The aircraft just made an important maiden flight. Now comes the hard part: improving its batteries.
For eight minutes today, an electric airplane from Eviation flew in the skies above central Washington state. Propelled by twospinning two propellers near the tail, pulling energy from 8,000 pounds of batteries, the aircraft hit a speed of about 171 miles per hour during its brief flight.
The flight of the sleek electric plane, which its maker calls Alice, was a significant milestone for a sector of aviation that focuses on carrying small amounts of people—nine or fewer—short distances, and doing it with no tailpipe emissions. “We made aviation history flying Alice, the world’s first all-electric commuter aircraft, here at the Moses Lake Flight Test facility,” Gregory Davis, the company’s CEO, said during a press conference following the flight.that the company conducted on September 18.
While the flight test today appeared to go off without a hitch—save for a brief taxi away from the runway before takeoff and then back again, to adjust a screen in the aircraft—the company has hard problems to solve ahead of this milestone. The most pressing long-term technical problem, Davis reports, is the batteries themselves, which are in the plane’s belly.
This is not the first electric aircraft to ever fly. Small air taxis from companies like Joby Aviation, Beta Technologies, and others have already taken to the skies multiple times. For example, a flying machine from Beta, called Alia,—with many stops along the way—in May. Eviation’s Alice aircraft is positioning itself in a slightly different category from the air taxis being flown by these companies, as it’s an aircraft with the ability to someday carry nine people.