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welcome to the AeroInnovate >> Technology Showcase Stage.and
My name is Meredith Jaeger, and I am the co-founder and director
of AeroInnovate.
have Chip Yates, but before I go In this afternoon's session we
share just a little bit of into Chip's bio, I'd like to
and what we're all about. We are physically located here
in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and we provide resources and services
to entrepreneurs and investors
aviation industry to help connect them, educate them,e
expose them, and provide a
information and resources among commthemselves as well.hare
So, with that, I will now introduce our featured guest for
today.
executive officer and founder of Chip Yates is the chief
Chip led a team of three Flight of the Century.
create 258-horsepower electric volunteer aerospace engineers to
speeds of over 200 miles per superbike which he rode at
land speed records, the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb
World Record, four AMA national records, and four AMA national
championship titles.
FIM and Guinness Book of World He currently holds the official
fastest electric motorcycle. Records titles for the world's
258-horsepower motor into the world's most powerful electric
aircraft, a Burt Rutan-designed Long-EZ.
Yates is a prolific inventor
patents, including three on the Jeep Grand Cherokee and more
than 30 consumer products invented and brought to market,
including the trend setting FlipLash flip over toy car.
One week ago, Chip broke the
at an amazing 202.6 miles per speed record hour.lectric flight
It is my pleasure to introduce
to y[APPLAUSE]tes.
Hello, people.
A beautiful day. Happy Friday.
So, I have to have a Burt Rutan quote because I have a Burt
Rutan, plagiarized, beautiful Burt Rutan Long-EZ with a
beautiful gas engine in it and
airplane. turned iFor shame.electric
Burt says, among other things, a
have confidence and nonsense. true cDo you all believe?has to
Well, the nonsense part I'm referring to is our infinite
range electricity flight. It's a cover of Popular Science
type stuff. How could you possibly have an
electric airplane that flies
And, for my background in building electric vehicles of
the extreme variety, I got into aviation just two or two and a
half months ago and immediately wondered why I couldn't have an
airplane that flew fast and for long durations.
And we all know the answer is batteries.
But you're going to hear in my
think we can develop a way presentation today about why I
solutions. around that using mechanical
bit. So, I'll get to that in a little
to do is I want to, I don't know And the other thing today I want
yesterday or this morning, but if any of you were at my talk
setting the world record, and wthen we gave a little bit oft
data, as much as we could in the
Today, I want today to be a technical sort of interchange.
I want to roll up our sleeves and dig into the technology a
little bit. At the end of my
200-mile-an-hour flight, I lost a battery and I was forced to
make a dead stick landing, my second flight in a canard and
second flight in this aircraft. It's over there and it doesn't
have a scratch on it. Thank you.
But that was more luck than anything else.
But there's some interesting
We collect telemetry on board the aircraft, and we have it
matched up with the video so you
flight what was happening. can see at each stage of the
of today's presentation. So that's going to be the meat
of people who weren't here But I want to, for the benefit
a few pieces of background that yesexplains how we got here.ugh
First of all, standing up here
I think America is a place where as a proud American.
We have all the tools necessary iand all the freedoms to do
things that are bold and push us
I think electric aviation is the into the next century.
I'm convinced that 100%. future.
into proving that and starting a I've invested everything I have
to do that. coThis is the country where we,
need to be taking risks and innovating.
And people ask me, hey, what's
Is it electric or is it not telectric??
And the future is direct
So if we want electric aircraft fin the future, we do things.
today to make it happen.
don't hope that it happens. We have to actually take action.
So, the power train technology
came from our electric that's in the electric aircraft
And we designed this with three guys in a year, and it is the
world's most powerful electric
importantly, we developed this motorcycle, but, more
vehicle could compete with a gas bike to prove that an electric
And that's what we did. I like this picture because it's
me leading a Ducati 848 Superbike with a pro rider on it
in an actual road race that was scheduled, it's a gasoline road
race and I entered an electric
And we did that in January of 2011, and we got a second place
and a third place in two races
Suzukis, Yamahas, Kawasakis, and that we entered against Hondas,
And I was so proud that a couple KTMs.
build a bike that could beat of guys in their garage could
forth. Kawasakis and Yamahas and so
Popular Science put it on the Scover because they thought itnd
was hard to believe that an electric vehicle could compete
with gas because what we've seen
that are compromised, generally speaking, compromised across the
board.
they're more expensive, they They're heavier, they're slower,
long time to recharge, and don't go as long, they need a
So our philosophy on electric vehicles it you build them and
you implement them in places
gasoline, at least compete if where theynot beat.tually beat
On the electric motor side, the electric motors have gasoline
motors beat already, and I'm a
When I raced as a professional gas motor guy.
own gas engines. motorcycle racer, I built all my
6,000 RPM. 600 CC motors that would rev to
Championship. I'm a motor guy, but I hate to
say it to myself and everybody, electric motors have gas motors
beat completely.
you can walk up and touch it. It's 11 inches around, 11 inches
long. It makes 258-horsepower, 400
foot pounds of torque, and the
Everybody says it's instant; it really is instant.
We had to write a ton of
flip over and kill me, and the software to make the bike not
We had to write a bunch of same with the airplane.
torque from coming on too soon. It weighs 110 pounds versus a
Chevy 350, 575. It doesn't need a transmission.
