this is the world's first full-sized
all-electric passenger plane
her name is alice now she isn't the
first attempt at an electric passenger
plane
previous attempts looked like this a
glider or an old seaplane retrofitted
with an electric engine
but alice is different the aviation
alice is
a nine passenger two crew all-electric
commuter aircraft this aircraft is
built from the ground up to be electric
it's not a conversion of anything
israeli aeronautics company aviation
started work on alice back in 2015
and debuted the plane in june 2019 its
goal
to find a sustainable way to move people
regionally air travel is one of the
fastest growing contributors to climate
change
and even mid pandemic when travel has
dipped the airline industry's carbon
footprint is still outpacing predictions
regional travel is a big component of
that footprint in 2017
half of the 4 billion air tickets sold
were for regional flights
even though these were short distances
the aircraft used were huge
jet planes built across oceans
that's an insanity because we're using
the wrong tools for the job
alice might be a solution for these
popular commuter routes
think new york city to dc or even up the
west coast
between san jose and san diego the plane
is built to fly up to 650 miles on just
one charge of its lithium-ion battery
the distance from london to prague
and it's designed to carry passengers at
cruising speeds of about 276 miles per
hour
now that's about half as fast as jet
fuel planes so
a one-hour 10-minute flight from new
york city to dc would be about two and a
half hours on alice
but alice could do that journey
emissions-free
it seems ideal but engineers faced a few
challenges while building alice
it has a huge battery we have roughly
3.6 metric tons of battery over 8 000
pounds
in electric cars a battery's weight
isn't as much of an issue
because cars stay on the ground but in a
plane trying to get in the air with a
heavy battery becomes a challenge
the bigger the battery the more power
for the plane but a bigger battery also
means more weight to lift
so more power is needed to get it in the
air
in normal airplanes an estimated 30 of
the plane's maximum takeoff weight is
jet fuel
and that weight lessens over time as jet
fuels burned while in the air
but for alice we're roughly at 60
percent
of maximum takeoff weight meaning 60 of
the plane when
it takes off is battery it's the same
when it lands we don't lose anything
so aviation had two solutions for a
heavy battery
engineers distributed the battery
throughout the plane that
battery is literally all over the place
it's under the floor it's in the wings
in the fuselage in different locations
then they balanced out the battery's
sheer weight the way to do it
is just to build everything else very
light alice has a lightweight airframe
slim wings and wingtip propellers it has
a lifting body which means it looks like
a for lack of a better
description an upside down boat all of
those features were built
to create a more efficient airframe at
cruise
another key feature that sets alice
apart is its lift to drag ratio
or how much lift the wing generates
compared to how much drag it creates
moving through the air
a regular plane has a lift to drag ratio
of 17 to 1.
for alice that rate is 25 to 1 meaning
it's more aerodynamically efficient
and uses less energy getting into the
air
for future passengers all this
environmentally conscious innovation
means a lot less traveler's guilt i
think it's important that the industry
looks at its
responsibilities of the planet and makes
itself more sustainable in terms of
emissions
but it needs to work economically some
players in the industry say electric
planes could mean 40 to 80 percent lower
airfares that's because it doesn't cost
as much to operate an electric plane
aviation's alice costs about 200 per
flight hour to operate
a similarly performing turbo prop would
cost between 1200 and 2 000
per flight hour but in order to be truly
sustainable omer says people have to
actually
want to fly electric this needs to feel
like a plane you want to use
daily so how does alice do that
designers wanted the windows to be big
enough to increase visibility
and they added stability technology to
help with turbulence plus alice's
electric engine is practically silent
this plane is dramatically less noisy
about two orders of magnitude less noisy
than an equivalently sized aircraft i
think it could change the way
we treat airports despite testing
hiccups in early january
omer estimates the plane will be
certified by 2022
us-based airline cape air has already
decided to buy the aircraft
at 4 million dollars per plane the
airline plans to introduce alice into
its fleet
serving regional routes from boston to
nantucket martha's vineyard
and up into new hampshire and new york
in the very beginning it was extremely
difficult to convince
partners clients anybody investors that
were not delusional today it feels like
everybody is on board
and this is where the industry should go
the industry is beginning to notice
that there is really a tectonic shift
here