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Tesla’s success ushers in a new era of electric flight
Electric flight may not be as far away as we once thought. In the next decade, aircraft are set to see dramatic changes as companies both large and small work to bring fully electric and hybrid flight to market. Airlines, manufacturers, and startups all seem to be moving towards this goal (see below). The race is clearly on and it will change the way we think about flight.
Yet as it was for the introduction of electric vehicles, the first aircraft is short range and seat just a few passengers. Their applications today are limited but to think the industry will stay in this nascent stage would be a mistake. Successes in these small and short-range aircraft will translate forward into larger and longer-range aircraft. The companies that find success here will emerge as leaders in a new era of electric flight.
Companies working on electric flight
On the Market Today:
First, it’s important to appreciate that only recently have small electric powered aircraft gone from concepts to commercial use.
Pipistrel’s Alpha Electro is one of these all-electric aircraft. It’s meant primarily for pilot training and just received its airworthiness certification from the FAA in April 2018, becoming the first in the USA to do so. The Alpha Electro only seats two people and is good for an hour of flight plus reserves. That might not sound like much but it could be disruptive. Pipistrel says the aircraft cuts beginner pilot training costs by as much as 70% while producing zero emissions and low noise.
In China, the Ruixiang RX1E is a similar style trainer sold there commercially. They also have a new, longer-range model that was recently tested, the RX1E-A. With a two-hour flight time the new version doubles its previous capabilities. At this size of aircraft the technology is getting close to parity with comparable gasoline-powered aircraft, like the Cessna 162 which has a flight time of about three hours.
Full parity might be here sooner than you think. Coming small electric aircraft have better specs and more seating, with many nearly ready for certification (pictured below). Pipistrel has their Panthera (top right), which will hold four passengers and will come in options for combustion, hybrid, and all-electric powertrains. There’s also BYE Aerospace in Colorado, which has a four-seater in development and just completed the first test flight of the two-seater Sun Flyer 2 — it has a flight time of 3 hours. Ruixiang also announced they have a 4-seater aircraft in development. The other important consideration is that their initial costs appear to be comparable to combustion options as well.
Pipistrel Alpha Electro (top left), Pipistrel Panthera (top right), Ruixiang RX1E-A (bottom left), BYE Aerospace Sunflyer 2 (bottom right)
Looking at these options, some will say that an electric aircraft is an isolated niche and for now, that’s mostly correct. These are small aircraft with limited applications. Yet when the Nissan Leaf and even the Tesla Roaster first came out many believed electric cars were a niche technology too. The range was too short, seating was too small, and costs were too high to realistically consider the technology going mainstream. Now we are in the midst of a market transformation, with automakers pouring billions into their EV programs and countries announcing they are phasing out combustion vehicles.
Market Transformation – Near-Term Preproduction:
The next major step for electric flight appears to be in small commuter aircraft. Aircraft that weigh less than 12,500 lbs, carry 5 to 20 passengers and travel up to 750 miles. In addition to regional commuter needs, they may also serve recreational and business purposes. If small aircraft are like the Tesla Roadster then these are like the Model S. They have more seats, longer range, and are made in higher volumes.
The use case of short range regional commuters is almost perfect for electrification. Much of their flight is spent just getting up to altitude, where cruising achieves the greatest efficiency. The time spent cruising however is relatively short and the result is that such regional flights are inherently less efficient than those over greater distances. On the plus side the high operating costs are a great opportunity for electrification. Consider that a turbine engine achieves an efficiency of around 55% at cruising, but on ascent that efficiency can drop by half (~25%). By comparison, an electric motor has efficiencies greater than 95%.
One of the companies working to electrify these regional aircraft is Wright Electric, based out of Los Angeles. They recently announced plans to bring to market a 9-seat electrified aircraft with a range of at least 340 miles. According to their website that would cover the distance of nearly 44% of all flights. The announcement is part of their new partnership with JetEx, a fixed-base operator based in Saudi Arabia with operations in over 30 countries. I recently spoke with Wright Electric’s CEO Jeff Engler about their coming aircraft and where he see’s the industry going. The first thing that surprised me is that their aircraft could be on the market very soon.
“We are certain that the first flight test will take place next year. It could be on the market in just over two years.” – Jeff Engler, CEO of Wright Electric
That means that sometime towards the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021 they could be in their air, operating with paying customers.
Wright Electric / JetEx
Their aircraft is intended for intercity travel and recreational activities Jeff said, but it’s not the end goal. In fact, their approach may be familiar to fans of electric cars.
“Our plan is similar to the Tesla approach, in the sense that they started with the Roadster and then scaled up to larger more mass market vehicles. Our first plane to market will be a premium aircraft meant to travel short distances with a small number of passengers… perfect for intercity flights and recreational activities like skydiving. This initial program is the springboard for development of larger longer-range aircraft”. – Jeff Engler, CEO of Wright Electric
In regards to the technology Jeff said they are developing the hybrid and all electric powertrains concurrently. He noted that battery advancements will dictate the transition to fully electric flight but in the interim, hybrid solutions will significantly reduce fuel costs, noise, and pollution. With restrained enthusiasm, he was cautiously optimistic about the coming advances in battery technology. Yet battery technology isn’t holding them up.
The beauty of hybrid options is that as batteries improve they can be seamlessly integrated into the design, allowing more of the flight to be electric. For their electric hybrid, Wright Electric likes to use the term “helper motor”. A helper motor can run hard during takeoff and ascent to help bring the aircraft up to altitude, thereby reducing the burden on the combustion engines, improving overall efficiency, and reducing fuel consumption. Once at altitude, the combustion engines can take over, where they operate most efficiently.
