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Rotax parts price increases


Roger Lee

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Another few reasons: no other engine company (in the 80-140 HP class) has come close to their dominant market position.  Covid probably gutted their supply chain impacting Rotax’s income during all the factory closures last year... finally, they have Private Equity ownership, which is not known for tolerating earnings declines.  It’s not like we can substitute parts 🙄

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1 hour ago, AGLyme said:

Another few reasons: no other engine company (in the 80-140 HP class) has come close to their dominant market position.  Covid probably gutted their supply chain impacting Rotax’s income during all the factory closures last year... finally, they have Private Equity ownership, which is not known for tolerating earnings declines.  It’s not like we can substitute parts 🙄

ELSA can substitute parts...if such parts were available.  But other than add-on FI systems and such, I don't know of many aftermarket parts for the 912-series.  Business opportunity?   :D

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The manufacturer controls all parts and repairs for SLSA, unlike certified where there are approval options thru a number of faa avenues. That is my greatest complaint with SLSA and is why I went ELSA. There needs to be some type of AC 4313 for LSA and PMA and STC options. And yes I understand that LSA is to make things simpler but some issues never work out that way, some LSA manufacturers are horrible to deal with. I just converted a stock J3 cub to a supercub and the documentation was easy to do it.

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3 hours ago, FlyingMonkey said:

Business opportunity?   :D

As you probably know, Parts sales is WAY more profitable than new engine sales.  It will be interesting to see if anyone takes on Rotax in a meantingful way.  

PS:  Rotax before long, better start inventing a new electric motor.  When they solve the battery issues, electric motors will be all the rage.  Google Rolls Royce electric motors.  This is actually going to be a thing probably in the next 10 years.

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3 hours ago, AGLyme said:

When they solve the battery issues, electric motors will be all the rage

It's certainly coming, but I'll step out and say this is sort of like the "flying car" that's always a few years away...  I'm sure you recall the recent thread of VFR on top and your long hang time, these electrics won't be telling those tails for 30 more years!  Batteries are advancing, but have a loooong way to go.  And then how does one cross country, plug it in and come back the next day?  We're no longer making a pee break / gas 'n go.  Now don't take me wrong, I can see an electric ultralight or such in my future, but would limit myself to up and back local playing around.  I do find the quieter nature of flight appealing, and like the systems simplicity, but struggle with the practical aspects and see this still a long ways out.

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Well my ideal plane would be Fuel Cell / Battery combo. Other than The Electric Motor, No moving parts. 
Lets  face it, the internal combustion engine is more than 100 years old and gas turbine 80 years old. God help us the best we have been capable of since is a little engine tweaking. Doesn’t say much for all those blow hards we see promoting their engines at shows. At least the medical guy’s came up with viagra and many other great products. Just my observation.

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I’ll bet 10 years D..., Mad is correct, there is way too much money to be made when that golden battery / energy source solution is discovered.  And it will be.  Look at the quick Covid vaccine situation.  
I hear you on the flying car and electric flying taxi fantasies.  But I do believe that the next gen engine will be developed just in time when the Chinese Govt  finally figures out how to mass produce the (stolen western tech) latest gas turbines.. ; )

Yeah, I know subject creep, sorry in advance. 

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2 hours ago, GrassStripFlyBoy said:

It's certainly coming, but I'll step out and say this is sort of like the "flying car" that's always a few years away...  I'm sure you recall the recent thread of VFR on top and your long hang time, these electrics won't be telling those tails for 30 more years!  Batteries are advancing, but have a loooong way to go.  And then how does one cross country, plug it in and come back the next day?  We're no longer making a pee break / gas 'n go.  Now don't take me wrong, I can see an electric ultralight or such in my future, but would limit myself to up and back local playing around.  I do find the quieter nature of flight appealing, and like the systems simplicity, but struggle with the practical aspects and see this still a long ways out.

The human tendency for imitation is a common roadblock to first principles thinking. When most people envision the future, they project the current form forward rather than projecting the function forward and abandoning the form.

For instance, when criticizing technological progress some people ask, “Where are the flying cars?”

Here's the thing: We have flying cars. They're called airplanes. People who ask this question are so focused on form (a flying object that looks like a car) that they overlook the function (transportation by flight).

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The post I tossed out is not a flippant 'It will never happen' statement.  I started with it is certainly coming, the concerns I'm seeing here are many, and we've been working to optimize these technologies for a couple decades now, what I'm getting at is just what many are saying - it will take an entirely new technology and my crystal ball is that is long ways away.

Lithium Ion batteries are not the solution, far from the optimum storage source.  I supplied components into the first EV pack for then Fiat Chrysler back in 2010, learned a thing or two on the subject here.  I'm sticking with the 30 year forecast, giant leap stuff here, not refinement of current technologies.

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For more fun discussion, lets zoom out a bit and assume the perfect battery was developed tomorrow, 10x capacity of today, could be scaled up in manufacturing quickly, no rare earth mineral supply snags, does not loose capacity over charge cycles / life span, and all at an economical price point - the golden battery!  

Now that leaves us with two more hurdles, 1) a power grid needing major rebuild / expanded capacity to support the distribution of all this consumption, and 2) the ability to generate 1000% plus more electricity to supply this power.  Those two items will take a decade minimum if we hammered down on nuclear full speed ahead today.  Building more nuclear power plants will be the major talking point in coming years.

