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A comment on Electrified wingsuit from BMW reaches 186MPH on first flight.

Re:Electrified wingsuit from BMW reaches 186MPH on first flight by generalizations on Sunday November 15, 2020 @09:13AM (#25101302)
> BMW says the electric wingsuit enabled Salzmann to accelerate faster than his mates at a peak speed of 186 mph. (Normal wingsuit operators typically reach horizontal speeds around 62 mph.)

Very cool; it appears to be an assist, however, without the power to actually do a takeoff.

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Re:Electrified wingsuit from BMW reaches 186MPH on first flight by MiguelHudnandez on Sunday November 15, 2020 @01:37PM (#25103502)
15kW should be enough to easily lift an adult human, but the stability implications are a good reason this is an assisted wingsuit and not a jetpack.

Another thing to consider is that saying it has 15kW motors and 5 minutes of thrust does not necessarily mean 5 minutes at 15Kw. That would work out to 1.2kWH weighing what I guess to be about 40 pounds in batteries alone.

I'm really impressed by wingsuits, and strapping a motor onto one just makes it that much cooler.

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Re:Electrified wingsuit from BMW reaches 186MPH on first flight by hwillis on Sunday November 15, 2020 @07:02PM (#25106270)
> That would work out to 1.2kWH weighing what I guess to be about 40 pounds in batteries alone.

Absolutely not. Sony VTC4s are early 2010s cells that do 30 amps continuous with 2000 mAh capacity[1]. 172 cells weigh in at 17 lbs, 1.2 kWh, and a whopping 16.5 kW continuous rated output.

For lower power applications, higher-capacity cells like the NCR18650G[2] weigh below 10 lbs per kWh.

[1]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0674/3651/files/Sony_VTC4....

[2]: https://www.imrbatteries.com/content/panasonic_ncr18650g.pdf

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Re:Electrified wingsuit from BMW reaches 186MPH on first flight by shi on Monday November 16, 2020 @02:10AM (#25108979)
> Normal wingsuit operators typically reach horizontal speeds around 62 mph.

Normal wingsuits can easily reach ground speeds up to 250kmh/155mph.

Source: https://ppc.paralog.net/listtracks.php?sort=Speed&record=C

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