Even without being fully electric hybrid aircraft would have surprising benefits to fuel economy, pollution, and noise. Wright Electric has estimated the potential for reducing fuel use by nearly 2/3’s, while fellow electric aircraft startup Zunum Aero indicated 40% to 80% operating savings. Zunum Aero also noted a potential 70% reduction in community noise.
More Regional Commuter Aircraft are Coming Too:
Wright electric isn’t the only one working in this space. Other startups are also pushing the industry forward and they’ve partnered with established manufacturers and airlines to help make it happen. It’s similar to the approach Tesla took early on by partnering with established companies like Daimler and Toyota, and even in their recent developments of the Semi.
Zunum Aero is another one of the leaders in the electric aircraft space, based out of the west coast near Seattle. They are developing a 12-seat hybrid-electric, with a targeted range of over 700 miles. First test flights are targeted for 2019 and commercial operation is planned for 2022 (pictured below). Their partners include Boeing and JetBlue and just last week JetSuite announced they would order up to 100 of Zunum’s hybrid aircraft.
Eviation Aircraft is an Israel based company and has great ambitions for their first aircraft named “Alice”. It will be a 9-seat 650 mile aircraft and most importantly “all-electric”. They are targeting brining it to market by 2021. Is all-electric flight on that scale possible by 2021? They’ve said the aircraft will use a 950 kWh battery and just recently signed Kokam as their battery supplier, so they seem to be serious. I hope they make it happen. Alice is gorgeous.
Zunum Aero (top), Eviation Aircraft (bottom)
Other Exciting Developments Coming Soon:
In the heavyweight division Airbus, Siemens, and Rolls-Royce have their own partnership, working together on their E-Fan X after the successful small electric E-Fan program. The E-Fan X will be a hybrid demonstrator aircraft based on the 100-seat BAe146. The first test flight is planned for 2020 and they are looking to bring a similarly sized hybrid aircraft to market sometime around 2030. Originally they were going to bring a small electric trainer based on the E-Fan to market in 2017 or 2018 but said the pace of development has set their ambitions upwards. There’s also Airbus’s subsidiary A3 which is working on a small all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
E-Fan X
Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft are extremely interesting. They could be the biggest disrupters of all (covered in more detail in a follow up article, part 2). They too seem to be much closer than people think. For flying short distances they don’t actually need massive advancements in battery technology. Norway’s Avinor, their national aircraft operator, seems to indicate the mid 2020’s for practical operation.
Companies like Uber, Lilium, Kittyhawk, A3, and many more are developing electric aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing. They look more like flying cars than airplanes and that seems to be the point. These “air-taxis” are meant for hyper-local travel. Something you would hop onto downtown and take to get to across the city or to another nearby city. Lilium is a relatively new startup, founded in 2015, but has already made significant advancements in the space. They’ve already had their first full-scale test flight which is viewable below. Watching it lift off is almost magical. They brought on former Ferrari designer Frank Stephenson to head their design program and raised $90M to proceed with further development.
Lilium VTOL
Final Thoughts and Intro to Part 2
For fully electric flight a lot depends on batteries, but the technology is already finding applications in short-range, small aircraft. Increasing larger hybrid aircraft are also set to see their application in the real world in just a few years and will yield substantial benefits of their own. These moves should not be discounted. They are a prelude of what’s to come.
At this point, you may be wondering exactly what are the benefits of electric flight. That’s the focus of the second part of this article, coming out soon. They are substantial and will drive the industry forward with haste.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
News
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Musk says China’s magnet export ban cost Optimus months, and robot hands remain shockingly hard.
Elon Musk says China’s export curbs on magnets used in electric motors set back Tesla’s Optimus program by two to three months, and that the robot’s hands remain the hardest part of the project. He made the comments Saturday during a live interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas, in front of roughly 2,000 attendees. The Optimus discussion begins around the 49 minute mark of the stream.
On the hands, Musk was blunt and noted that a general purpose humanoid needs fine motor skills that are “incredibly difficult to get right. Shockingly difficult,” he said in the interview. He pointed to a problem he says no one has demonstrated yet: “One of the hardest things also generally is to do precision and force at the same time,” such as driving a small self tapping screw into wood. Touch sensors add another layer, since it is “actually kind of hard to get touch sensors that elastically deform and can handle high cycle life and it won’t just break after a few thousand cycles.”
He also took aim at rival robot videos. “Any complicated looking robot demo, it’s a canned demo. It’s not real,” Musk said, adding that real AI means showing a robot something it has never seen and watching it still cope, the way FSD handles a city it has never driven.
Musk expects the Optimus ramp to be slower than a new vehicle production ramp. “The initial part of that S curve of production ramp is going to be very slow at the beginning,” Musk said, partly because “unlike cars, there’s no pre existing supply chain for robot stuff.” That echoes his July reply on X that Optimus production “will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new.”
The magnet disclosure puts a number on a problem Musk first raised in 2025. He said China “prevented the export of magnets for use in electric motors” and that it “set back the Optimus program by like two or three months.” Then he added: “We had robots with no arms.” Tesla’s fix is to bring the supply chain home. “You’ve got to be able to make all the parts domestically,” he said. Teslarati reported in April 2025 that Musk tied the issue to permanent magnets in the arm actuators, where motors have to be as small as possible.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Production is moving regardless, with a reported internal goal of more than 1,000 a week by the end of 2026. Teslarati recently covered how Tesla is certifying supply partners in China for Optimus parts, while the company’s hand design has been the subject of new patent filings.
Musk has said he wants Optimus available to the public by late 2027, though Tesla has not confirmed that date or published updated production figures.
Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
