What attributes do you think new MOSAIC compliant LSA aircraft should have to return General Aviation to 10,000 aircraft sales per year?

AKiss20 said:
I heard billionaire liver is good with fava beans and a nice Chianti
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It needs to be a VERY good wine.

Billionaires can tend towards bitterness if the wine isn't a match to the dinner.
 
DeadStick said:
THAT is why we can't afford new planes anymore. The Big Bosses at the top are taking home so much of the pie, we can barely feed ourselves on the crumbs left to us. Forget lawsuits, forget regulations, forget all the lies you've been told to distract you from the truth. GA is a luxury hobby, and until we all take the blinders off and stop cheerleading this messed up form of Death By Capitalism, there won't be a middle class left to afford luxury hobbies.
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And what do you propose to replace it with?????
 
StraightnLevel said:
Name them. Humor me.
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www.nissanusa.com

2024 Nissan Versa: Fuel-Efficient Subcompact Sedan

Experience the 2024 Nissan Versa: Subcompact car fuel efficiency with advanced safety technology and a spacious interior. Discover Versa's features and pricing today!
www.nissanusa.com www.nissanusa.com

That was easy...

StraightnLevel said:
Once you've done that, ask if those cars are built at a quality level that you would be comfortable with in gusting winds at 5,000 ft.
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Sure. Rubber on road at an elevation of 5,000 feet? Why not?
 
2-Bit Speed said:
That was easy...
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Yes, that's one.

Now, do you honestly think you could build an airplane that would be safe and pass certification for anywhere near the cost of the lowest price version of a mass-produced car? In 2021, Nissan sold more than 60,000 Versas, and the one you mentioned is the loss-leader that they only build a handful of (try to find one on a lot that's less than $20K - good luck). Without the other 59,750 Versa sales to cover the fixed overheard and capital costs, the price couldn't be anywhere near that low.

Now, realistically, what would the total market size be for a new GA plane, even if you could get it under $50K? How many people per year would drop that much cash for a 2-seater joyride plane, given the availability of existing aircraft?

I'm not seeing it. Without massive volumes, there is no way to get the fixed costs and capitalization out of the pricing model, and you won't get to the sort of commodity-level procing you are talking about while fixed costs aren't covered.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Yes, that's one.
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Which fulfills my claim: A greater-than-zero number of new cars available for purchase for less than $20,000.

StraightnLevel said:
Now, do you honestly think you could build an airplane that would be safe and pass certification for anywhere near the cost of the lowest price version of a mass-produced car?
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No. I don't own a factory.

StraightnLevel said:
Now, realistically, what would the total market size be for a new GA plane, even if you could get it under $50K? How many people per year would drop that much cash for a 2-seater joyride plane, given the availability of existing aircraft?

I'm not seeing it. Without massive volumes, there is no way to get the fixed costs and capitalization out of the pricing model, and you won't get to the sort of commodity-level procing you are talking about while fixed costs aren't covered.
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Cool. Let's get massive volume, then.
 
StraightnLevel said:
Don't waste your breath arguing. That post includes the "fixed wealth" fallacy; anyone who believes that sort of nonsense is not going to understand what you're saying.
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You can insult me and dismiss the economic work of much smarter people, it's a free country. But nothing you said can explain the simple facts: the top rung of society increased their wealth by 351X since 1978 while the rest of us stayed even with inflation. Grow the pie however big you want, but if you always reserve 99% of it for the rich all you will ever has is crumbs my friend.

And if you want to know what we replace our form of capitalism with, maybe ask any of the other Western countries that are pumping out modern certified aircraft (Tecnam, Diamond) while our Good Ol' Capitalist Textron is still producing the same tin can POS they've built for 60 years only now it's 10X as expensive. Does that sound like free market capitalism to you?
 
DeadStick said:
[N]othing you said can explain the simple facts: the top rung of society increased their wealth by 351X since 1978 while the rest of us stayed even with inflation.
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So... the rich got all that money WITHOUT decreasing the wealth of the rest? That sounds like a growing pie to me...
 
2-Bit Speed said:
www.nissanusa.com

2024 Nissan Versa: Fuel-Efficient Subcompact Sedan

Experience the 2024 Nissan Versa: Subcompact car fuel efficiency with advanced safety technology and a spacious interior. Discover Versa's features and pricing today!
www.nissanusa.com www.nissanusa.com

That was easy...
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Owned a Versa for about ten years. Really not a bad little car. Good quality; didn't have any major issues. However, it does illustrate the economies of scale. It was sold around the world (was actually a luxury car in Japan) and at its peak, they sold 100,000 a year in the US alone. There's never been *any* airplane with that high of a production rate; it equals the total number of airplanes built in the US in the middle of World War 2...and that's with dozens of manufacturers.