You can use one.
We use a jack shaft on the It doesn't need one.
speed reduction unit on the motorcycleaircraft.used a prop
But it's a steady gear
On the aircraft it's 2.1 to 1 gear reduction.
So when the prop is designed to go 250 miles an hour at 3100
RPM, and that puts the motor at 6,000 RPM.
And it's a good place for the motor to be.
Well in the power ban.
to 8,500 RPM, but we don't need The motor that much.lly rev up
The electric motor is 92% efficient, and that's true.
It's the motor and the
only put off about 7% or 8% waste heat from the horsepower
they're producing.
motorcycle, if you look, this motorcycle is more powerful than
a Grand Prix MotoGP bike, and it
from a Honda dirt bike. It really is not rejecting any
heat at all.
maintenance required. AnLiterally, no maintenance ato
all.
years. We've had that motor for two
It works or it doesn't. And the batteries we all know.
I don't like hearing doom and gloom about batteries.
Batteries, I brought one with me
latest and greatest lithium ion herepolymer pouch cell. the
Okay, this battery, to me,
of technology. represents an incredible piece
weighs just under two pounds. We have 102 of these in the
motorcycle, and the first flight
pack, 102. on the aircraft we used the same
charged, is 4.2 volts. This battery, when fully
have in the airplane. So That's a lot of voltage.t I
The amazing thing about this
amps, and it can put out 600 battery is it can put out 600
So, if you think about your household outlets, 15 amps, you
plug in your toaster, this is 600 amps.
If you short these terminals
doing, it will pull 3,600 amps together, don't do what I'm
So, you look at this battery and before it destroys itself.
far enough, I wish they'd do we complain my car doesn't go
These guys are doing an amazing job, the battery guys.
And they don't pay me to say
We get their batteries and we tear them up.
But the problem is, as consumers
vehicles to gas vehicles. Well, that's apples and oranges.
Electric vehicles and batteries are not going to equal the
stored energy capacity of gasoline.
They're not even close. High level, this is about 86
times worse than gasoline in
We validate, this cell right is about the best you can get for
high performance applications.
Gasoline is 12,000 watt hours 145 watper kilogram.ilogram.
So don't compare them.
applications where it makes sense; use gasoline vehicles
where it makes sense. I don't believe electric
vehicles are going to whip
They co-exist. gasoline vehicles out.
So the pack we had in the aircraft and the motorcycle
could put out 600 amps. It was 12.4 kilowatt hours,
which is three times more stored
It's a 31-amp-hour pack. energy than a Toyota Prius.
pack. The one in the airplane is 428
volts.
critical low voltage, 291. Something to remember is this
be part of the story as to why I We'll get to that, and that will
electric airplane. had a forced landing in the
I want to fly an electric Soairplane, I want to fly longat
distances.
the Atlantic. In faI want to fly Charles over
Lindbergh's route in an electric
And we can't get airplanes to fly 200 or 300 miles right now,
so what do we do? So after I retired the electric
motorcycle, I brought my guys together, smart guys, and said,
hey, guys, I want to fly an electric airplane the Lindbergh
route over the Atlantic.
Is it possible? And they came back, said
absolutely not, you're totally
That's 3,600 miles. You're way out there.
So we started inventing and brainstorming because I want to
do it anyway, and we came up
One was dropping batteries as with ayou fly.ideas.
If you heard my talk yesterday, we talked about this where a
gasoline airplane has way more
burns it so it gets lighter as stored energy in gas and it
And the electric airplane has way less and it holds on to dead
batteries as it flies.
So our first idea was we'll drop Doesn't seem fair.
We'll make a battery pack in batteries as we use them.
route we'll drop half of it. two, and halfway over a certain
And the answer is it would help And how maround 40%.hat help?
You could get about 40% range extension if you did a huge
drop. That doesn't get us anywhere
near over the Atlantic, but we
And we did this all in lab and thought it was interesting.
where is this optimized. have a bunch of models about
take that same battery pack and you break it into 10 pieces and
you consume each one, so each one is a full voltage, you
consume each one in series, and as each one is done then you
drop it.
That's around 92% if you did 10 drops, but it means you're in an
electric airplane, you're flying
collection centers. It's kind of a lot to get your
head around, but it means that
is let's get rid of this weight. that's a worthwhile way to think
basically doubled your range. Still didn't get me over the
Atlantic. So, we're thinking as we drop
these batteries we don't want to
They're expensive and it's drop them.
So we'll pick them up and we'll environrecharge them.endly.
Maybe we'll drop them on
wings on them and they can glide parachutes, or maybe we'll put
pick them up at our collection left, glide right, land, and we
So we had battery packs with centers.
they have wings, just put a wings, propeller on it.ll, if
It could fly back up and meet you.
And so you're deep into the realm of the completely
ridiculous, but as time passed
idea with people and started and we started socializing this
possible or not, we ended up talking about whether it was
Now, there are challenges, which with it actually is possible.
concept of having an electric mother ship that flies a heavy
payload at a legitimate speed either across the United States
or over an ocean, for starters
something like that. how about LA to San Francisco or
carrying the mail, but along the Maybe it starts and it's just
you've got an infrastructure and route, it's a known route,
they tether connect and they you've got UAVs that fly up and
the next one comes up later in recharge and they go down and
And they're just recharged on the ground and relaunched.
