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Israeli company Eviation Aircraft successfully launched the Alice on Tuesday morning from Washington's Grant County International Airport. The zero-emission plane traveled at an altitude of 3,500 feet for its eight-minute inaugural flight.
"This is history," Gregory Davis, Eviation's president and CEO, told CNN Business."We have not seen the propulsion technology change on the 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."
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 one hour, and about 440 nautical miles. The plane has a max cruise speed of 250 knots, or 287 miles per hour. For reference, a Boeing 737 has a max cruise speed of 588 miles per hour.
[...] "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 company says it expects to be working on developing an FAA-certified aircraft through 2025, followed by a year or two of flight testing before it can deliver Alices to customers.
Three different versions of the Alice are in protoype stages: a "commuter" variant, an executive version, and one specialized 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.
See also: Electric Planes Are Coming: Short-Hop Regional Flights Could be Running on Batteries in a Few Years
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Electric planes might seem futuristic, but they aren't that far off, at least for short hops:
Two-seater Velis Electros are already quietly buzzing around Europe, electric sea planes are being tested in British Columbia, and larger planes are coming. Air Canada announced on Sept. 15, 2022, that it would buy 30 electric-hybrid regional aircraft from Sweden's Heart Aerospace, which expects to have its 30-seat plane in service by 2028. Analysts at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab note that the first hybrid electric 50- to 70-seat commuter plane could be ready not long after that. In the 2030s, they say, electric aviation could really take off.
[...] Aircraft are some of the most complex vehicles out there, but the biggest problem for electrifying them is the battery weight.
[...] Jet fuel can hold about 50 times more energy compared to batteries per unit mass. So, you can have 1 pound of jet fuel or 50 pounds of batteries. To close that gap, we need to either make lithium-ion batteries lighter or develop new batteries that hold more energy. New batteries are being developed, but they aren't yet ready for aircraft.
An electric alternative is hybrids.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday September 29 2022, @06:46PM (1 child)
"One of these days, Alice ... bang, zoom, straight to Cancun!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 29 2022, @11:29PM
How sweet it is!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Thursday September 29 2022, @07:40PM (3 children)
This is not possible, unless they have found a way to break the laws of thermodynamics.
A more honest statement would be: "this plane has move its emissions to the grid"; but that doesn't sound good for the investors.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @08:48PM
It's pretty obvious, to probably everyone here, that to provide power needed to fly, pretty much all planes that are not electric must burn a fuel that will generate and emit CO2.
But most people know that electricity can be generated from CO2-emitting processes, but also from NON-CO2-emitting processes, like PV, nuclear, wind, wave, geothermal, etc.
The very obvious point of this plane is: the energy to fly the plane can now be sourced elsewhere, including from non-CO2 releasing sources.
Get it now?
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday September 29 2022, @11:37PM (1 child)
Fairly close, for the flight test. They were in Washington State where 65% of the electricity is hydroelectric.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Friday September 30 2022, @01:33AM
if they can power it using 100% renewables, and if the construction process is also zero emission, and the plane it self is recyclable, then they could claim zero emissions.
I understand that this is a combination of marketing, journalism and general 'shiny' hype... but the zero emissions claim is currently false.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Touché) by jimbrooking on Thursday September 29 2022, @07:56PM (2 children)
See https://www.beta.team [beta.team] . It's been flying for a while.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @08:58PM
How weird... My ad/script blockers block the entire site, comes up blank. I guess everything's a pop-up now
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 30 2022, @01:41PM
The aircraft you linked is not a "passenger aircraft". It's cool, though.
The Alice is "the first all-electric passenger aircraft": (quote from the article)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @09:05PM (3 children)
Why won't they ever let us hear the damn machine?! From outside, and the inside??
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday September 29 2022, @10:13PM (2 children)
Maybe that music is the sound of the plane. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 29 2022, @10:41PM (1 child)
Pretty sure it sounds more like this [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30 2022, @12:46AM
Thanks for the link, sounds like a "bigger" version of my battery electric lawn mower.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Friday September 30 2022, @02:46AM
If she is in fact able to fly for one hour, It'd give her 30 minutes under day VFR and 15 minutes at night and under IFR - about 100 nautical miles distance Yes there are a few places where it makes sense.
Going back to technology, the batteries for an aircraft have different requirements than for cars. For cars it's interesting to know 0% to 50% or 80% charge specs. For an aircraft it would be from 75% to 100% charge.
There is a solution though which nobody to my knowledge have brought up yet - to have a reserve fossil fuel engine.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.