The buzz about electric aircraft

Emissions limits force the aviation industry to study hybrid and battery-electric propulsion systems.

A relatively new concept in the aviation world, electric aircraft are taking to the air in greater numbers of late. In fact, you could say electric aircraft are suddenly flying high.

One of the stars at the recent Experimental Aircraft Association’s Oshkosh AirVenture show, for example, was the Taurus G4 aircraft, a four-seat testbed that is powered by a 150-kW electric motor—the most powerful yet seen in an all-electric airplane. The oneof- a-kind, twin-glider-body airframe was designed and built in five months by Slovenian electric aircraft manufacturer Pipistrel, and a Penn State team. The battery-electric G4 recently won the grand prize in the 2011 Green Flight Challenge, a green aviation fly-off awarded by NASA/CAFE (Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency) Foundation and sponsored by Google.