And you have to fly the same
Maybe it's good for UPS or direction all the time.
But you start looking at it and you go, what are the challenges?
How do you link up and how do you get them up in the air and
stuff?
part of recharging in air is And you break it down but no
So we look at that and we think, impossible.
can make it across the Atlantic. if we do something like that, we
the water. We might have to launch one from
difficult. That seems like it would be
of what would it mean to be Ssuccessful about going acrossa
the Atlantic. Now, we could have come up with
anything. We could have said if you fly at
80,000 feet, you could do it
You could get up in the air in today.
get blown over there with the jet stream, and that's great,
you get a world record, but that's not going to help all of
us fly in electric airplanes. The thing that's going to help
us fly in electric airplanes is developing an infrastructure
that supports heavy payload,
And so we came up with criteria and we worked through the
Charles Lindbergh Foundation and
people that are involved in the Lindbergh route and the history
of it, and we were very respectful and we said we want
to do this, what do you guys
And we came up with some think?
Got to fly the exact route. You've got to be at least as
fast as Lindbergh or faster.
creep over there at 20 miles an It doesn't dohour.ny good if we
The same altitude or lower. Don't get up in the jet stream
and get blown over there. Can't be a balloon.
Can't be a blimp. Has to be manned.
So, we set it up so success would mean you've actually moved
the ball forward. That we figured out a way, as
crazy as it sounds, to fly a big
And I think the aircraft we're heavy payload.
and can fly faster than the desiLindbergh on the route,unds
all-electric, and right now the way we have it is we're using 5
UAVs, which we'll talk about, but if we accomplish this, you
land in Paris, it's not just
to do a 3,600-mile flight with hey, look at me, it's possible
So, we went to NASA, and after an all-electric airplane.
gave us their OTIS trajectory optimizer software, and we had
our smart guys write a layer on top of that.
And what that does, that's the
Apollo all the way up until now, software that was used for
and it takes a bunch of it'sscenarios into account.izer
It's very complicated.
laid it on its side and said how And we've actually taken it and
where each UAV and everything abyou do has a penalty and ath
benefit associated with it. So how many UAVs do I need to
get across the Atlantic?
you could use 10 or you could use 5 if you launch them from
here. You could use four, but one has
to be launched from the water.
do that. And we say no, we don't want to
Okay, now you're up to five or So we can strain that out.
So that's the way it thinks. six.
UAV has to fly before it docks There's a penalty for how far a
half its batteries just getting with us becauto us.would consume
So all that logic is in our route optimizer, and the first
route that we've optimized is the Lindbergh route.
So, you see, when I take off
plan and I'm sure it will change, when I take off from JFK
we already have a UAV attached. It's hard-attached to the
aircraft. And we use a ground cart, it's
all electric, and it propels us down the runway, and we get to
take-off speed. We rotate off the cart, and then
our propeller starts turning. We have a really low landing
gear on the Lindbergh plane.
white, that is using the power We fly the first leg, which is
attached to us. And we have our own battery pack
in our aircraft.
We pick up number two, all the We drop that over Newfoundland.
recharging us are soft-docked. subsequent docked UAVs that are
in midair or anything like that. We're not trying to join planes
in front of us, and it has a The way it works is the UAV is
that is being blown back with a tethebasket behind it.s nose
And the Lindbergh plane comes in
the Air Force uses. You probe the basket, and once a
connection is made, we're charging over a coaxial cable,
the Lindbergh plane overflies the UAV and tows it during the
charging cycle. So this is where the rest of it
is. One comes from Iceland.
Another one takes off from
But over the middle, we're Ireland and comes and meets me.
That means we're running on our own power for a little bit here
over the middle and then near the end.
Now, the US Navy is interested
And they took a look at this and in this.
helpful if we launched one over the ocean maybe from a submarine
or a surface ship or an aircraft
And we said, yeah, absolutely. carrier?
The Navy might be involved in the Lindbergh flight as well.
Okay, so, again, this is what it
And, again, this is sort of a Popular Science-y image, but the
math is there.
SolidWorks at the moment. That's the first one that's
hard-docked to us being jettisoned, and the rest are
soft-tethered.
airport being in the middle of And again, this whole idea of an
Science-y stuff, but you get the the ocean, this is Popular
These are going to be flown off land and the US Navy may or may
not help us in the flight.
The other day they sent us a They're very excited.
We're actually in contract letter of intent.
Lake. All they do is fly UAVs up at
China Lake. F-18s, they do all kinds of
missile tests, and we are next
So this is why we picked China door at Inyokern Airport.
So we're from Orange County. Lake and Inyokern.
site is in Orange County, but we Our electric vehicle development
we think this area here could be picked Inyokern Airport because
Inyokern Airport has three the next Mohave of innovation.
One is 7100 feet and I needed it beautiful runways.
last week. when I made my emergency landing
then you've got China Lake, the ButNaval Air Weapons Station,nd
that's all restricted, but if they like you it's not
restricted. It's funny how it works.
So we sort of fly in there and
tracking range that they use to track the space shuttle and
SpaceShipOne, and when we did our record, they actually
tracked us and validated it.
interesting stuff about that. AnBut the Navy, this is Chiname
Lake, just up in China Lake they
people. dThey own enough restricted air
space to be Rhode Island, and a lot of what they do is unmanned
stuff.
story about electric vehicles and unmanned UAVs, and theyr
jumped on board immediately.
