The cheapest certified aircraft right now run something like $180,000. Really nice ones like the Cirrus SR-22's run $250-500k. Even a homebuilt aircraft will run you at least $80,000 plus 1200 hours or so of your time to build it, or else buy somebody else's for $100k+. A marginal quality airplane is still going to be $40k at a minimum and may bring a boatload of repair bills with it.

The pricing alone eliminates most people from ever realizing the dream of private flight and electric motors will not make planes cheaper, just as electric cars are more expensive than gasoline cars.

The number of private pilots in America used to be something like 3 million back in the 50's, fell to 800,000 in 1980 and 500,000 by 2005 according to an article I read not long ago. Private pilots are vanishing and electric planes are unlikely to change that.

Your comments about intefering with commercial flights and being "unregulated" are absurd. Try flying into Class B (commercial) airspace without permission and you'll find military aircraft on your ass within minutes to shoot you right out of the sky.

A cruise speed of 90kmh? Isn't that a bit low?

I've seen model electric airplanes with turbines in them. They zip along very quickly...for about 10 minutes. I wonder if they can do regenerative braking when they coast in for a landing? HOw much juice would 47 kg of batteries have?

Sid:

We are talking about private, simplified very light, low speed, one or two place wood/fabric electric plane kits, not heavy ultra fast fighter planes or commercial aircraft.

If mass produced, those kits will not cost more than the 4-wheel gas guzzlers that many of our kids currently drive.

The restricted lincense required to fly those very light, low speed planes should be easy to get and will not require the same proficiency level than for commercial airplanes.

Eventually, a combined ground/restricted air vehicle user license may be considered.

Notice how the two planes look similar in apearance. Also the 90kph (55mph) is considerably faster than Bleriot's original 1909 model, at 36 mph.

Any advances in power delivery and weight saving required for electric planes to advance, will ultimately carry over into landbound vehicles, in a positive way. A potential benefit for any electric battery powered appliance. Best of luck to them.

90 km/h is fairly slow, even a cessna 150(a really old 2 seater airplane) flys at about 95 mph(or so says the manual, actual speeds are closer to about 85) not sure what that is in kph exactly, but significantly more than 90 km/h

This has been around for a while, although a quick google indicated the company may have gone bankrupt. I know they sold some production units. I’ve seen promo video. This is a very high performance, electric self-launching sailplane.

http://www.lange-flugzeugbau.com/pdf/in_the_press/soaring_e_tr.pdf

Reading this and the comments I think it might be possible in 40-50 years to have battery powered personal aircraft. One problem right now is even if you afford a personal aircraft the fuel costs are very high.

The piloting issues of many airplanes in the sky seems like a problem now.. but with 40 years of advancements in computer technology and communication technology it won't be. You'd just link all the planes up to a network and if two planes were getting too close together the computer would take over for a bit. And of course the computer would make it impossible to go into the restricted areas, like for commercial airliners.

This flight is a long way from that possible future, but its a great and cool feat nonetheless.

They did this with just 48 kg of LiPoly batteries (at 200 Wh/kg storing just 9.6 kWh), meaning the plane managed 3 miles per kWh, not too bad!

In future, for larger and faster aircraft and longer flights, the 200 Wh/kg LiPoly will be switched for 3,000 Wh/kg lithium-air cells. This would give 15 times the range of the currently used batteries and commercial electric flight becomes a reasonable proposition.

In 1990, Eric Raymond flew the Sunseeker, an entirely solar powered aircraft across the USA (about 2,500 miles) from California to Kittyhawk, North Carolina in 31 hoops (about 200 miles each) on 2% efficient solar cells (Sanyo), carbon fiber frame and neodymium electric motor.

A team in Switzerland (Solar Impulse) is planning to fly around the planet on solar power in 2011.

Eric has been planning to fly around the planet on solar power for awhile too.

What's new ?

Try flying into Class B (commercial) airspace without permission and you'll find military aircraft on your ass within minutes to shoot you right out of the sky.