World's Largest Battery-Powered Aircraft Completes 27-Minute First Flight

The world's largest fully battery-powered aircraft has completed its maiden flight. The X1, developed by Swedish-founded company Heart Aerospace, took off from a regional airport in upstate New York and stayed airborne for 27 minutes on battery power alone, reaching about 1,100 feet with only a pilot on board.

The 30-seat X1 has a 106-foot wingspan, is 76 feet long and weighs more than 25,000 pounds — roughly the weight of an empty school bus. Heart Aerospace founder and CEO Anders Forslund described the flight as a demonstration of electric flights at the scale of a commercial airliner. The X1 will not enter passenger service; it is a demonstrator — a test aircraft for technologies the company plans to fold into its larger commercial projects.

Battery weight remains the biggest obstacle to fully electric airliners. Unlike conventional aircraft, which become lighter as fuel burns off, batteries stay at the same weight throughout a flight, and a bigger battery demands more energy just to stay aloft. On battery power alone, the X1's range is roughly 125 miles — too short to replace most regional flights while keeping aviation's required safety reserves.

Heart's answer is the ES-30, a planned hybrid-electric regional aircraft that pairs batteries with a combustion engine acting as a range extender, giving an expected maximum range of nearly 500 miles. The company expects the ES-30 to enter service by 2031 and estimates operating costs up to 40 percent below similar conventional regional aircraft; airlines including United Airlines, Air Canada and JSX have expressed interest. Heart has also said one X1 test flight used about $5 of electricity, a figure excluding crew, airport charges, maintenance, insurance and battery degradation.

Other companies are pursuing electric flight too: Rolls-Royce has built a small fully electric high-speed aircraft, Harbour Air has tested a six-seat electric seaplane, and Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation are developing electric vertical take-off and landing craft for shorter trips.