 

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13 hours ago, GrassStripFlyBoy said:

It's certainly coming, but I'll step out and say this is sort of like the "flying car" that's always a few years away...  I'm sure you recall the recent thread of VFR on top and your long hang time, these electrics won't be telling those tails for 30 more years!  Batteries are advancing, but have a loooong way to go.  And then how does one cross country, plug it in and come back the next day?  We're no longer making a pee break / gas 'n go.  Now don't take me wrong, I can see an electric ultralight or such in my future, but would limit myself to up and back local playing around.  I do find the quieter nature of flight appealing, and like the systems simplicity, but struggle with the practical aspects and see this still a long ways out.

I'm in the same camp.  Electric is cool and has some really neat advantages.  But there are some very fundamental limitations on basic chemistry involved, and as you say super-duper insane capacity instant recharge batteries may always be "just a few years away".

The problem is energy density.  Gasoline is insanely high energy density for a fuel.  I read an article explaining that a gallon of gasoline has similar energy to the work done by four men pushing a 2000lb car down a road for four hours.  Nuts.  Nothing else really come close in both power generation *and* practicality.  Natural gas is good, but basically the same technology.  Same with Hydrogen IC engines.  Hydrogen fuel cells are wonderful, but very complex and expensive to build.  And Hydrogen has the huge disadvantage of being very difficult to store; the molecules are so tiny they will escape from any storage vessel over time, so you have to use it fast or accept you will lose a large percentage of your fuel.

Part of the problem with batteries is that to be practical you are asking for chemistry that provides at least similar energy density to gasoline, can be re-energized to make them reusable for many cycles without losing capacity, can be recharged quickly, etc.  It's a really tall order.  Mining the material for exotic batteries is expensive and very hard on the environment.  Plus you are still not negating the "older" technology, you just shift it up the wire to the power plant.  You still have to generate the electricity to charge your batteries, and that takes coal, diesel/gas/nat gas/hydrogen, or nuclear.  There is no free lunch.  Battery powered vehicles are largely coal-powered in the end, we just get to pretend it's clean because we can't see the coal dust or smokestacks.

IMO going to electrics has no real advantage until you solve the power generation issue with something like fusion.
 

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12 hours ago, Odowneyeng said:

Well my ideal plane would be Fuel Cell / Battery combo. Other than The Electric Motor, No moving parts. 
Lets  face it, the internal combustion engine is more than 100 years old and gas turbine 80 years old. God help us the best we have been capable of since is a little engine tweaking. Doesn’t say much for all those blow hards we see promoting their engines at shows. At least the medical guy’s came up with viagra and many other great products. Just my observation.

Hmm...In just the last 25 years or so the IC engine has made big advances.  Modern engines are far more efficient and clean.  They produce something like 5% of the pollutants of engines a few decades ago.  Are they "old" technology?  Of course.  But the knife is a thousands of years old but it's still the best tool for many tasks.  Old doesn't mean useless.

It would be great to come up with something super amazing that works better.  But the IC blowhards at the trade shows aren't really any different from the electric tech blowhards at the trade shows.  They are all salesmen trying to tout tiny incremental improvements as "revolutionary."

If you really want to talk about antiquated tech, let's talk about 100hp air-cooled boxer engines with carburetors that cost $20k...   :D

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12 hours ago, AGLyme said:

I’ll bet 10 years D..., Mad is correct, there is way too much money to be made when that golden battery / energy source solution is discovered.  And it will be.  Look at the quick Covid vaccine situation.  

Money doesn't make the impossible possible.  It can accelerate the possible (like the covid vaccine), but it can't change fundamental chemistry and physics.  Is truly practical electric a possible tech?  We don't know.  We can dump a lot of money into it and get amazing advances, or get nothing.  We don't know until *after* that money is spent.

Look at nuclear fusion.  Hundreds of billions (maybe even a trillion?) of dollars over 60 years, and we are still "just a few years away" from a reactor that produces excess power.  Again, it could happen tomorrow, or never and that money is wasted.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for new tech and investment in same.  I just realize there are huge hurdles and financial risks, and I I don't jump on the hype train until it's proven.

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Here’s something few people are aware of, to provide a consistent user experience the first couple of years on EV’s, the software limits range from its potential maximum, so owners have a steady sense of performance and quality – say 400 miles max and that holds for so many charges / so many months.  Then one enters into the reduced capacity and range drops, maybe a few years out, and owners are then thinking ‘this is ok – it’s starting to get some age on it’ mindset.  But, if there was no software limiting capacity, a new EV might go 550 miles off the lot, then user would be at 400 miles a couple years out, then down to 200 mile range after X number of charge cycles / years.  The marketing groups won the design plan on this, as an engineer I’d rather have the fullest potential for maximum use and savings available, but also understand why public perception had to be controlled.

I share this as Pipistrel states up to 60 min flight time.  What software limitation are they using, if any?  I doubt it’s as conservative as the auto market, may even be full swing.  When you drop that kind of money and three years later struggle to get a :30 flight in, and need to buy a new battery, will these still be all the rage?

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Moore’s law prevails.  Can’t think of a single treasure hunt that will bring a greater financial  return than achieving a lithium x 5 battery/energy source.  I’ll be an old man riding around in the mall in one of those buggies with a flag... but it’s coming.

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A 750 hp electric motor is going to be flight tested i believe in 2022 to replace a PT6. Obviously an experiment but things are moving fast. Keep an eye on Elon Musk's battery company. Recombinant DNA was discovered by a researcher who missed his flight and rented a car to get home. He had time to think on the long trip home, it changed everything overnight. It is well documented. You can't predict future technology schedules.  My bet is sooner than later.

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