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ohazi

The airplane in question is a Pipistrel Alpha Electro, which has been around since 2015.

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For the curious: https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/alpha-electro/overview

I note it has "up to 60 minutes" under "endurance".

What I believe is the non-electric version of the plane is here: https://www.pipistrel.si/plane/alpha-trainer/overview

That has an endurance of 3.1 hours with its standard 50-liter fuel tanks.

Yep. Similar to cars, electric planes are starting with short ranges. The huge savings is in maintenance.

Also, 30 minutes is long enough to just do a few take offs and landings to stay current on the cheap, or just for doing short lessons or flight reviews. I could definitely see a flight school having one of these around just to meet those needs as cheaply as possible.

Not cool how they frame the story to make it sound like the municipalities in question were responsible for making the plane.

Agreed! They didn’t even mention the manufacturer of the airplane but mentioned the relevant government initiative at least twice. Reads like a city hall press release.

Considering how hard it is to get new technologies pushed through municipal red tape, the framing of this as a “city hall press release” was likely the manufacturer’s idea, part of a deal they made in exchange for some consideration for changing municipal airspace regulations to allow testing.

See also: driverless cars.

Municipalities don't have airspace regulations. That's all managed federally. Also the Alpha Electro is already legal to test. It's apparently registered as an Experimental aircraft in the US currently, which means it can be used by owners but not commercially (e.g. for flight training). The market Pipistrel's aiming for is the Light Sport Aircraft category, but electric planes can't be registered as LSA in the US so Pipistrel would have to go through the standard airworthiness certification process. Which is long and expensive.

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