Hey, Taxi!

Your wish is its command.

- PETER GARRISON

I never thought I’d see the day, but General Motors—among a number of other auto manufacturers, not to mention nations—has pronounced a death sentence upon the internal-combustion engine. Stays are possible, but permanent commutation is unlikely. It appears that electricity, in one form or another, may triumph in the end.

The powerplants of cars and reciprocating- engine airplanes have a lot in common, and while aviation benefits from a lot of special pleading—look at the ever-lingering matter of leaded avgas—the intense research and development going into electric cars and their batteries is bound to spill over into airplanes.

Electric point-to-point flight is currently possible—marginally. It is practical for small, light and clean fixed-wing airplanes, such as the Pipistrel Alpha Electro, flying short distances at moderate speed. High speeds over long distances are out of the question. At present—even taking into account the superior ability of electric motors to convert available energy into useful work— batteries are roughly 15 times heavier, per thrust-horsepower-hour, than fossil fuels. For a mode of transport that prizes lightness above all else, this is not a promising situation, and it takes a pathological optimist to foresee a 15-fold improvement in the performance of batteries.