Washington: In a major milestone for the aviation industry, an all-electric airplane flew successfully for 30 minutes over Moses Lake, Washington
The plane is a modified Cessna Caravan that seats nine people. Seattle-based aviation companies Startup MagniX — which supplied the electric motor — and AeroTEC, an aerospace engineering and certification company, worked on it.
The cabin was filled with two tonnes of lithium batteries and cooling equipment, leaving little room for passengers. The flight has a range of 100 miles (160km) and is powered by a single 750-hp electric motor.
The startup had previously modified a De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver seaplane with the same motor which had flown over Vancouver, Canada, in December 2019.
These existing designs are reportedly easier to get certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for commercial flights.
Magnix CEO Roei Ganzarski said that electric airplanes are 40-70 per cent cheaper than normal ones and do not produce any CO2. These will serve smaller airports with “shorter door-to-door service”.
Aviation accounts for 2 per cent of global carbon emissions commercially and 12 per cent in the transport sector, CNBC said, quoting The International Council on Clean Transportation.
Energy density of batteries is a hindrance to fully-electric large airplanes, so large commercial jets are not becoming fully electric any time soon, experts note. However, Airbus is reportedly considering designing hybrid passenger jets.
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