If Mazda spends $25M in NRE on a new engine program and sells that design for 8 model years, the amortized NRE is around $10 per car or about 3 basis points of the product.
If Lycoming or Continental spend $25M on a new engine program and sell them for 15 years in all 172s, it’s around $22K per airplane or around 550 basis points. When investments in engine development are over 180x more expensive on a percent of sales basis and over 2000x as expensive on a per-unit basis, it’s unsurprising that few companies are stepping up to do that development.
I don’t mind at all if you want to lobby for it; I think there are improvements that could be made, but I think you’ll find the economics daunting and the current engine tech to be pretty well matched to the application.
Regulation is exactly the reason why there are few technology improvements. Improving the engines is pretty trivial. Heck, Diamond adapted car engines for their aircraft.
_Certifying_ them is hilariously expensive for the manufacturers and users.
One can certainly fix that, but that's how it is. Main reason why the planes that consume automotive gas the most are in the 'experimental' category.
If Lycoming or Continental spend $25M on a new engine program and sell them for 15 years in all 172s, it’s around $22K per airplane or around 550 basis points. When investments in engine development are over 180x more expensive on a percent of sales basis and over 2000x as expensive on a per-unit basis, it’s unsurprising that few companies are stepping up to do that development.
I don’t mind at all if you want to lobby for it; I think there are improvements that could be made, but I think you’ll find the economics daunting and the current engine tech to be pretty well matched to the application.