Elfly - Jeg så Alice på Le Bourget

Foto: Per Gram

Eviation’s Alice To Fly This Year

Four years ago, Eviation Aircraft CEO Omer Bar-Yohay introduced the all-electric Alice, a nine-seat, all-composite aircraft targeting the short-range regional airline market. Now, the full-scale prototype Alice is at the Paris Air Show and Israel-based Eviation has secured a “double-digit” order for the $4 million airplane from U.S. regional airline Cape Air. 

“When we started in 2015,” Bar-Yohay said, “we were written off as delusional at best.” At the time, he promised to bring the full-scale Alice to Paris 2019. “This is the pinnacle of an insanely long effort,” he said.

Alice is equipped with three 260-kW Siemens electric motors fitted with Hartzell variable-pitch propellers, with one on each wingtip and one fitted to the tail. The prototype brought to Paris has a completed interior, BendixKing AeroVue avionics suite, and Honeywell’s new lightweight fly-by-wire flight control system. 

Alice's lithium-ion batteries weigh 8,200 pounds, which is 60 percent of the airplane’s 14,000-pound mtow. Performance of the Alice as a regional airliner includes range, with 45-minute reserve, of 565 nm and 240-knot cruise speed at 10,000 feet. The concept, from the beginning, was to develop an airplane that small regional airlines could use for trips that are just too expensive in larger turbine-power airplanes, including serving smaller airports where most airlines can’t cost-effectively operate.

First flight of the Alice is planned by the end of this year.