This is the tracking range at China Lake that validated Burt
Rutan's SpaceShipOne that they
Melvill into space. And this is also the tracking
range that validated the space
Edwards. shuttle when it would land at
Lake and not Edwards. So, interesting little piece of
information here. Last week when we flew the world
record flight, China Lake was helping us because we have this
arrangement with them.
radar, video, infrared, all Akinds of information back, and
after the flight we landed and
hanger at Inyokern and their they came racing over to our
they said, yeah, we're only egoing to give you the radard
because the infrared was
We have had trouble finding you. strange.
another look at that before they So I think they're going to have
So they were sort of taken aback release it to the public.
Rutan-designed airplane, by here's a fiberglass
so they switched to infrared. aWe'll just pick up the heat.,
This is what the bad guys do, right?
They us surface air missiles and
And they looked at my motor. pick up your heat.
I'm flying 200 miles an hour It's making 250-horsepower.
space, and they're having diretrouble seeing me. air
That's weird. They don't like that.
I got a tiny little radiator
heat, and it doesn't show up on poopingtheir screens.bit of
And you can see radar dropouts
But they got us at 204.4. We got ourselves at 202.6.
So we just went with the lower
But really, really great guys at of the numbers.
They're actually, despite being the Navy, very entrepreneurial,
and we're excited to be up there
and forth. because we can have this back
The red arrow is runway 33. This is where it took off, and
the red circle over on the right
We have a nice hanger there. is our hanger.
Brand new runway. It's a b7100 feet.acility.
And I picked that one because we
no wind. flew in the morning, there was
records in the wind. You don't want to do world
liked the direction, there was a And I picked this one because I
problem and needed to do an aborted takeoff, but luckily I
didn't. So we picked the long, safe
runway. So, the first flight, this is
the Long-EZ, and this is the
in the Long-EZ to the Lindbergh relationship plane. world record
The Lindbergh is a hundred-foot wingspan, all carbon dedicated,
heavy weight plane. The Long-EZ has nothing to do
with the actual flight, but it's
And the reason we bought it, an R&D platform.
Rutan's designs, but my nfather-in-law had one and he
built it and I flew about a hundred hours in the backseat,
so I was totally in love with Long-EZs.
But, more practically, with a pusher we can have a recharging
probe sticking out the front. So that's what we're doing.
We have a recharging probe
that mounts on the front, sticks that's being built right now
have a Cessna 182 that has the up, out and forward, and then we
the tether going out the back. battery pack in the backseat and
hear from us is hopefully we And so the next thing you'll
and put some level of recharge made a successful dock midair
We're going to take this in back insteps.ong-EZ.
But that's the next goal is we
and then we charge through a use an electromagnetic coupling,
So there's the safety. coaxial cable.
breaks. It's not mechanically coupled.
So, we're building the battery
They'll sit in the back of the chargers.
They're actually able to be jettisoned.
If we have any problems, heat or
It's a 200-amp battery charger, fire, wactually.p them.
So we're going to charge at a rate of 200 amps, which is kind
of insane.
So in the 182 is a DC pack just slightly higher voltage than the
pack in the Long-EZ, and we have
chargers that we have wired up two parallel hundred-amp
200 amps. iAnd so that's our objective ist
to put some level, I really want
amount of charge and land with to take off with a certain
I think that would be awesome. more than I took off with.
to making the Lindbergh thing And I think happen.the next step
The Lindbergh, it's 2014. We have a road map.
I'm sure we'll make, but this is
We have to go in steps. So the Long-EZ came along quick.
We bought it in April.
Had 850 hours on it. It was a gasoline plane.
Tom Garrison, a mechanical It came out of Texas.
It had an 02-35 in it, engineer, was the builder.
It was flying, airworthy, and had registration and everything.
And we took off the wings in
U-Haul and started working on it Dallas and towed it home on a
And between May and June, in two in May.
plane that you see over here. So there's a lot of long nights.
And people know that that was the same two months I got my
pilot's license.
and finished it and I just got So I started my license in May
So it was two months of not it abousleeping.ks ago.
But the progression of the
on the 14th, and we sort of sped Long-EZ was we did a taxi test
Oshkosh so we could show you all it up to try to get it here to
about you but I've seen a lot of something because I don't know
that are concepts and I want to see stuff that's actually flown
and things that have done something.
And so there was a lot of extra pressure to be able to come here
today and be in the position I'm
oh my god, it was so cool flying in now where I'm talking about,
airplane. And so we barely squeaked it in
because we did runway tests two days later, first flight two
days after that, and then went
the world record 202 miles an up the day ahour.July 19th for
That was also the same day for
on the video. thHow many people were in theis
presentation the other day and
So not that many? Okay, so we've got to see the
video.
on the 19th and then we took the So we did the dead stick landing
Oshkosh the next day. So this poor thing, so if I
collapse it's understandable, this poor thing hasn't had any
rest. Okay, so the video.
So the video shows we had four
and then we had a chase. cameras on board the airplane,
There's the camera angle shot The 182 out of that.e plane.
The Long-EZ, took out the 118-horsepower gas motor.
