HWBRIEF
It's the largest battery electric aircraft ever to fly, but it's a test plane, not the 30 seat hybrid electric regional airliner United, Air Canada, and JSX are waiting on.
Heart Aerospace's 106-foot X1 demonstrator lifted off from Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York on August 12 and stayed airborne for 27 minutes, reaching 1,100 feet above ground level. Heart calls it the largest battery-electric aircraft ever to fly: a 76-foot-long, 25,000-plus-pound full-scale test plane drawing more than a megawatt of electric power from its batteries alone.
The flight ran under an FAA Special Airworthiness Certificate in the Experimental Category, the FAA's envelope for prototype aircraft rather than the Part 25 type certificate a commercial airliner needs. Heart says the 27-minute hop used about $5 of electricity. The company paired that figure with the jet-fuel benchmark it cited: $3.50 a gallon for the week ending August 7, up 63% from a year earlier.
X1 is a pure-battery demonstrator. The production aircraft it previews, the 30-seat ES-30, is a hybrid-electric regional airliner: roughly 124 miles on batteries, 300 to 500 miles with onboard reserve generators. United, Air Canada, and JSX have placed non-binding commitments; the FAA Part 25 program that would clear ES-30 for commercial service has not yet begun.