, Columnist
Electric Aircraft May Have More Potential Than We Thought
If the aviation industry is serious about hitting net zero by 2050, then long shots like this must be seriously investigated.
Could this prototype really fly?
Photographer: Paul Hanna/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Batteries are doing such a great job replacing petroleum in car engines that it’s natural to think they might do the same in the skies. Efforts to make a working airplane prototype, however, perennially come up short.
Kitty Hawk, the startup backed by Google co-founder Larry Page that hoped to make an electric flying car, quietly abandoned the project after five years in 2020. Last year, two separate proposed battery planes being developed by ventures including Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc and Nasa were dropped within a month of each other.