I love the thought of Honda getting into the airplane business. I'm sure this will become a key part of the future of aviation. I'd bet my second home on it. I wonder about the Honda Jet. Travel range will have to be increased substantially for success.
World Honda Aircraft Engine Web Site
Honda Aero, Inc., is a wholly-owned Honda subsidiary established to manage Honda?s aviation engine business. http://www.honda.co.jp/tech/new-category/airplane/hondajet/index.html
Toyota also has to get into this air space.
Eclipse Aviation is another interesting jet play at aproximately $1.3Million.
Update: After I posted this I was at the gym and grabbed a Forbes magazine November 2004. And there it was again. HONDA TAKES TO THE SKIES. Great Article.
Honda Airplane Engine Looks like a GAS engine is also in the design phase. Dialog found online: "I just returned from camping at Oshkosh and I thought your readers may be interested in what happened to me while there.
On Wednesday, my wife and I were sitting next to our Cherokee 235 when I noticed a gentleman studying the O-540 in the plane. Seeing how this is OSH and everyone is friendly here, I decided to do my part and ask if he had any questions.
We started a conversation about likes and dislikes of the old Lycoming. After a while, he informed me that he was a design engineer assigned to airplane engine development for Honda.
Needless to say, my ears perked up and the conversation turned to Honda and the direction they are heading with regard to airplanes.
As best I can remember, the questions and answers were as follows:
Me: Is Honda still pursuing a light airplane engine?
Him: Yes (emphatic), we have a prototype flying now and it's performing well. (He shows me a picture of the engine: 4 cylinder, water cooled, injected.)
Me: How much horsepower?
Him: I'm more used to metric numbers but the conversion should relate to about 320 HP.
Me: What have you been seeing for fuel burn?
Him: About 7-8 gallons/hr at 75% power.
Me: What type of fuel and is the engine direct drive?
Him: Yes, direct drive and fuel is any type of auto fuel or avgas.
Me: Dual ignition?
Him: Yes, complete redundancy.
Me: Weight?
Him: Same or slightly less than old 4-cylinder engines.
Me: Projected TBO?
Him: We plan to start at 2000 hrs and expect much more. we also use many off the shelf auto parts and expect an overhaul to be at least 1/2 the cost of today's.
Me: Cost?
Him: We expect to be under $40,000 complete with vacuum pumps, ignition, fuel delivery equipment, and electronics (including FADEC).
Him: What do you like and dislike about your current engine? I have to report back to Tokyo the results of my surveys.
Me: The common problems of fuel burn, out-of-this-world overhaul prices, complexity of operation, etc.
Him: Would pilots like the single power lever with automatic mixture control?
Me: Mooney attempted a similar thing a while ago and it didn't go over very well.
Him: We are aware of the Porsche engine and have defined where that system failed; our engine will make much more power and burn less fuel.
We went on for a while longer.
Him picking my brain and I trying to get as much information out of him as possible.
Bottom line is that Honda appears to be very serious in this endeavor and will be entering the market with some "big guns" in the near future.
I can't wait. Hmmmm ... a Honda powered RV-8 ... now that's the ticket."
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Toyota getting in the Business:
Airborne Ambition
Ed Hooper is working to build Toyota's first airplane
By John Dunn
When Toyota began entertaining ideas of building light airplanes, the automaker recruited Ed Hooper to help earn its wings.
Edwin H. Hooper, AE '61, who spent most of his career at Beech
Aircraft, is directing Toyota's newest venture, developing light
aircraft. It's an idea that Hooper says could do more than fly-it could
revitalize the country's general aviation industry.
"The main thing that intrigued me was the focus of this entire effort
from Toyota to strive to revitalize a very ailing industry," Hooper
says.
While corporate jets have sold well, general aviation is trying
to pull out of a nose dive. In 1979, the small aircraft industry sold
about 20,000 planes--a figure that declined to less than 1,000 planes a
year a few years ago. But three years ago, shortly after Cessna started
making small planes again, sales began to pick up.
One reason general aviation has been dormant for the past 15 to
20 years is product liability. Some of the major manufacturers dropped
out of building single-engine planes.
NASA also is trying to help get the industry airborne again with a program it calls AGATE-Advanced General Aviation Technologies Experiment.
NASA chief Dan Goldin is trying to bring new technologies to general
aviation to make it safer, less costly and more accessible. "The desire
is there, and it looks like the opportunity is there for Toyota to help
revitalize an industry that has just been really down," Hooper says.
Hooper heads a staff of 30 engineers working in Gardena, Calif.
"It's quite new," Hooper says. "We're just barely past the
concept design phase, beginning to put things in place for
manufacturing and detail planning."
Toyota began studying the aviation industry after its chairman,
Hiroshi Okuda, established a goal of generating 10 percent of Toyota's
sales from non-automotive business within the next decade. The
automaker is also studying the marine industry.
"Toyota's airplane program is strictly a feasibility study,"
says Diana De Joseph, with Toyota's office of National Media Relations.
At this time, Toyota has no definite plans to introduce an aircraft to
the market.
Explains Hooper: "The key is going to be: Can we produce this
airplane for significantly less than some of the airplanes that are out
there today?" Although the plane would cost less, he says, it would
have superior performance and would be loaded with modern technology.
Hooper's goal is to "design an airplane that brings new
materials, new technology and automotive manufacturing efficiencies
together to see if we can significantly reduce the price tag." He
envisions a four-seat, reciprocating, propeller-driven plane that is
both stylish and affordable.
Built of all-composite construction, the plane would have
low-drag air-flow characteristics and today's computer-based avionics
and instruments. Instead of a slew of gauges, the panel would be
designed to "look like a laptop computer," says Hooper.
A native of Greenville, S.C., Hooper went to work for Lockheed
Georgia after graduating from Tech as a co-op student. There he became
a specialist in flutter vibrations.
After moving to California, Hooper joined Beech Aircraft (now Raytheon) in 1973, where the product line ranged from prop-driven, light planes to corporate jets.
As with many people in the industry, building aircraft is more
than a profession for Hooper, it's a hobby. He has been a member of the
Experimental Aircraft Association-a organization of pilots who design
and build their own planes-since he was a student at Georgia Tech. In
the 1970s, he assembled and flew an open-air biplane.
"I kept it for a lot of years, but it is was tubular steel and fabric-real old technology."
Surprisingly, Hooper says Toyota hasn't given him a firm deadline.
"When I worked at Raytheon, we were very schedule-driven to
develop and certify new airplanes," he recalls. "I was very much driven
by schedule. I'm used to that.
"But Toyota's attitude is that schedule is not so terribly
important. And the money we spend on research and development is not so
terribly important. What is important is that we conduct a diligent,
process-driven program, step-by-step, and conceive the best airplane
for that particular market.
"Then we prove it with prototype hardware, the manufacturing
processes and flying; tweak it, make some changes; and then make a
final decision to certify it. They said we've got to do the best
dad-gum job that was ever done. And if we can do that in three years,
fine. If we can do that in six years, fine."
Eager to see the project succeed, Hooper sees it as an
opportunity "to perhaps set a real milestone for general aviation in
the future. If we can make airplanes affordable and fun to fly, a whole
lot easier to operate than they are now, it could make a tremendous
difference." GT
