Spoiler: These aircraft are almost entirely useless outside of limited pilot training applications. You might get 1-1.5 usable hours of flight time per charge. Battery density is not there yet and this is another fake it till you make it play.
To further expand, these will cover about 90% of the hours needed for a part 61 private pilot licence and and another 80-90% for instrument and commercial. The issue is you'll still need a ICE aircraft for some of the XC flights which complicates training somewhat.
Edit: Also, 3.5 hours is at barely-staying-aloft airspeeds riding the bottom of the drag curve. If you're maneuvering, doing practice landings, or actually trying to go somewhere you will not get anywhere near those numbers. The FAA also requires minimum 0.5 hours of reserve upon landing.
61.87 has quite a few solo requirements in make/model for student pilots, so getting them dual trained in two airplanes seems potentially not worth it. There's an out clause "or similar make/model" essentially leaving it up to the CFI or the flight school to decide what is similar. But heck I wouldn't sign off a student trained on a Cessna 152 for a solo in a Cessna 162. They'd have to be really similar like Cessna 150 vs 152 similar. If the company produce the same plane with electric and fuel power plants it might work. But that's two airworthiness certification processes the manufacturer has to go through.
Don't get me wrong, these will be great for schools, but I don't think that's what the average HN reader is thinking about when looking at these. Bye is not publishing the important numbers so this whole thing looks a little too much like an attempt to say they're changing the entire aviation landscape when they're just another electric trainer (in a market that already exists and has more realistic contenders).
Huh? "Battery density is not there yet." "Fake it or make it" You know, it'd be helpful if you didn't accuse them of fraud without grounds.
Battery density is only half the issue. The other one is efficiency. Half-century-old cessnas fly like a brick. State of the art aerodynamic performance can allow you to get two or three times the range you'd get just swapping out their engine for battery+electric.
This aircraft can probably do about 400km range. With reserves, maybe 350km. That's not nothing, about Bakersfield to San Jose. And this thing is not fully optimized. If you REALLY wanted distance, you'd pressurize the cabin, use even higher aspect ratio wings, retractable gear, blend the body into the wing a bit, etc, and you could do up to about 1000km range with today's batteries (you'd be mostly battery by weight).
To further expand, these will cover about 90% of the hours needed for a part 61 private pilot licence and and another 80-90% for instrument and commercial. The issue is you'll still need a ICE aircraft for some of the XC flights which complicates training somewhat.
Edit: Also, 3.5 hours is at barely-staying-aloft airspeeds riding the bottom of the drag curve. If you're maneuvering, doing practice landings, or actually trying to go somewhere you will not get anywhere near those numbers. The FAA also requires minimum 0.5 hours of reserve upon landing.