The first entirely electric passenger aircraft ever to fly has done so successfully. The Alice was successfully launched on Tuesday morning from Washington’s Grant County International Airport by the Israeli business Eviation Aircraft. During its eight-minute test flight, the zero-emission aircraft climbed to a height of 3,500 feet.
“This is history,” Gregory Davis, Eviation’s president, and CEO said. “We have not seen the propulsion technology change in aircraft since we went from the piston engine to the turbine engine.” “It was the 1950s.” “That was the last time you saw an entirely new technology like this come together.”
The maximum cruise speed of the aircraft is 250 knots or 287 miles per hour
The nine-passenger Alice will be able to fly for one to two hours with battery technology similar to that of an electric car or a cell phone and 30 minutes of charging.
The maximum cruise speed of the aircraft is 250 knots or 287 miles per hour. For comparison, the maximum cruise speed of a Boeing 737 is 588 miles per hour.
Since its inception in 2015, Eviation has been driving Alice forward. The company hopes to use the data gathered during Tuesday’s flight to plan the next steps and deliver aircraft to customers by 2027 — though Eviation cautions that this plan is subject to change.
“We’ve 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 actually and review it to see how the aircraft performs versus our models and our analysis,” Davis said. “From there, we’ll understand what we need to do next.”
The airplane is currently in the prototyping stages of three different variations
According to the business, it plans to continue developing an FAA-certified aircraft through 2025. After that, there will be a short period of flight testing before Alices can be delivered to customers.
The Alice is currently in the prototyping stages of three different variations: a “commuter” variant, an executive version, and one tailored for cargo. The commuter configuration holds nine passengers and two pilots, as well as 850 pounds of cargo. The executive design has six passenger seats for a more spacious flight, and the cargo plane holds 450 cubic feet of volume.
