World's Largest Electrical Plane Flies on Battery Power for 27 Minutes
Heart Aerospace's experimental electric prototype plane, the X1, completed its first test flight this week. It flew on battery power alone for 27 minutes, reaching a peak altitude of 1,100 feet, as Popsci reports. This was a strong proof of concept for the design, which will help inform Heart's commercial plans to launch a hybrid electric plane by the end of the decade.
Heart has been pushing the electric plane concept for years, first pitching its smaller ES-19 plane and more recently switching to the 30-seat ES-30 design. Targeted for shorter-haul commercial trips of between 100 and 500 miles, the plane will carry a complement of 30 passengers and be effectively carbon neutral on shorter flights.
But before it can build that plane, Heart's got to show the concept can work, and the X1 is off to a great start. On its first flight, it flew without issue, using...
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