magniX has developed a family of electric motors designed specifically for commercial aviation application.
CEO Roei Ganzarski explained how the company was producing two series of motors for Eviation’s electric aircraft – a 375 horsepower motor and a 750 horsepower motor.
He explained how the company was bringing forward the production of all electric planes including a partnership with Canadian airline Harbour Air to convert their entire fleet of Beaver aircraft to all electric operation.

Conversion to electric allows operators to retain aircraft

“It’s a really exciting time because while you have on the one hand the advantages of longer range optimised aircraft for electric like the Eviation Alice, not everyone’s going to be able to afford that or wait for that. And not everyone needs that long range as well. Someone like Harbour Air that has average flights of 50, 60, 70 miles, doesn’t need an aircraft that can do 650 miles. So a converted aircraft allows them to keep the aircraft that they know how to fly, they know how to use and they can get 100-120 miles out of.”
Ganzarski explained the process for that conversion: “Basically, you take an existing aircraft, you strip out all of the fuel based systems you take out the very antiquated, heavy, gas guzzling emission creating engine and you replace it with a clean, small, lightweight motor, like what you see here at our booth. Replace the fuel with batteries. And you do a lot of testing as you fly.

Middle range flights likely to go electric in next couple of years

He added that the switch from fuel to electric engines for some flights was likely to take place in the in the next couple of years, “There’s really two aspects of the short term future we’re starting to see middle mile flights go all electric, we’re talking about 2022. So a little less than three years from now, you’ll start seeing people flying 100 200 500 miles in an all electric clean aircraft. Beyond that, when you look five to 10 years down the line, you’ll start seeing flights of 1,000 or 1,500 miles being done in an all electric aircraft of up to 19 to 25 seats, as opposed to the six to 12, which we’ll see in the short term.”