THE VEHICLES
Omer Bar-Yohay, founder and CEO of EViation Aircraft
‘Wait a minute. The electric car is having such a hard time getting out there in big numbers, so how are you going to do a plane?’ But a plane is almost by definition something that you share as a means of transport. One of the things that don’t work so well with electric cars is the cost, because of batteries - it’s very hard to compete with 100-year-old technology, so everything new you’re building is going to be expensive. But if you share [a vehicle] you don’t really care that it’s a little more expensive.” As is the case in most commercial EV scenarios, over time the lower operating expenses more than com-
pensate for the higher upfront cost. “Making the plane electric makes the direct operating cost of the aircraft lower, and this is because of the energy cost and the potential reduction of maintenance. You don’t have any oil, your engine reserves are dramatically lower, and things generally work more easily because they just don’t break down after 10,000 hours.” Bar-Yohay doesn’t believe that any battery breakthroughs are necessary to build an economically viable e-plane. “We found that, if you start from scratch and build the best electric aircraft you can build, then today’s battery technology is good enough. You can build a very compelling product for a specific existing market, and the fact that I can fly only a third of the range of an equivalent-size aircraft really doesn’t matter. If you look at the air taxi market, or if you look at regional transport, an electric plane makes perfect sense.” “The other thing that we found is that building the plane electrically - I mean, building the plane to take the most advantage possible from electric propulsion from the ground up - actually makes for a better aircraft,” says Bar-Yohay, “because you just put the pro-
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