Good link, Mark. BTW, you back in CA with the RV?
In the facts section in the Mark's link, you can see it it needs 32kW to power the Taurus to 100mph. The Taurus was a 4 seater. That’s 8kW/person or 103lbs/kW. It’s not inconceivable then that 17kW is enough to keep this new little thing flying for that long if it only needs 8kW/person. Throttle back a little to maybe 6kW and it’ll go about 1.5hrs.
Electric motors have linear power output, which recip engines do not. Therefore they can run at a lot less percentage of max power and still produce thrust, which an IC engine can’t. A gas engine is actually only fully semi-efficient from a power-to-weight point of view at absolute max power. Anything else and you’re carrying a lot of dead weight around. Not so with electric motors – they’re as efficient at 1rpm as at 10000rpm. This is actually what makes electric hybrid propulsion not as bad an idea as people think for aviation. It is much better to have a smaller IC or turbine engine running a generator at max power continuously, then lug around a bigger one that you use variably. Have electric motors be the prime mover and variable power unit, not the IC.
In aviation we rarely cruise below 55% of rated power at altitude. Maybe 45% at very long range cruise settings. That's because of two reasons: the IC engine loses steam up there, so the 55% could be close to wide open throttle at altitude. Electric doesn’t have that problem, so as air resistance goes down, you can reduce your power output considerably at altitude. The second reason is of what I described above. When aviation moves towards electric propulsion, you’ll probably see long range cruising power settings of 20-30%, which would be the equiv of 45-55% in an IC engine. I personally can’t wait. I’m done with the IC engine. Such a pain in the a*se that thing.