Electric cars tried to get off the ground for decades before the Prius finally gave the industry some footing. Now that the electric car industry is off the ground, the electric plane industry steps up. Electric vehicle technology is hitting the sky as electric aviation startup, Eviation, takes a step forward in its process. The Alice, their first all-electric passenger aircraft, prepares to take flight at long last.
Last week, Alice went through engine testing at Arlington Municipal Airport north of Seattle. According to Eviation CEO Omer Bar-Yohay, they are just weeks away from the first flight.
With battery technology similar to an electric car or a cell phone and 30 minutes of charging, the Alice will fly for an hour and about 440 nautical miles. The plane has a max cruise speed of 250 knots or 287 miles per hour, nearly half of a Boeing 737. The company, focused exclusively on electric air travel, hopes that electric planes will become an industry-wide reality in the next decade.
Eviation has developed three prototypes – commuter, executive, and cargo. The commuter configuration holds nine passengers and two pilots, and 850 pounds of cargo in testing. The executive design carries six passengers in a more spacious layout, and the cargo plane holds 450 cubic feet of volume.
According to the company, all of this can reduce operating costs of commercial jets by 70%.
According to industry experts, the most significant obstacle for electric vehicles in the sky to overcome is the battery.
“The stumbling block is the battery technology just like with cars, but more so in airplanes. This is because, with airplanes, the concern is the weight,” CEO of Aero Consulting Experts, Ross Aimer, said. “As soon as we have better battery technology, which I suspect will be in two or three years, that’s when all these electric airplanes will eventually come.”
It remains to be seen if Eviation will be the Tesla of the sky or if the battery problem proves to be a stumbling block too heavy to move.
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