A plane retrofit with an all-electric motor successfully took flight over Washington for 30 minutes on Thursday.
The small plane, a Cessna Caravan, used a MagniX 750-horsepower motor in the test flight, the same type of MagniX engine installed on an all-electric seaplane that flew over British Columbia in December. The aviation company AeroTEC modified the Cessna.
Electric planes, after further testing, may one day prove successful in transporting people on shorter regional hops (perhaps some 300 miles or less). That’s good, because taking off burns a lot of fuel, meaning short flights today have double the “carbon intensity,” or amount of carbon burned per mile, than longer flights. Read more…
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