The world's first all-electric passenger airplane has taken to the sky for its first ever eight-minute flight.
The zero-emission aircraft successfully launched from Washington's Grant County International Airport on Tuesday morning.
Eviation Aircraft, the Israeli-founded company behind the plane, said the nine-passenger aircraft traveled at an altitude of 3,500 feet.
Gregory Davis, Eviation’s president and CEO, told CNN : “This is history. We have not seen the propulsion technology change on the aircraft since we went from the piston engine to the turbine engine.
"It was the 1950s that was the last time you saw an entirely new technology like this come together.”
The Alice aircraft works similarly to an electric car or mobile phone as it be can be placed on charge for 30 minutes and fly up to one or two hours.
Eviation Aircraft believe it can eventually travel up to 250 nautical miles based on the current battery technology.
In April this year, the company said the aircraft could eventually fly 440 nautical miles.
It has a max speed of 250 knots - which is 287 miles per hour which, in comparison to a Boeing 737, has a max cruise speed of 588 per hour.
The company was set up in 2015 and the business has been tweaking and improving the plane ever since.
CEO Gregory believes the information gathered from the short-flight today will be key for them to improve the aircraft - and move forward with better changes.
He hopes to deliver aircrafts to customers by 2027 but the company have warned the time frame could soon change.
Gregory admitted:“We’ve actually generated, frankly, terabytes of data with the data acquisition systems that we had on the aircraft, so we’re going to take a couple of weeks actually and review it to see how the aircraft performs versus our models and our analysis.
“From there, we’ll understand what we need to do next.”
The company is hoping to work on developing an FAA-certified aircraft in 2025 with then a couple years of flight testing before the aircraft can be launched to customers.
There are currently three different prototypes of the Alice which include a "commuter", an executive version, and a cargo one.
The commuter can entertain 9 people and two pilots along with 850 pounds of cargo.
Whilst the executive design has six passenger seats to allow for more leg room and with a cargo capacity of 450 feet of cubic volume.
The original plane for the aircraft was to take off in 2021 but issues saw progress being delayed.
Weather issues affected testing along with some financial difficulties too.
However, DHL and Miami charter company GlobalX have all expressed their interest and intent to buy the planes.
