Elektra One Solar
PC-Aero a German electric plane company has came up with the Elektra One Solar. The company’s Elektra One is a single-seat electric airplane that uses both batteries and solar cells to increase the endurance during flight and is capable of flying more than 100 miles per hour.
Apparently the single-person ultralight aircraft took off from the German municipality of Unterwössen on 25th of june. In its journey it crossed over the Grossglockner (the highest mountain in Austria), and proceeded to land in the Austrian town of Lienz. The whole flight took 2.5 hours.
Airbus e-fan
The Airbus e-fan was meant to be the first plane to cross the channel purely by battery power on the 10th of July. It had huge coverage in Calais in France when it landed. However an electric plane called the cri cri flown by Hugues Duval crossed the channel 12 hours before the Airbus e-fan in the night time with not much publicity. This has brought up the case of who actually gets into the record books.
One difference in Duval’s flight that may be a point of controversy in the two planes competetion, is that he did not have formal permission to take off from Dover and that his aircraft was towed into the air by a conventional plane. This point can put his neaky flight into jeopardy.
