An all-electric version of one of the world’s best-known small utility airplanes hummed through its first flight today at Moses Lake in central Washington state.
Redmond, Wash.-based MagniX and Seattle-based AeroTEC were in charge of the test, which focused on the performance of a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan powered by MagniX’s 750-horsepower Magni500 propulsion system.
During today’s 30-minute-long test flight, the hum of the modified eCaravan’s motor was drowned out by the relative roar of the chase plane’s engine. “The small Cessna is making about double the noise,” MagniX CEO Roei Ganzarski said during his webcast commentary.
Ganzarski played up the significance of the moment when the plane landed back at Moses Lake’s Grant County International Airport, which commonly serves as an aviation testing ground and storage facility.
“You just witnessed history — the world’s largest all-electric aircraft,” he said.
You could argue with that claim: For example, the Swiss-built Solar Impulse 2 aircraft, which relied entirely on solar-generated electricity and made a round-the-world circuit in 2015-2016, boasted a 236-foot wingspan and weighed 5,060 pounds. In comparison, a Cessna Grand Caravan has a 52-foot wingspan and typically weighs 4,700 pounds.
It’d be harder to argue with the significance of the eCaravan experiment, however. No one will be taking a plane like Solar Impulse 2 out for a spin anytime soon, but all-electric versions of planes like the nine-passenger Cessna Grand Caravan could someday be a common sight in the skies above.
Watch the eCaravan’s first flight in MagniX’s Twitter video:
— magniX (@MagniX) May 28, 2020
We’re not just talking about Cessnas: MagniX, an electric-propulsion venture that has facilities in Australia as well as Redmond, has also converted a six-seat de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver seaplane to battery power for Vancouver, B.C.-based Harbour Air. That all-electric plane made its first flight last December, and today Ganzarski said flight tests were continuing. Harbour Air aims to have the plane certified by the end of next year, and will eventually convert its entire fleet to electric power.
Meanwhile, MagniX’s sister company, Israel-based Eviation, is working on a new breed of airplane that’s designed to be all-electric from the ground up. That plane is slated to be tested eventually in Moses Lake as well. One of the propulsion options for Eviation’s nine-passenger Alice aircraft would use three of MagniX’s 375-hp Magni250 electric motors.
The eCaravan experiment is part of MagniX’s certification effort for the Magni500 system. AeroTEC, which focuses on aerospace testing, engineering and certification, is a key partner in that effort.
MagniX’s strategy is to offer all-electric options for airplanes flying short-haul flights — for example, the half-hour seaplane flights that are Harbour Air’s specialty. The flight range would gradually increase with improvements in the technology for batteries and propulsion.
All-electric aviation has a lot of pluses, ranging from quieter operation to zero emissions. Even NASA is getting into the act, with an experimental all-electric airplane called the X-57 Maxwell.
Ganzarsky has said electric propulsion could revolutionize aviation the way Tesla is revolutionizing the market for electric cars. But not all revolutions succeed, at least at first: In 2017, a Seattle-area startup called Zunum Aero tried to get a hybrid-electric regional airplane developed with millions of dollars of financial backing from the venture capital arms of Boeing and JetBlue as well as Washington state’s Clean Energy Fund. Last year, the effort fizzled amid financial troubles.
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May 29, 2020 at 12:37AM
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