LONDON: British engineering company Rolls-Royce gave a first look at a one-seater electric aircraft on Thursday it hopes will fly in late Spring next year and become the world's fastest all-electric aircraft.
Rolls-Royce unveiled the electric plane, which it is building with partners YASA and Electroflight and others and which will target a speed of over 300 miles per hour, at a hangar in Gloucestershire, western England. Named ACCEL, the £6.5 million project will have the most power-dense battery pack ever assembled for an aircraft, Rolls-Royce said, providing enough fuel to fly 320km, or the distance between London and Paris, on a single charge.Over the coming months, engineers will begin to integrate the electrical propulsion system into the airframe before a first flight by an experienced pilot in late Spring 2020 at a location yet to be decided, but possibly in the Welsh countryside.