an 'off the shelf' American airframe - it's a Nemesis NXT racer designed for a flat 6 Lycoming engine (hence the flat/wide nose). The registration G-NXTE is also a bit of a giveaway! AFAIK Rolls Royce sub-contracted pretty much everything to specialists, and actually had minimal (if any) technical involvement. But still.

The Mercedes-Benz link is that the motor came from UK-based YASA ... they became part of MB last year, and will provide the electric motors for their new "AMG.EA" platform (high performance, driver-oriented) vehicles.
Yes, I understand the emotion and elation from having been a pioneer in some technical challenge.
For me it was doing 350mph powered by a couple of diesel digger engines. Did that mean we now have diesel trucks rushing about at huge velocities? No, but the profile of JCB changed dramatically, and their sales worldwide followed a massive upward trend.
In these events which last just a few seconds, we don't really face the elephant in the room about energy density of the batteries. The flight capability of that plane was measured in minutes, so not really something we will be jumping on to cross the Atlantic in the next few years.
The DieselMax LSR car used just 12 litres of regular diesel to set the 350mph record, 500 times less than the Bloodhound car which set the outright and sound barrier breaking LSR.
For that little and very innovative aeroplane, a huge proportion of its take off weight was battery.
Inspirational, but as we have seen, not something which has changed Rolls Royce's mind about electric commercial aviation.
 

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