A Cirrus SR22 was notionally retrofit with an electric powertrain and regenerative energy devices to address increasing future airline pilot demand and an aging fleet of inefficient general aviation aircraft, as well as high pilot training, maintenance, and fuel costs. Using an energy-based approach, the all-electric aircraft was deterministically analyzed over a generic pilot training mission by selecting a promising electric architecture, leveraging electric vehicle innovations in the auto industry, and incorporating wingtip vortex regenerative energy devices. Requiring a 427 Wh/kg Lithium-ion cell contained in a 320 Wh/kg battery, it was found to be a feasible and economically viable alternative to conventionally powered light aircraft for high utilization rate training missions in the near-term (2020) and beyond. However, it was limited to a two-passenger payload until battery energy density improves. Incorporating energy recapture devices improves mission performance by increasing overall efficiency at the expense of greater cost and complexity, but large uncertainty as to the device cost and performance exists. They were not considered vital for mission accomplishment in the current state of technology, and accounted for 5.4% of the total mission energy requirement. When compared to a Cirrus SR20 performing the same mission, acquisition costs for an electric SR22 were estimated to be 155-181% higher, but assuming U.S. national average energy prices, operating and support costs were lowered by 26%, including an 81% decrease in energy costs. For an aircraft used for flight training, cost parity was reached within 6 years for a 900 sorties (1260 flight-hours)/year utilization rate and by 14 years with 400-500 sortie (560-700 flight-hours)/year. A decrease in the overall operating and support costs of light aircraft flight should reduce the cost of pilot training, alleviating a large obstacle for the creation of pilots to meet future demand.
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