Tecnam today announced it has ceased development on its P-Volt electric short-haul aircraft citing the need for speculation on technology to make the aircraft practical.
The P2012-based P-Volt was planned as a nine-seat aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce electric motors and targeted at passenger, cargo, medevac and special mission operations.
Tecnam was three years into development, when it elected to stop the program because of a lack of certainty with emerging technology.
"Since the beginning of the P-Volt development, Tecnam’s focus has been to provide operators with the ability to fly an all-electric passenger aircraft profitably, efficiently and sustainably in terms of operating costs, emissions, performance, turnaround and time to market," the company says.
"At present, Tecnam believes that these can only be achieved by extremely aggressive speculation on uncertain technology developments."
Tecnam's Chief Research and Development Officer Fabio Russo said the company wouldn't be pressured by timelines.
"We don’t feel attracted by the '2026' stream or any Electric Rush," he said. "It has always been our culture to commit to achievable goals with customers and operators, and we intend to keep that promise.
"We hope that new technologies will make businesses viable sooner rather than later, and we have real confidence in our partners’ ability to bring highly valuable products to the zero-emission powertrain and energy storage arena.”
Tecnam concluded that unless it speculated heavily on emerging technology, the P-Volt would not be viable. Current technology would produce battery packs that at the end of their lives would present a poor Net Present Value for customer operators.
"The proliferation of aircraft with 'new' batteries would lead to unrealistic mission profiles that would quickly degrade after a few weeks of operation, making the all-electric passenger aircraft a mere 'Green Transition flagship' rather than a real player in the decarbonisation of aviation," Tecnam says.
"Taking into account the most optimistic projections of slow charge cycles and the possible limitation of the maximum charge level per cycle, the real storage capacity would fall below 170Wh/kg, and only a few hundred flights would drive operators to replace the entire storage unit, with a dramatic increase in direct operating costs due to the reserves for battery replacement prices."
Although the P-Volt program has been stopped, Tecnam says it will continue to explore emerging technologies with a view to kick-starting the project again once it becomes viable.