achimha wrote:
With the amazing progress in chemical battery technology and the faster than expected decline in cost per kWh, we can expect to see useable electric flying vehicles (I don’t say airplanes) rather soon. This will be exciting.
In many ways, thanks to Elon Musk.
The man is almost single-handedly pulling the world to the next level.
Oh, and he’s South African (although he changed to American, one of the beauties of the US) which means that he doesn’t really sell hype. IME, ZA types are pretty direct and follow the ‘say what you mean and mean what you say’ rule…
He has hit basically everything he’s said he would. At some point the world will take him seriously. Europeans have a habit of laughing at such people right before they start complaining about them… :)
BTW, I’m not too confident that VW is going to catch Tesla at this stage in the game, if for no other reason than VW doesn’t sound too confident themselves…
Electric cars have been sold for a long time by many manufacturers, but Tesla was the first to realize that you need to capture the hearts, not just the mind or the climate quota. We’d still see ugly cars like BYD or tiny city cars with flimsy glassfibre bodies if it weren’t for Elon. He made a car that they could no longer ignore, that beat them at their own game. It’s the most radical disruptive change to the automotive industry since the T Ford. Tesla might end up failing eventually, the German car makers might get smart and make better electric cars in the end, but nobody can deny that it would not have happened without Tesla.
Nokia and Sony Ericsson were the biggest cell phone makers in the world, just 3 years later they were both gone. I get the head-stuck-in-sand from quite a few manufacturers these days, some of them German (especially VW and Mercedes seem to have been caught with their pants down), but also American and Japanese (Mazda, Suzuki, Subaru etc). Ignore new technology at your own peril – in 20 years time all of these mfg won’t be here, and there will be some new players.
I bet the Russians still remember the day they laughed at Musk when he came to buy rockets from them.
If one can go from zero (2002) to landing a rocket flying in reverse (!) on a ship (2016) how hard can it be to make an electric car?
While that happens all around us we still wonder whether we should use electronic ignition on planes as it had a history of shutting off in wet weather ca. 1982… and god forbid we take vacuum hoses out, the gremlins would have no place to hide.
I am also pleased to see resident philosopher LeSving boast about towing his planeS, boatS and “stuff” and about having ordered a Tesla Model 3 “that only braindead fanbois drive” instead of a “no nonsense car” – while at the same time clamoring with trotskyesque passion that expecting to get utility from a plane is some sort of capitalist silver platter entitlement deviationism. AliG would be proud.
achimha wrote:
Part 23 is what you would call “recreational” aviation
Still just semantics. Any aircraft can be used for recreational purposes regardless of certification, but non-certified aircraft cannot be used for commercial purposes, and they will never be included in ICAO. I’m concerned with the real world, I’m not interested in quasi-“intellectual” play with words to make some sort of “point” that doesn’t exist.
Airborne_Again wrote:
So asking for “non-certified” aircraft that can be used “everywhere” is essentially a contradication in terms.
Not necessarily. It’s only a contradiction in ICAO, because that is what ICAO is all about. ICAO doesn’t make regulations though. EASA do indeed make regulations, but they have no regulations restricting ANNEX II aircraft from flying all over EASA land without special permission. To the extent such special permissions are needed within Europe, that’s the sole work of each national aviation authority.
Ayway, it’s this urge for certification that kills private GA in certified planes. Now, that’s a real contradiction, and private pilots are their won worst enemy here. This is what I dislike about clubs. They are, along with schools, the only ones that can live happily in this regime. Very few private pilots can afford a brand new Cessna today. This is also what I dislike about the EASA cost sharing regulations. A commercialization of private GA that does no other purpose than to create an artificial “need” for certified planes (that almost no private pilot can afford in any case). Non certified, strictly non commercial, that’s the only way private GA will survive.
ICAO doesn’t make regulations? I suggest you sit Air Law again… if you ever sat it to begin with.
Nothing in ICAO is legally binding to any single person, unless a legal entity makes a regulation/law out of it.
Is that a way of admitting you have no idea what you are talking about?
Suggest a crash course on the precedence of international vs. domestic law in monist and dualist jurisdictions.
Suggest further study of Finanger I (Rt 2000 s 1811) and Finanger II (Rt 2005 p 1365) as well as familiarisation with the “presumsjonprinsippet” before making broad based incorrect assumptions based “mostly on fact” (sic).
It’s correct that ICAO conventions are not directly applicable law and require the member states to enact corresponding law. However, the signatories agree to enact such law and for virtually all cases did do that so one can therefore say that ICAO rules are generally binding. What would be the point otherwise?
ICAO covers small/private/recreational aviation and commercial aviation and there are certification regimes that are ICAO compliant and address each (Part 23, Part 25). ICAO is the basis of automatic, no questions asked mutual recognition of aircraft and flight crews. This is what the world is based on. Trying to establish another national regime next to ICAO will have a hard time getting adoption. The US are large enough and isolated enough to provide useful national regimes to the majority of pilots but Europe has too many and too small countries. Therefore uncertified aviation can never be as useful as in the USA and not replace ICAO compliant aviation for a large segment of the market.
I personally believe in multi-lateralism and ICAO as well as EASA are good examples of that. Putting your head in your national sand might be en vogue in the Trumpland/Brexit world but is not to stay.
ICAO is an international treaty, an agreement between sovereign states. It’s not law. There is no such thing as “international law” even though the term is loved by the media.
I personally believe in multi-lateralism and ICAO as well as EASA are good examples of that. Putting your head in your national sand might be en vogue in the Trumpland/Brexit world but is not to stay.
I’m not so sure about that. Already in 1981 ECAC produced a proposal for free border crossing of experimental aircraft. It has worked fine in most of Europe, long before EASA, and it has nothing to do with ICAO. What has EASA done in this respect? Absolutely nothing that isn’t covered in ICAO in any case.
Already in 1981 ECAC produced a proposal for free border crossing of experimental aircraft. It has worked fine in most of Europe
Mainly for those who almost never leave their home country, and are OK with day VFR… And lots of restrictions on long term parking of the aircraft in a “foreign” country. It’s fine so long as you are aware before buying one. Many previous threads here already 