It's sitting on the shop floor
have a boat and you needed an if anybody anchor.t or if you
No, it's a good motor.
end of the day with the battery Butpack in there, we used thehe
battery pack from out motorcycle, which was old.
It's from 2009 and so we had put
Bonneville and racing gas bikes a lot ofand stuff.that at
So that battery pack admittedly was a little long in the tooth.
So maybe I shouldn't have done
pack I wouldn't have made it for it, but if I had built a new
So there's a lot of tradeoffs to Oshkosh.
But we put the old battery pack in there.
So you're talking about an
normal Long-EZ with that pack in airplane that's lighter than a
It was 1240 pounds with me in it it.
CG of 102. ready to fly.
Nice and safe. So it was nicely in Rutan's CG.
Everything signed off and then Good weight and balance.
So you're talking about an we did the flight.
with twice the horsepower. airplane lighter than a Long-EZ
quite interesting. So what we found was something
throttle. And I'll show you that on the%
data. It was amazing when I first flew
the thing.
I didn't know how much to do. I didn't want to floor it and
have some failure, battery
wound on the throttle maybe 50% failin the first flight. we
And the thing rotates,
like this, and I look down at my immediately starts climbing out
at 120 knots or something like air speed indicator is climbing
And I go, I don't want to do that.
batteries and do a nice slow that because I want to save my
of energy possible for the climb and use the least amount
and see what we have. fSo I'm in the climb and I'mt
rotating back to power in the full climb, and I thought that
was really surreal. From flight training you're in
the 172 and you're trying to
firewall, if anything. push it further from the
So in the video that we'll show you with the record flight, we
climbed out 87 knots, 650 feet
So we took off from Inyokern, which is 2500, the runway is
2500 MSL. So we got up to 4,500 MSL and we
leveled off.
to go sort as slowly as possible And we leveled off an I wanted
could turn and do the high speed to get away from Inyokern so I
So we level off 4,500 and I roll run.
throttle, 100 miles an hour. the throttle back and I'm at 20%
dead pack which there's a lot of It's pulling 45 amps out of a
so it probably would have done impedance in our pack right now
We're pulling 45 amps and it better.
is not the greatest. sagged down to 370 volts, which
particular day. So I noticed right away at level
flight that I was going to have some issues with battery sag,
and when the batteries sag, you lose horsepower, and if they go
too low under their critical
have a problem, and that's what voltagehappened to us.and you
So, we get out there at 4500, we
back towards China Lake's do a restricted airspace.ight
I tell the 182, see you guys
As I roll on the throttle, I see later, and roll on the throttle.
I've got a dashboard in there. the battery sag.
you can see it's a formula one When you look at the airplane
We have a MoTec computer in dashboardthere.by MoTec.
I roll on the throttle and I see
and it continues to drop down. the voltage drop down below 370,
long time building up to speed So, I take, actually, quite a
the batteries. because I'm trying not to slam
to 190. SSo I'm sitting there 190 milest
an hour and the battery sag is
It's like 290 or 300. We'll see on the data.
And if it gets to 270 you're in trouble.
So I'm there at 190 miles an
on my dashboard. hour, and I'm getting red lights
batteries down too far. Hey, mStop doing that.ng the
So that's where I had a choice
off the throttle at 190 and be to make, and it was do you roll
That battery pack I think was toast anyway.
It had two years of abuse on it.
go to 100% throttle and try to Or do you just punch through and
So, we all know what I did go over 200?
Sorry. right?
field, go ahead. So, if you can glide to the
So you see in the data there's So I went to 100%.
throttle where that was sort of jme trying to punch it through.%
And we punched to 200 but that
The battery sagged to 270, and I was it.
for about 15 seconds, enough for held 200 miles an hour or better
level flight, we get it, slow China Lake down. we got you
And then I rolled it off and I
and I had my warning lights tstill but I still have power.t,
It feels okay.
it. But the plan was to just fly by
the tower.
negative, Ghostrider, just a Not a Tom Cruise fly-by,
We had some state Assembly regular fly-by.
and stuff, so I was going to fly woman, some people, dignitaries
and land. So I started to do that because
I still had power, and so I'm halfway over the runway at a
thousand feet, halfway down the runway, and I lost all power.
And so then it's too late.
thousand feet right there on You're not going to go down a
So then I executed sort of a that runway.
didn't get to do my fly-by but swooping 180 and landed and
So that was fun. got to do emergency landing.
And then, when you watch on the video, I set it up to glide, I
think it was around 80 knots, and I got a good glide, the
Rutan plane saved me. It wasn't me, it was the Rutan
plane.
I'm trying to make it to the It just handled beautifully.
I'm misaligned with the runway runway.
minute. Right when the wheels touch is
the first time I've become
And as I'm becoming aligned with aligned with the runway.
I'm using a little bit more back the runway trying to make it,
little bit more, and pretty soon elevator, a little bit more, a
then the plane falls out of the I rsky but it's about a foot.nd
So it's like clunk, and then I
ever so embarrassing, but got on bounce the nose wheel, which is
So that's what you'll see is the ground safely.
heading towards restricted take off from Inyokern runway 33
beyond, turn, climb, and I climb airspace, that's China Lake
So in the video, once I start climbing we cut it out because
it takes forever. Climb, climb, climb.
