An all-electric passenger aircraft completed its first 8-minute test flight on Tuesday. The nine-passenger prototype plane named Alice, built by startup Eviation, which claimed that the plane is “ushering in a new era of aviation.”
The plug-in plane took two wide turns around the airfield, and made a “whirring buzz” sound, which was “a fluttering of air from the propellers at the rear of the fuselage,” during its eight minutes in the air, according to a report by the Seattle Times.
Alice reportedly “gave a couple more loud buzzes when the pilot revved the motors” while it taxied into the terminal.
The aircraft was designed and built by the startup company, Eviation, in an attempt to show the potential for an electric commercial commuter aircraft that can fly a few hundred miles at an altitude of roughly 15,000 feet.
“Are the batteries on the prototype aircraft capable of propelling the certification aircraft, capable of providing sufficient energy? The answer is no, absolutely not,” Eviation CEO Greg Davis said, claiming that Alice is not the same design that the company plans on building later.
Davis said his company needs still-to-be-developed advances in battery technology to make Eviation’s planes commercially viable.
“It’s really ushering in a new era of aviation,” Davis said. “This is the first radical change in aerospace propulsion technology, since we went from the Super Constellation to the 707, from the piston engine to the jet engine, and now to the electric motor.”
Electric vehicles are now set to take to the skies, as Air Canada also announced this month that it has ordered 30 plug-in planes from the Swedish electric aircraft startup company, Heart Aerospace. The electric planes are expected to have an operational range of just 124 to 248 miles per charge.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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