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Norway Tests Tiny Electric Plane, Sees Passenger Flights by 2025 (reuters.com)
Norway tested a two-seater electric plane on Monday and predicted a start to passenger flights by 2025 if new aviation technologies match a green shift that has made Norwegians the world's top buyers of electric cars. From a report: Transport Minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen and Dag Falk-Petersen, head of state-run Avinor which runs most of Norway's airports, took a few minutes' flight around Oslo airport in an Alpha Electro G2 plane, built by Pipistrel in Slovenia. "This is ... a first example that we are moving fast forward" toward greener aviation, Solvik-Olsen told Reuters. "We do have to make sure it is safe - people won't fly if they don't trust it." He said plane makers such as Boeing and Airbus were developing electric aircraft and that battery prices were tumbling, making it feasible to reach a government goal of making all domestic flights in Norway electric by 2040.
Battery weight is the problem when it comes to aviation.
So? That means (for the time being) it'll only work for very light planes, and/or short hops. Trips like Amsterdam -> London, which iirc is something like 15 or 20 mins actual flight time. Plenty of short flight routes like that around the world. And of course that's only the beginning as battery technology improves.
That said: personally I think it's a shame we're not seeing more electric ships. For that application, weight is a non-issue. And moving masses through water is a very energy-efficient manner to move anything around, so energy contents is also less of an issue than for cars or planes. Well at least we have electric bicycles... :-)