The world’s first all-electric passenger plane has successfully taken off. Israeli company Eviation Aircraft successfully launched Alice on Tuesday morning from Grant County International Airport in Washington, United States. The zero-emission plane traveled at an altitude of 3,500 feet for its eight-minute maiden flight.
“This is history,” said Gregory Davis, president and CEO of Eviation. “We haven’t seen propulsion technology change on the aircraft since we moved from the piston engine to the turbine engine. The 1950s was the last time you saw a whole new technology like this come together.”
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With battery technology similar to that of an electric car or a cell phone and 30 minutes of charging, the nine-passenger Alice will be able to fly for an hour and about 440 nautical miles, equivalent to 814 kilometers. The plane has a maximum cruising speed of 250 knots, or 460 km/h. For reference, a Boeing 737 has a maximum cruising speed of 946 km/h.
Eviation was founded in 2015 and has been driving Alice ever since. The company hopes to use the information gathered during Tuesday’s flight to review next steps and deliver aircraft to customers by 2027 – although Eviation cautions that the plan is subject to change.
“We actually generated, frankly, terabytes of data with the data acquisition systems that we had on the aircraft, so we’re going to take a couple of weeks and review them to see how the aircraft performs against our models and our analysis,” he said. Davis. “From there, we will understand what we need to do next.”
The company says it expects to work on developing an aircraft certified by the FAA, the US aviation agency, by 2025, followed by a year or two of flight testing before it can deliver Alices to customers.
Three different versions of Alice are in the prototype phase: a “commuter” variant, an executive version and a specialized cargo version. The passenger configuration accommodates nine passengers and two pilots, plus 385 kilograms of cargo. The executive design has six passenger seats for a more spacious flight, and the cargo plane has 450 cubic feet of volume.
But Alice’s journey towards takeoff was not without problems. Plagued by delays, Alice was originally supposed to fly in 2021. Eviation has faced executive turnover and a series of weather issues that have stalled testing progress, pushing back takeoff dates and announcing fleet launches for years. CapeAir airline hopes to put a fleet into service by 2023, serving routes in Boston and Cape Cod, but purchased Alices have faced delays. DHL and Miami-based air charter company GlobalX also announced plans to purchase the plane.
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