The basic fact is that there IS no market for light aircraft, compared to just about any other consumer transportation vehicle. You're not going to get prices down to $20,000, or even $100,000, unless there's more-general acceptance of their use as transportation. And that's not going to happen, considering the training and safety issues.

Ron Wanttaja
 
2-Bit Speed said:
So... the rich got all that money WITHOUT decreasing the wealth of the rest? That sounds like a growing pie to me...
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Yes, the pie is growing while the size of our slice shrinks while our boss' slice keeps growing faster than the pie. How is this so hard to understand? I thought pilots were supposed to be good with numbers?
 
wanttaja said:
Owned a Versa for about ten years. Really not a bad little car. Good quality; didn't have any major issues. However, it does illustrate the economies of scale. It was sold around the world (was actually a luxury car in Japan) and at its peak, they sold 100,000 a year in the US alone. There's never been *any* airplane with that high of a production rate; it equals the total number of airplanes built in the US in the middle of World War 2...and that's with dozens of manufacturers.

The basic fact is that there IS no market for light aircraft, compared to just about any other consumer transportation vehicle. You're not going to get prices down to $20,000, or even $100,000, unless there's more-general acceptance of their use as transportation. And that's not going to happen, considering the training and safety issues.

Ron Wanttaja
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I don't disagree with a single thing you've said. Doesn't stop me for wishing for such low prices.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Uh, not according to you. You said that our slice remained stagnant accounting for inflation. Someone having more than me does not mean I have less.
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Ok, now try to understand how the price of everything you buy has also increased more than inflation (see my post about the 9X increase in C172 prices). Not a big deal for the guy who's salary went up 351x over the same period, but a very big deal for the guys like us who only went up 4.5X.

We are running on a treadmill that is speeding up faster than we can keep up. That's why airplanes, and many other luxury goods, used to be in arm's reach for many of us but now aren't.

And that is why we can't hit 10k GA planes sold each year, to bring us back to the original point. If we would care less about systems and theories and more about how flying is slipping away from the people like us, maybe we can start to fix it.
 
DeadStick said:
That's why airplanes, and many other luxury goods, used to be in arm's reach for many of us but now aren't.
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I'll have to take your word for that (while typing on a laptop that couldn't have existed ten years ago with more processing power than anything but a super-computer in the 1980s).
 
2-Bit Speed said:
I'll have to take your word for that (while typing on a laptop that couldn't have existed ten years ago with more processing power than anything but a super-computer in the 1980s).
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Mass production makes that possible, but GA will never appeal to such a massive, global consumer audience as computers do. But I've already shown the data for this industry we're talking about, so do with that what you choose.
 
DeadStick said:
You can insult me and dismiss the economic work of much smarter people,
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"Much smarter" than whom? You don't know who the people are who participate here, so you might want to take care in making your assumptions.
 
wanttaja said:
The basic fact is that there IS no market for light aircraft, compared to just about any other consumer transportation vehicle. You're not going to get prices down to $20,000, or even $100,000, unless there's more-general acceptance of their use as transportation. And that's not going to happen, considering the training and safety issues.

Ron Wanttaja
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Nit pick. Your statement is an absolute that it will never happen. I disagree, at some point society will accept the technical cost to make it happen. We are likely decades away from this point, but it is only a matter of time. The two dimensional road system placed on large metro areas is too limiting. The technical costs to develop and build such cheap vehicles which can "fly" passengers from point to point will be a critical solution to helping the large metro areas grow.
I think this point is likely decades away, but I believe it will happen. Hence I tend to avoid absolutes about such solutions.

Tim
 
tspear said:
Nit pick. Your statement is an absolute that it will never happen. I disagree, at some point society will accept the technical cost to make it happen. We are likely decades away from this point, but it is only a matter of time. The two dimensional road system placed on large metro areas is too limiting. The technical costs to develop and build such cheap vehicles which can "fly" passengers from point to point will be a critical solution to helping the large metro areas grow.
I think this point is likely decades away, but I believe it will happen. Hence I tend to avoid absolutes about such solutions.

Tim
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IF energy storage technology evolves to a point where such urban air transport is possible, they wouldn't be building cheap airplanes using mass production; general aviation as we know it won't exist any more, for multiple reasons. First, the technology that would make such air transport possible would also completely eliminate gasoline fueled ground vehicles, and without the automotive market supporting the gasoline infrastructure, aviation gasoline would also cease to exist. The market would just be too small to operate a refinery and distribution system. Second, if such large numbers of flying cars (might as well call them that) come into existence, they would have to be fully automated and air traffic control and airspace would have to be reorganized to let them move safely... which would eliminate the ability to fly a manually controlled conventional airplane anywhere other than the remotest areas, if even there.