Then I tell the 182 I'm doing a 180, and that red mark is when I
start accelerating, but I start accelerating very slow, like
30%-40% throttle. So we cut all that out of the
video to get it down to six or
it back when I'm at 190 and I spunch through 200 at the end.ng
And then you'll see me come back, initiate the fly-by, and
then abort the fly-by and do the
So I got, because I used to be a emergency landing.
racer, I have a Nomex fire suit. car racer and a motorcycle
It's a race car driver suit. It's not a proper flight suit.
was giving to me by National And then I have a parachute that
So we built a canopy jettison Pasystem.s.
So if I pull a ripcord in the Long-EZ, the canopy flies off,
and I've got my parachute.
2,000 feet AGL, so probably not Bthat great of parachutingy
weather.
seven minutes. And this video is just under
experimental electric 89 Charlie >> Inyokern traffic,
traffic, departure to the south Yankee is dInyokern.33 for light
Okay, so this is 35% power
My power is just a little rotary setting.
You can see it when you look in there.
It's just a little zero or
258-horsepowwant.hichever you
It's got a lot of elevator trim in there.
The canard folks told me
They said the canard will fly and then the main wheels stay on
the ground a while. So don't worry, it will fly.
So this is the second ever
So you've got to turn before you flight of this airplane.
China Lake, experimental get into China Lake there.
89 Charlie Yankee is airborne for world record speed run.
So I was reporting into China Lake that we're going to do the
run, make sure that they could
So this is from the 182 chase plane, of course.
Say again.
than our performance. >> Your >> Roger that. cleaner
23 Alpha, 180 turn to the left.
Go ahead. You're clear left.
So we're going to make that 180 and start slowly
accelerating.
Roll on the power.
Okay, see you guys later. Wat>> Roger that.es.
That's kind of cocky, huh?
We're going to outrun the 182. See you guys later.
All right, so now we're at 190 It's not very nice.
A little vibration in the ricockpit..
We'll sort that out when we get home.
200 miles an hour.
Yankee. 201 miles>> Yee-haw, --9 Charlie
See the red lights in the cockpit?
4,600 feet, 202 miles an
I'm going to shut it down. hour.
pulled the voltage below 290, and 270 is where stuff goes bad.
89 Charlie Yankee, I think
so I'm going to get in the I'm going to damage the battery
Roger that. We still have you in sight..
You're about a half mile ahead. We'll follow you.
Roger that. Inyokern traffic, experimental
89 Charlie Yankee electric is going to enter the pattern for
landing 33 Inyokern.
So I still had power up until that point.
I was going to do the fly-by, but now I lost all power.
I'm having issues with my battery so I'm going to get in
the pattern and land this thing.
So now I'm turning away from >> Roger that.
And you hear the whine but it's tthe propeller spinning..
No power at all.
So there's gear down. And then I was close to the
runway so I did deploy the speed
landing... brake which, once you watch my
experimental electric 89 Charlie >> Inyokern traffic,
Inyokern. >> Okay, so that's priority
landing, that's emergency landing.
But I deployed the speed brake
runway, but, in retrospect, I shouldn't have done that because
I actually have trouble making
I didn't want to make a sharp, the runway.
Gear down. steep turn.
glide it in. I lost power so I'm going to
We'll follow you. >> A full glide here.
And I did a very luxurious turn so I wouldn't stall it, but it
was too luxurious.
I shouldn't hbrake.ed the speed
It gets a little scary here.
Look at my elevator.
Little bounce. Done.
that from the 182. And here's the overhead view of
I like this better because you Just trying to get aligned.
Makes it look good. don'>> Holy crap.nce.
Inyokern traffic, 89 Charlie
Complete lack of power. I'll have to get towed back in
here, Inyokern. >> Inyokern traffic, sky lane 23
Alpha on the upwind runway 33,
Ridiculous. close t[APPLAUSE]okern.
What's wrong with you people? You don't applaud crash
landings. So there was some media there,
and there's four pictures they
I don't know why they're took of the landing.
There's one. overexposed like that.
Three. Two.
And the bush hides the bounce landing gear and makes it looks
like a pretty good landing. Okay, so what the hell went
wrong with that?
the MoTec data. WeWe're going to animate this.u
I'm going to show you the take-off, and I'm going to show
you what's sort of going through
Why do we only go 200 miles an my head.
The battery pack had so much hour?
put a load on it, it will only internal impedance that when I
It was done. put out 400 amps.
full horsepower. So we need 600 amps to make our
hour. And that's right where that blue
vertical bar there, wherever you
for you. move that is what it will read
That's terrible. So right there I'm at 279 volts.
vents and opens up and you've 270destroyed everything.hing
So we basically blew up the pack
The motor is spinning at 5400 at to set the record.
with not enough power to really the shaft, engage it.e prop, but
It's sitting there sort of
Let me talk about this real quick before we look at the
telemetry data. The way electric motors work is
you get horsepower that's commensurate with voltage, and
so we put 400, for the
We had a little booster pack. For the airplane we had 428.
So at 428 volts all the way down
line, the top line, you have to 380 volts, which is the green
put a load on it and it can sag down, all the way down to 380
and you'll still make full
And when we were racing the electric bike, that's what
happened. That's what happens with a fresh
pack. When the voltage drops down
to 340, that's the yellow line, your power gets de-rated by how
much voltage you can keep on the
So then you get down to 240 and you're making 150 horsepower.
