Richard Riley wrote:

On Jun 16, 7:37 pm, Larry Dighera wrote:

How Beat The High Cost Of Fuel

The motor is powered by a 78 pound, custom-built lithium-ion polymer
battery with a power output of "5.6 kilowatt hours"; projected life is
300 to 500 full discharge cycles or more than 1,000 partial cycles.
The battery can be recharged in as little as two hours using a
220-volt charger (or six hours with a 110-volt charger). The cost for
a full recharge is 70 cents with the 110-volt charger. Fishman says
it's feasible to carry a small 110-volt charger as baggage on
cross-country flights.


1 horsepower = .75kw. So 5.6 kilowatt hours is only 7.51 horsepower
hours. Good enough for a short burst to get you to altitude and soar
the thermals, bu you aren't going anywhere cross country.

Compare it to a really inefficient 2 stroke, burning .6 lb/hp-hr.
Your battery is equal to .75 gallons of gas.

Wait a second...5.6 KWH doesn't really tell you how much HP it is, does
it? All it says is that it consumes 5.6KW in an hour. If you only ran
the motor for 5 minutes per hours, the HP would be 12 times that or
approx. 90 HP. Using KW HOURS doesn't tell the whole story. Running a
100W light bulb 10 hours uses 1 KWH and so does running a 500W bulb for
2 hours but the 500W bulb does more work at any instant in time (it's a
lot brighter!). Now, if that motor was rated at 5.6KW, then yes, I'd
agree it is about 7.5 HP.

Scott