Electric planes, once a fantasy, are beginning to take to the skies

By Liam On Nov 3, 2023

Chris Caputo stood on the tarmac of Burlington International Airport in Vermont in early October and looked at the clouds in the distance. He had piloted military and commercial aircraft over a long career and logged thousands of hours of flying time, but the journey he was about to take would be very different.

That’s because the plane Caputo would fly runs on batteries. For the next sixteen days, he and his colleagues flew the plane, a CX300 built by their employer, Beta Technologies, along the East Coast. They would make nearly two dozen stops to rest and recharge as they flew through the busy airspace of Boston, New York, Washington and other cities. As the Florida trip came to an end, Beta turned the plane over to the Air Force, which will experiment with it in the coming months. The trip offered a vision of what aviation could look like years from now — one in which the sky is filled with planes that don’t emit the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming the planet. “We are doing very meaningful work for our state, our country and the planet,” Caputo said. “It’s hard not to want to be a part of it.”

For most of aviation history, electric airplanes have been little more than a fantasy. But technological advances, especially in batteries, and billions of dollars in investment have helped make short-haul electric air travel feasible — and, proponents hope, commercially viable. Privately held Beta has raised more than $800 million from investors including Fidelity, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and private equity firm TPG Capital. The company employs about 600 people and recently completed construction of a factory in Burlington, where it plans to mass-produce its aircraft, which have yet to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The first will be the CX300, a sleek aircraft with a 50-foot wingspan, large curved windows and a rear propeller. That aircraft is designed to carry about 2,500 pounds of cargo and will be followed shortly thereafter by the A250, which shares about 80 percent of the CX300’s design and is equipped with lift rotors to take off and land like a helicopter. Both planes, which Beta is marketing as the Alia, will eventually carry passengers, the company says. “You’re almost one with the plane,” Caputo said, later adding, “You can kind of hear and feel the air going over the control surfaces. Caputo said the CX300 and other electric aircraft could open up new opportunities, such as better connecting rural areas with little or no direct air service. Beta’s plane has flown as far as 386 miles on a single charge, but the company expects its customers will typically use it for trips of 100 to 150 miles.