So we were somewhere in between there, probably making about
170-180 horsepower with the voltage sag as bad as it was.
So that makes sense for 200 miles an hour.
It's about right. I'm going to switch over to the
MoTec data here.
by MoTec. It's out of a Formula One car.
Actually, we bought it from a Lama team.
And we write all our software,
$10,000 thing. and this MoTec ECU is about a
It's what controls the race car. It goes on race cars.
to control our electric airplane We've completely customized that
It also stores I think a power train.
Many channels. gigabyte of data.
We have a pitch, yaw, and roll. We have everything you can
imagine that we're logging. So, we can display all that.
We can actually send it over
when we get down on the ground telemetry from the air, and then
And we opened up MoTec's i2 Pro we software, and you can dot.
analysis. So what we've got here is we've
got a full length video with our
red is voltage, and the higher speed, my throttle position, the
I love that sound. the better.
So remember this, we're just And the blue is amps.
Inyokern traffic, experimental electric 89 Charlie
Yankee, taxiway Bravo, Inyokern.
miles an hour. >> So we're taxiing along seven
Whatever it's reading is here. The gauge is here.
actual values, high and low. It'll read in the middle of the
the taxi here at this moment. Voltage, see the voltage looks
great.
take off, I'm going to go 250 miles an hour at this voltage.
This is fantastic.
along. Amps, pulling 20 amps taxiing
on the flight and see all the So you can data live.ar anywhere
Inyokern traffic, experimental electric 89 Charlie
Yankee is departing 33 for light
Inyokern. traffi>> So let's go to...south
Kind of want to look at the climb real quick and then we'll
go to the 200 miles an hour.
pattern at the runway altitude You see altitude here, we're at
See my throttle position in green here?
35%.
airplane at 35% throttle? HI'm trying to go as slow as Ian
can, remember.
my speed at the top, that's in So my speed there, you can see
Climb out at 80-some miles an miles per houhour.this software.
I'm using 37% throttle. But see my voltage has already
sagged. 370 volts.
When I looked down at that I
well this is going to work. This battery pack is pretty old.
Pulling 150 amps for the climb
Okay, so then let's go to the fun part here.
So we're flying along.
190, see. I got to 190, I look at my
voltage.
So in the cockpit, anything below 290 I'm getting red
lights. So this is the decision point.
You see my throttle position? 78?
You see that green trace up there?
Look what's coming. Boom.
This guy goes to 100% throttle
there. just to try to get the record
200 miles an hour. And so there you see.
Yankee. 2>> Right as I broke through...e
Yee-haw.
I knew I had it. >> It lit up on the dash.
hour. >I'm going to shut it down.
So I hold it up at 200 for 15 seconds, and then see the
voltage come back when I take the load off of it?
The voltage recovers. Look, now up to 300-some volts
just because I took the load off
89 Charlie Yankee, I think I of it.
batteries so I'm going to get in might have damaged some
Roger that. tWe've still got you in sight.g.
You're about a half mile ahead. We'll follow you in.
Roger that. Inyokern traffic...
All right.
We used that in racing when I was racing world superbikes and
stuff.
after racing, I'd tell my crew So I'd come back into the pits
it was so extreme, man, I was like there's no more speed to be
had from this bike. And they're like really?
Huh, 70% throttle, huh? Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.
So the battery pack that we used, it performed perfectly up
until Bonneville. And Bonneville we thought we'd
be able to go about 220 or
It went 201 so it was a little something.
It was enough for the records and everything, so we go hey, we
got the record but internally we
The battery pack, we had built were a little disappointed.
pack by the time we got the up too mBonneville.ce in the
And so we can show you that too.
the way you get de-rated is when And the way it manifests itself,
aircraft when I rotate the knob, I open the throttle, or on the
MoTec and then it sends a it command back to the motor the
controller. And it says Yates wants so much
torque. We send torque commands to the
motor, and the motor outputs the
And the motor sends back a torque.
we have two CAN networks on signalboard the airplane.nicate,
And the motor, I'll say I want
you got it. 2What happens when I'm gettingys
de-rated because my voltage is, at the very top, see this circle
there?
line. YouThe green line is calledred
requested torque. That's what I'm asking.
It's going over CAN.
I'm at Bonneville. Please give me full power.
The red is coming back from the I nthing saying I cannot.s.
I do not have enough voltage on the bus to give you that level
of torque.
means you're not getting what you're asking for, you're being
de-rated.
This is a video from Bonneville that shows the same thing.
This is a camera facing backwards.
You can see the salt. We're on the salt flats of
Bonneville. And then one looking at my ugly
face. So you can see here, this is
battery state of charge.
Has nothing to do with the Fully charged battery.
Voltage, started with 450. battery being empty.
That's a function of high We'battery impedance.w.
Horsepower, thing makes 258 horsepower.
Makes it all day long when I'm
By the time I get to Bonneville, road racing.
trap right now. My ground speed, about 200 miles
an hour.
Horsepower, 190 horsepower. I've been de-rated from 258 to
190.
Not proud of it. Got a little wobble there.
live in when we build extreme performance electric vehicles is
taking a motor and pushing it to
That motor and controller are being customized for us.
