Is an X4 worth anything these days? When the SP140 came out the X4 seems to have become fully obsolete due to the newer machine having much better efficiency and ease of use.
I recently listed it for sale (no takers at $3k CDN even!) I do think it has a bright future if (huge IF) a decent battery system for it becomes available. The Bonka’s worked but without a BMS manually managing the charge adds to the workload of operating the machine who’s very existence is partly due to it being very easy to own and operate (vs a 2 stroke).
I keep looking at eBike and eGo power tool batteries as potential replacements for the Bonkas. I keep wondering if the SP140 battery and charger could be adapted with a big@$$ DC-DC converter. I keep wondering if OpenPPG is working on a battery system for the X4 - maybe by splitting the SP140 pack down to 56V or ?? With more and more energy dense batteries the lack of efficiency of 4 motors/props will be less and less of a detriment.
Does the X4 have any future or is it the first gen Nissan Leaf of PPG? I still have mine; partly because it’s seems to be very heavily depreciated, and partly because I have a glimmer of hope it’ll one day become what it could have been.
Not to speak for @Pdwhite but I know the X4 holds a special place in my heart. The project was born out of a drone company we had combined with a university project that ended up winning the competition and launched OpenPPG. The X4 is still the “O” in OpenPPG, even though we haven’t sold it in many years.
That being said and in full transparency, it is not returning any time soon. I’m not enough of a car guy to know if the Nissan Leaf analogy makes sense but even Tesla has recently stopped selling their first vehicles, the Model S and Model X, for some of the same reasons: it’s not where our focus is.
As you know, the X4 is a wonderful design for redundancy and 0 torque but has the real downside of worse efficiency which is what most pilots care about. Unless physics changes (or battery cell density/costs improve by 10X), a single large motor vs 4 small ones is always going to win out.
Battery technology has improved a ton since the early X4 days. Back in 2018, Bonkas were one of the best options, and adding a BMS mostly meant more weight and complexity in the air. Now there are eFoils, high-power eBikes, power tool systems, and other compact electric vehicles pushing much better battery systems into the market. So I do think there may be interesting DIY paths for someone who wants to keep an X4 flying.
I’d genuinely love to see what you figure out. The X4 may not be coming back as an OpenPPG product, but I would be very happy to see existing ones kept alive, improved, and flown even better than when they were new.
The early Leaf was great but very…unique, a bit pricy in its day, and subject to early battery tech.
Thank you for your transparency. It’s the answer I expected if not the one I hoped for. I may hang onto it and cobble something up. Would be a great machine to travel with. Just drive around and sneak in a 20 minute flight from almost anywhere you can find some room for launching. Heck itd even fit into the back of a Nissan Leaf I bet.
