Ironically, the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of electric flight will be the government. Aviation is perhaps the most regulated activity in the country. Just getting that plane into the country was a nightmare for Pipistrel. It was nearly impossible to ship its lithium-ion battery here, due to the permits required and the possible explosive hazards of shipping lithium-ion batteries. Pipistrel had to find an American pilot to fly it, since none of their pilots were properly certified to do so. Certifying anything for commercial use in aviation takes years to decades, especially when you're talking about revolutionary technology. (As it is, the Pipistrel and like aircraft are flown under the "experimental" category)
Then there is the issue of scalability. It's relatively easy to scale up the size of airframes, but not so much batteries and motors. Until those barriers are breached, these planes will be mostly limited to experimental general aviation use.
(Personally, I'd love it if there was a battery-powered GA plane I could use for touch-and-gos. The current hourly cost of over $100/hr could be cut drastically, and make remaining current economical again)
It will be a long time before I'd trust these for flying cross-country though, or anywhere out of gliding range of an airfield. The endurance for most of these planes do not even meet minimum FAA standards of 30 minutes for VFR flight. And even if they did, judging battery endurance is far less certain than that for petrol-powered aircraft, where you can actually know what's left in the tank. (I can't tell you how many times my video camera has confidently told me that I've got 30 minutes left, and then, all of a sudden, dies) That kind of guesswork is simply unacceptable in aviation.
Get ready for the next wave of green technology: electric aircraft.
This week, NASA selected the winner of its CAFE Green Flight Challenge, the team from Pipistrel-USA.com. The prize? A lofty $1.35 million.
The event, sponsored by Google, was held at the Sonoma County Airport in California and was intended to promote more efficient aircraft design, as well as the growth of an electric aircraft industry.
Fourteen teams signed up for the challenge, but only two aircraft met the competition’s efficiency requirements: the aircraft had to travel at least 200 miles at 100 miles per hour, using less than the energy equivalent of one gallon of fuel per occupant.
The Pipistrel team, which took the top prize, flew an electric plane called the Taurus G4, while the runner-up, also flying an electric aircraft, was the eGenius team from Germany. NASA said on Monday that both teams exceeded the challenge requirement, averaging the energy equivalent of nearly 400 passenger miles per gallon, while flying more than 100 miles per hour.
While Pipistrel said it does not plan on building the electric two-seater for production, the competition results bode well for the future of electric power in aviation.
And considering that by many counts, the global aviation industry is among the worst CO2 offenders, the prospect of using electric aircraft for commercial travel sounds promising.
