Israeli All-Electric Plane Ushers in New Age of Aviation

Two years after unveiling a prototype for the first known all-electric airplane at the Paris Air Show in 2019, Israeli company Eviation is preparing for the plane’s first test flight to usher in a new age of aviation.

The test flight for the aircraft, dubbed Alice, is expected before the end of the year with the plane — now in its fifth iteration — in final assembly at Eviation headquarters in Arlington, Washington, just north of Seattle.

This test flight puts Alice on a path toward approval by regulators and then, hopefully, service entry in 2024. The company is making three more planes for a total of four aircraft to accelerate certification.

Alice is designed to accommodate nine passengers and two crew members. Once operational, it will make regional trips as accessible as a train ride, but at a lower cost and with better service. With a payload of 2,500 pounds (1.1 tons) and a range of 506 miles (815 kilometers), Alice would be available for passengers to book a ride by an app for popular short-haul routes — for example, San Jose to San Diego, London to Prague, and Paris to Toulouse. 

The aircraft’s lithium-ion battery would require 30 minutes or less to charge per flight hour, as its mission is to make electric, zero-emission aviation a competitive, sustainable answer to on-demand mobility.

Eviation snagged its first client, Massachusetts-based regional airline Cape Air, in 2019 just as it unveiled its Alice prototype. Cape Air, which operates 95 fleets in some two dozen cities throughout the US and the Caribbean, placed an order for 92 Alice aircraft priced at $4 million each. Eviation then announced that two well-known but not-yet-disclosed American companies had also placed orders for the Alice, which now topped 150.

Last month, Eviation revealed that global logistics and international shipping giant DHL had placed an order for 12 Alice aircraft in cargo configuration, the Alice eCargo, to set up an electric DHL Express network for a pioneering step into a sustainable aviation future. Eviation provides a credible operational solution for cargo operations; Alice can be charged while loading and unloading for maximum use on short hauls.

Alice has low maintenance and operating costs, and it is expected that the aircraft will reduce carrier costs by up to 70 percent. A strong bonus is how much quieter electric planes are.

By the time the Alice planes go into service in 2024, pending all regulatory approval, electric aircraft fleets will be much more common because they don’t need as much infrastructure as electric cars.

Once there are final approvals, the rollout is expected to be rapid in the US, and then globally.

Eviation has attracted its fair share of attention in recent years, nabbing a spot on TIME magazine’s list of 100 “best inventions” two years ago (alongside eight other Israeli-founded companies), and winning a “World-Changing Ideas” Award in 2018 by US business magazine Fast Company. The company intends to remain a plane manufacturer and has no plans to become a fleet operator or a logistics provider.

Source: The Times of Israel