But the technology to make it practical doesn't exist, and is not likely to exist, absent a major breakthrough in nuclear physics. The limits of chemical energy storage are well understood, and there is nothing known that comes even within an order of magnitude of gasoline or other existing hydrocarbon fuels.
 
Dana said:
IF energy storage technology evolves to a point where such urban air transport is possible, they wouldn't be building cheap airplanes using mass production; general aviation as we know it won't exist any more, for multiple reasons. First, the technology that would make such air transport possible would also completely eliminate gasoline fueled ground vehicles, and without the automotive market supporting the gasoline infrastructure, aviation gasoline would also cease to exist. The market would just be too small to operate a refinery and distribution system. Second, if such large numbers of flying cars (might as well call them that) come into existence, they would have to be fully automated and air traffic control and airspace would have to be reorganized to let them move safely... which would eliminate the ability to fly a manually controlled conventional airplane anywhere other than the remotest areas, if even there.

But the technology to make it practical doesn't exist, and is not likely to exist, absent a major breakthrough in nuclear physics. The limits of chemical energy storage are well understood, and there is nothing known that comes even within an order of magnitude of gasoline or other existing hydrocarbon fuels.
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Dana,

Agree on multitude of issues. In fact, I think the regulatory aspect is severely being underestimated in terms of complexity. We have many very large airports which have become surrounded by the original metro areas they were built to serve. These types of environments will prove to be very difficult to manage.
In terms of energy, I disagree. For these "flying cars", they will be short ranged, even at an increase of 2-3% a year over the next twenty years will provide enough energy density for local flights. A number of current drone companies have already demonstrated the capability to fly on current battery tech for twenty minutes to an hour. That is plenty for a local run to the grocery store or to work. Even if battery technology fails, there will be SAF based solutions. The problem is currently, the turbine solutions are made from unobtanium and have a commensurate price.

Tim
 
tspear said:
That is plenty for a local run to the grocery store or to work.
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Actually it's not, for many of us. And when traffic deconfliction is added to the mix with many many vehicles in the air, travel times will likely be much longer.

The next time you go to the grocery store, look at all the cars in the parking lot. Then try to imagine how the air traffic situation will look if half of those, or even a fourth, are air vehicles.

As you yourself said,
tspear said:
I think the regulatory aspect is severely being underestimated in terms of complexity. We have many very large airports which have become surrounded by the original metro areas they were built to serve. These types of environments will prove to be very difficult to manage.
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tspear said:
The two dimensional road system placed on large metro areas is too limiting. The technical costs to develop and build such cheap vehicles which can "fly" passengers from point to point will be a critical solution to helping the large metro areas grow.
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From the driverless cars thread ...

Above & Beyond
 
DeadStick said:
Yes, the pie is growing while the size of our slice shrinks while our boss' slice keeps growing faster than the pie. How is this so hard to understand? I thought pilots were supposed to be good with numbers?
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So go bake your own pie and share it with others however you like.

AFAIK, there's no law prohibiting you from building the proverbial better mousetrap and taking your place as the newest billionaire.

Who is the evil oppressor holding you back? Name the scoundrel, and we the righteous of POA will rise up in your defense! Has Bezos blocked you from opening a store? Did Musk deny to you the laws of physics, so you can't invent a new product? Perhaps Warren Buffet has locked you out of financial markets so you can't invest in other people's ideas? Tell us! What have the ultra-wealthy done to prevent you from making your own wealth?

Bottom line, I really don't care about the numbers you toss around, even if they're an accurate represenation (which I doubt). It simply doesn't matter! Someone else's success does not inhibit my own success, or anyone else's for that matter. If anything, it enhances it. So what if Gates has an enormous slice of pie (that he baked)? That doesn't mean I don't have enough pie to eat myself, and his big slice does nothing to diminish my enjoyment of what I have.

At its core, the handwringing over "unfair wealth distribution" is rooted in envy and feelings of inadequacy, and it grows into self-imposed victimhood. It's a trap, it's a helluva way for a person to live, and I for one won't fall into it.
 
tspear said:
The two dimensional road system placed on large metro areas is too limiting.
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The obvious solution is for people to stay home.

Except for me, of course. The rest of you just stay off the roads so I won't have to deal with traffic.
 
FWIW: The one thing people miss when it comes to true urban based transport is that conventional transport methods, ie., light aircraft and helicopters, do not have the capabilities to effectively work in that environment. Its been tried in many ways over the decades.

