These guys have been quietly building an electric machine for the past four years–work that has paid off by creating a salable drive train that can be used by other makers. After seeing pictures, I inquired with the usual questions and the lead developer, Pierre, was most helpful. Computer translators are remarkable, making up for my utter lack of foreign language skills and letting us communicate reasonably well.
ParaWatt’s story involves four “impassioned technicians” who have worked on the electric paramotor for more than 4 years, testing many existing motors, and finding nothing that approached what they wanted from a quality point of view of, reliability and safety. So they created one. The one in these pictures is their fifth prototype.
Pierre and another developer of the ParaWatt electric paramotor
Pouring electric “fuel” into the 2010 ParaWatt paramotor
Here are the specifics, provided verbatim, from Pierre using a computer French-to-English Translator.
- The price of the engine is of 1794 € and the price of the controller is of 699 €. We do not propose complete paramoteurs, but only the engine intended for manufacturers of paramotor or light ULM.
- The price of battery 13S is approximately 1600 € at Kokam in Korea.
- The maximum trust is of 55 kgF with a propeller of 130 cm. Note: I asked about a thrust/duration curve but they haven’t done that kind of testing yet. No worries, neither has anyone else.
- The weight of our prototype is 31 kg, but it is a laboratory. I think that it is possible to make less than 30 kg ready for the use.
- We have 14 kg of batteries.
- Battery is a LiPo
- Special Chargeur/eq
- Special Chargeur/equilibror LiPo regulated over 4 hours charge.
The four team members are Pierre Renault, Louis Fourdan, Patrick Seme, Jean-Pierre Hochart.