It's a 600-amp controller.
removed because they know I'm crazy, and I want to be able ton
push the limits.
and greatest. The batteWe abuse them.he latest
We have software that saves them, but I have the ability to
override it, which is what I did
This is a view from inside our in the aircraft.
plane. battery pack that's on the
pull it down below 270 volts. TThe cell inverts and it goes
reverse polarity. The cell actually expands and
then vents itself, and it emits a distinctive odor and it's not
good. Don't breathe it.
It doesn't catch on fire. It doesn't blow up.
It doesn't do anything like that.
It just vents.
when it's inverted, and it The internal pressure builds up
So we opened the pack when we know that happened.
You can see which ones have vented.
And that's what it looks like.
shape, brand new. And there's one that vents right
around the tabs.
negative tab here. You've got a positive and
So that's how it fails. So in an under-voltage, you can.
make these catch on fire but
it, in an under-voltage we'vsituation, they vent. like
So in the aircraft when you saw me go 200 miles an hour and then
shut it down and lose power,
reverse polarity and opened up it's because one or more cells
And, initially, I still had continuity.
There was still some current
cells, and then they went full able to flow through the open
anymore. open and I got know continuity
dead stick landing. Now, that happened on the 19th
and we took wings off on the
haven't actually opened up the 20th and brought it here, so we
destroy everything or just one. We don't know the answer to that
yet.
show you. TherAnd this is what buildsnt to
impedance in the batteries. This is what we did that damaged
these batteries to where they had high internal impedance that
causes failure and the sag. And this is why I should have
replace them with a fresh pack
The reason I didn't, by the way, before the flight.
So I was sort of sitting on the floor and kind of fit in the
back seat of the Long-EZ, and so
and got some steal and made them we kind of went to Home Depot
flight. a fraReally, it was. first
It's like mild steal. We did it in a hurry.
Because we have the cells to
probably take me about a month build a proper pack but it will
pack to fit the Long-EZ that's to do like a really beautiful
And when we do that we expect the pr250 miles an hour orng-EZ.
thereabouts.
the point of the Lindbergh thing So, when we race motorcycles,
solution to this battery is applying a mechanical
Batteries don't last as long as you want, so we're refueling in
air, we're recharging in air. That's sort of a mechanical way
to get around batteries being not good enough to last as long
as they want. We do the exact same thing with
the motorcycle. When we built the motorcycle, I
said there's one goal, guys:
as fast around a racetrack as a this electgas, period.le will go
If we come to a decision point
you pick the one that makes it and we're not sure what to do,
Now, that's fine and you do that go as fast as the gas bike.
bike, but you wonder, can you and yofinish the race?a gas
And so we invented and patented a kinetic energy recovery
system, a regenerative braking. We're not the inventors of
regenerative braking, but we
wheel of a motorcycle, because invented a system for the front
energy is, that allows you to recover the kinetic energy from
the front wheel and slam it back
When you do that, the recharged side, you build impedance in the
cells.
will tell you, you can recharge Tthese cells at 1C or somethings
like that.
Anything more than 30 amps is So isort of off speck sheet.say.
You're on your own. If you treat this nicely and
recharge it at that level, then it will last a thousand cycles.
And it will.
batteries and we said okay, we What we did was we took these
It's for a race bike, it doesn't hear you.
And we took my gas, that's my gas bike there in that picture.
That's at Laguna Seca.
data acquisition on it, we road Ait around a track, brought itut
back in on the lap time I wanted, and we converted that to
an electric vehicle.
How much torque? How much power did we need?
have taken to get around the How many kilowatts would that
How much was available under track?
we could recover it? braking that we could regen if
something like 10C was And we found that we can regen,
So that's like 300 amps, 30 amp avhour.le.
But 10C is going to destroy the battery.
After one race you'd replace the
So you don't want to do that. So what we did was in the
software we put a line through
We said we're going to put a there and we truncated it.
And so, what is that? recA couple hundred amps.y?
It's still pretty good. And so we got video of us at
Auto Club Speedway we didn't get
amps into the pack. And by doing that, we were able0
to compete and even beat gas
with internal impedance buildup. bikes, but it damaged the pack
video. You'll see this data here in the
California Speedway in This is Auto Club Speedway,
It's 150-something miles an Calhour.ia.
We're going down the back straight.
You can follow the track. Heavy braking.
Watch that. We've got 120 amps in curves.
The green is amps getting recharged, and the red is amps
coming out to make it go. And the blue is the state of
charge of the battery, how much battery you've got left.
What's cool is in some corners
recharging the battery. And then we've got speed.
Now, here's the front straight. 168 or something.
And more curves.
there goes 60 amps of benefit.
So, I don't know if I've gone over time, but I wanted to tell
you guys, look, I want to share my excitement for the flight we
made. I want to tell you about the
future, and from my vision, from
We took a couple guys and built and airplane in two months, and.
we were able to set a record, and we haven't even started yet,
folks.
The next thing you're going to I'm so excited.
and recharging We're going to develop that technology with the
Navy, and then we're going to start planning for the Lindbergh
flight. So, I wanted to show you why the
batteries blew up, so to speak, why I had to make the forced
landing, the good stuff, the bad
motorcycle that caused the stuff, what we did with the
can get a complete understanding damage to the batteries so you
the history of our team in of the history of the batteries,
vehicles, and then my vision for building extreme electric
I'm very, very optimistic. the future which, personally,
[APPLAUSE]