One of the few places it has worked conventionally speaking is in Sao Paulo, Brazil where helicopters are used on a daily basis to commute across town or to the airport. Even the 1st real-time use of ADSB was used to further test the use and control of helicopters in an urban transport environment. But failed on a number of levels.

Regardless, whether you believe in them or not, drones and eVTOL/VTOL/Hybrids have breathed new life into the decades-long Urban Air Mobility (UAM) and the more recent Regional Air Mobility (RAM) plans and programs. And none of the current UAM or RAM plans rely on conventional transport methods for the simply reason they don’t work.

But I’m merely a messenger with some limited experience. The next couple years will be the tell all as a number of planned city-level UAM implementations will take place, globally. And while flight times might be counted in minutes and blocks vs hours and miles, that is how the system is designed to operate. As I’ve said before, interesting times ahead.
 
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Half Fast said:
The obvious solution is for people to stay home.

Except for me, of course. The rest of you just stay off the roads so I won't have to deal with traffic.
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Sounds like a plan! "Rise above ..."
 
Half Fast said:
Actually it's not, for many of us. And when traffic deconfliction is added to the mix with many many vehicles in the air, travel times will likely be much longer.
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In population centers, mileage is much lower. Two critical stats from here: https://www.bts.gov/statistical-pro...sehold-travel-survey-daily-travel-quick-facts
Average driver does 29 miles a day, and that is following roads not straight line to the destination (second section from the bottom). This is well within the capabilities of current battery tech.

Half Fast said:
The next time you go to the grocery store, look at all the cars in the parking lot. Then try to imagine how the air traffic situation will look if half of those, or even a fourth, are air vehicles.
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The problem in my local grocery stores are entering/leaving is a zoo (ok, inside the store also but flying cars will not help there) and that is only for an hour or two most days. By adding a third dimension, there will be a significant reduction in the congestion entering/leaving the parking lot. This will be a regulatory and process nightmare to figure out. But it is possible.

Tim
 
tspear said:
By adding a third dimension, there will be a significant reduction in the congestion entering/leaving the parking lot.
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'Adding' a third dimension is unlikely to ease congestion, but is very likely to increase complexity and risk to a very mundane, utilitarian task. And that's ignoring weather limitations. Just because some congestion has moved into the air does not mean that the congestion has reduced.

Furthermore, does anyone want to navigate a complex, congested, dangerous airspace in a bug-smasher every time they need some ground beef? Can these proposed e-wastes handle the extra 50 lbs of an average grocery run for the return trip? If not, do we want to be making more trips just to do what used to take fewer?
 
tspear said:
This will be a regulatory and process nightmare to figure out. But it is possible.
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Definitely possible, as they’ve been working on the regulatory side for years via the existing UAM policies. As for the process, the key to remember is all current UAM and RAM processes are public transport based and not private based. While there are plans for a private component to UAM I don’t think that will happen until the public UAM side has “matured.”
 
2-Bit Speed said:
'Adding' a third dimension is unlikely to ease congestion, but is very likely to increase complexity and risk to a very mundane, utilitarian task. And that's ignoring weather limitations. Just because some congestion has moved into the air does not mean that the congestion has reduced.

Furthermore, does anyone want to navigate a complex, congested, dangerous airspace in a bug-smasher every time they need some ground beef? Can these proposed e-wastes handle the extra 50 lbs of an average grocery run for the return trip? If not, do we want to be making more trips just to do what used to take fewer?
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The noise from the quad-copter-style drones and EV-aviation proposals will kill the idea long before congestion becomes an issue. Can you imagine the uproar from neighbors from the noise of a dozen or more giant quadcopters being overhead at under 500ft? It's one thing to have a sports car with a loud exhaust, or a diesel truck with a jake brake as those are quickly transient. The high-pitched whir of the blades would have people in an uproar.
 
Bell206 said:
Definitely possible, as they’ve been working on the regulatory side for years via the existing UAM policies. As for the process, the key to remember is all current UAM and RAM processes are public transport based and not private based. While there are plans for a private component to UAM I don’t think that will happen until the public UAM side has “matured.”
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It "is" happening.....they have certified one system and more are coming.... ;)
 
Half Fast said:
The obvious solution is for people to stay home.

Except for me, of course. The rest of you just stay off the roads so I won't have to deal with traffic.
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Except for you and everyone you want to do a service for you while you’re out…..
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Cool. Let's get massive volume, then.
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That is the problem, people don't want to spend the time to learn to fly. Heck, they don't even really learn to drive, and the actually do that.

The automated drones are more their speed.
 
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