Tech and AI

The largest battery aircraft yet flown burned about five dollars of electricity

By Staff Writer  |  16 August 2026

A 106 foot demonstrator weighing more than 25,000 pounds flew for 27 minutes over upstate New York on Wednesday 12 August, reaching 1,100 feet on more than a megawatt of electric propulsion. The energy bill is the number the manufacturer wants read.

The aircraft is called X1 and it is a demonstrator, not a product. It has a wingspan of 106 feet, measures 76 feet from nose to tail and weighed more than 25,000 pounds at takeoff, which its builder Heart Aerospace says makes it the largest battery electric aircraft ever flown. It went up on Wednesday 12 August from Plattsburgh International Airport in upstate New York, stayed up for 27 minutes and reached 1,100 feet above ground level.

The flight was made under a Federal Aviation Administration special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category, and it was flown as a full profile rather than a hop: taxi, takeoff, climb, manoeuvring and landing. The propulsion system delivered more than one megawatt.

With the first flight of X1, Heart Aerospace has demonstrated electric flight at the scale of a commercial airliner

Anders Forslund, Founder and Chief Executive, Heart Aerospace

The five dollars

The number that has travelled furthest is the energy cost. The company puts the electricity used on that first flight at about five dollars, and sets it against a jet fuel price averaging $3.50 per gallon for the week ending 7 August, up 63 per cent year on year.

That comparison should be read for what it is. A 27 minute demonstrator sortie at 1,100 feet is not a revenue flight, carries no passengers and does no cruise. What the figure does establish is the shape of the operating cost curve: the energy input for electric propulsion at this weight class is small enough that fuel stops being the variable that dominates the economics.

The constraint that has held electric aviation back is not thrust, it is energy density. Batteries do not get lighter as they discharge, so the weight that would have been burned off as fuel stays on board for the whole flight.

What it is a step towards

X1 exists to prove out the technologies, aerodynamics and flight performance behind the ES-30, a conventional fixed wing 30 seat hybrid electric regional aircraft being taken through certification under Part 25. The company expects the ES-30 to cut aircraft operating costs by more than 40 per cent against existing regional aircraft, on lower energy costs, reduced maintenance from simplified electric propulsion and better availability.

Entry into service is targeted for 2031. The first pre-production aircraft is being built at a pilot manufacturing plant in Los Angeles, with flight testing scheduled to begin in 2028. The company puts customer commitments at $9.4bn, from carriers including United Airlines, Air Canada and JSX, and executives at the first two are quoted in its announcement.

Through the X1 program, Heart has built the capability to design, build, test, operate, and continuously improve a clean-sheet electric commercial aircraft

Ben Stabler, Chief Technology Officer, Heart Aerospace

Why a regional airport is the point

The commercial argument being made here is about which airports become usable rather than about which aircraft get replaced. A 30 seat aircraft with an operating cost 40 per cent below a turboprop changes the arithmetic on routes that cannot currently fill a larger aeroplane, which is why the demonstrator is being flown out of a regional airport serving a community of 20,000 people rather than a test range.

For anyone who builds or maintains airfields, the second order consequences arrive before the aircraft does. A megawatt class charging installation on a stand is an electrical infrastructure project with a grid connection behind it, and the lead time on that connection is measured in years at most regional sites. If the 2031 date holds, the ground works are a 2028 problem.

Five dollars of electricity, five years to the service date, and a substation to build first.