15 Facts About Electric aircraft

An electric aircraft is an aircraft powered by electricity, almost always via one or more electric motors which drive propellers.

Electrically powered model aircraft have been flown at least since the 1970s and were the forerunners of the small unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, which in the twenty-first century have become widely used for many purposes.

Night flying, such for endurance flights and with Electric aircraft providing 24 hour coverage over an area typically require a backup storage system, which is charged during the day from surplus power, and supplies power during the hours of darkness.

However, compared to using a power cable, power beaming allows the Electric aircraft to move laterally and carries a much lower weight penalty, particularly as altitude increases.

Electric aircraft have additional heat generation and end-of-life needs, requiring novel thermal management strategies, power-fade capabilities and battery pack failure modes.

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Electric aircraft motors do not lose power with altitude, unlike internal-combustion engines, avoiding the need for complex and costly measures used to prevent this, such as the use of turbochargers.

Use of electricity for aircraft propulsion was first experimented with during the development of the airship in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The multirotor Electric aircraft is intended to carry four passengers, with a pilot initially and to become self-piloted when regulations allow.

On 21 October 1973, the Militky MB-E1, a Brditschka HB-3 motor glider converted by Fred Militky and Heino Brditschka, flew for 9 minutes from Linz in Austria: the first electric aircraft to fly under its own power with a person on board, powered by Nickel–cadmium batteries .

The leader of the project and often pilot of the Electric aircraft is Rudolf Voit-Nitschmann, the head of the institute.

In March 2015, the Electric aircraft took off on the first stage of a planned round-the-world trip, flying eastwards from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

In late 2000s Chinese manufacturer of radio-controlled models Yuneec International developed and tested several battery-powered manned fixed-wing aircraft, including E430, the first electric aircraft designed to be serially produced, but failed to commercialize them and in mid-2010s turned to the lucrative consumer drone market.

Taurus Electro was the first two-seat electric aircraft to have ever flown, while the Taurus Electro G2 is the production version, that was introduced in 2011.

Bye Aerospace eFlyer 2 is a light electric aircraft designed and under development by Bye Aerospace of Denver, Colorado.

The Electric aircraft was first publicly introduced on 11 May 2016, and first flew on 10 April 2018.