- 4 minutes ago
Electric cars took decades to go mainstream — electric planes might take even longer. We flew in BETA Technologies' Alia CX300, one of the most promising electric aircraft in the world, to find out why battery-powered flight has stayed almost impossible for more than 50 years.
The aviation industry has burned through more than $20 billion with barely a working commercial product to show for it — Zunum Aero, Eviation, and Lilium all collapsed after raising serious money.
So how is BETA different, and when will the rest of us actually get to fly electric?
The aviation industry has burned through more than $20 billion with barely a working commercial product to show for it — Zunum Aero, Eviation, and Lilium all collapsed after raising serious money.
So how is BETA different, and when will the rest of us actually get to fly electric?
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TechTranscript
00:00Oh my god!
00:04This was the most fun plane ride of my life.
00:07It was also the cheapest.
00:09It'll cost us maybe, I don't know, a dollar to do this flight.
00:13The CX-300 could become America's first commercial electric plane.
00:18Beta Technologies designed it from scratch to fly without a drop of jet fuel.
00:24I mean, this place is buzzing.
00:25Two dozen people here working on the floor, working on different planes.
00:31And it's just one of several companies trying to prove that the world is ready for a completely new kind
00:37of aircraft.
00:40Battery-operated flight is supposed to protect airlines from oil price shocks, like the one that's happening right now.
00:46But so far, even when these planes work, the businesses built around them don't.
00:51The overwhelming majority of companies that have been stood up for electrical aviation are going to die.
00:57It's just a matter of time.
00:58So why have electric planes remained almost impossible for half a century?
01:02And how soon will you get to flying one?
01:05This is South Carolina.
01:10Before we can understand why electric propulsion is so hard in the sky,
01:14we need to understand why it's hard even on the ground.
01:21And that's why I'm inside of this Hummer EV.
01:24This beast probably wasn't the vibe that General Motors had in mind in 1996,
01:29when it became the first company to lease electric cars to Americans.
01:34The first generation EV1 ran on lead-acid batteries,
01:37which is the same kind you can find in literally any gas-powered car.
01:41But its range was under 75 miles.
01:44Later cars, like the 2010 Nissan Leaf, upgraded to lithium-ion batteries.
01:49But again, those cars barely made 100 miles in range.
01:52By the time Tesla came onto the market,
01:55it doubled the size of the battery pack in its cars.
01:58And now today, EVs generally weigh about 30% more than their gas-powered equivalents.
02:03With a thousand horsepower, it can do zero to 60 in three seconds.
02:13This Hummer weighs 10,000 pounds.
02:16That's the weight of two military Humvees combined.
02:20And the reason for that is that a full third of the weight of this car
02:24is in the battery pack alone.
02:27It means that the first reason electric planes are almost impossible
02:31is because batteries are really freaking heavy.
02:35Batteries work for cars because you're not picking up the battery
02:38and carrying it around.
02:40In an airplane, you're picking that battery up
02:42and carrying it everywhere you go.
02:44Beta's Aliyah can fly over 300 nautical miles.
02:47That's about the distance of a flight from New York to Toronto.
02:50To do that trip, it carries almost 3,000 pounds of batteries.
02:55One of these is sort of similar to the size of a Tesla battery,
02:59like what would be in the bottom of a Tesla in that plate.
03:02But about two to five of them goes in the plane to power them.
03:06And that's about the same size as the battery pack inside this Hummer.
03:09The amount of jet fuel required to make the same trip
03:12would only weigh 50 pounds.
03:14Jet fuel is basically like magic.
03:17One kilogram of jet fuel carries something like 50 times more energy
03:22than a kilogram of the best batteries we have today.
03:25But here's the thing you might not know.
03:27An electric engine is actually more efficient
03:30than one that runs on fuel.
03:32Take this plane behind me.
03:34Its engine is burning gas to create tiny explosions
03:37that drive the pistons, valves, and crankshaft.
03:40Only about a third of the fuel's energy generates thrust
03:43and the rest is basically wasted heat.
03:47An electric engine doesn't have that problem.
03:49Most of the energy that it's outputting
03:51is put into the actual thrust of the engine.
03:54So that 50 to 1 ratio that I mentioned,
03:56it ends up being more like 20 to 1.
03:58The other thing is that you don't need magic
04:00for the kind of routes that Beta wants to fly.
04:03They're doing short hops, 150, 200 miles.
04:07You don't need jet fuel to make that possible.
04:10What you need is really good batteries.
04:12That's one of the reasons Beta Technologies
04:14assembles its lithium ion batteries in-house.
04:18We're in the production floor here at Beta.
04:20This is a massive facility.
04:22It's actually designed to be expandable
04:24because the idea is that
04:26as they're starting to fill customer orders
04:29they're going to need to crank up production.
04:31Beta starts with these cells
04:33that look like D batteries.
04:35Then the cells get grouped into modules
04:38and those get wired into packs.
04:40The planes are designed to swap battery packs,
04:43something most electric cars can't do.
04:45The world's first electric plane, called the MBE-1,
04:49took off in 1973.
04:51The first flight lasted 10 minutes.
04:53Today, batteries carry 5 to 6 times more energy per weight.
04:57That's called energy density.
04:59But that means they've only gotten about 3% better per year.
05:02At that rate, it would take another half century or more
05:06to catch up to jet fuel.
05:073% per year is not enough.
05:09Again, that's why I say you would have to completely change.
05:11You have a completely new sort of battery architecture
05:16to make those bigger airplanes work.
05:17And the weight of batteries explains
05:19why almost every electric aircraft in the world right now
05:22ends up roughly the same size.
05:24The math gets worse the bigger you build.
05:27A nine-seater electric plane is sort of the ceiling
05:29with today's battery technology.
05:31Assuming the same rate of growth,
05:33you wouldn't see an electric 747 until 2090.
05:37Given the battery chemistries that we're working with today,
05:39it's highly unlikely.
05:42Or I would say impossible, actually.
05:45Even if engineers develop more efficient batteries,
05:48there's another problem.
05:49A gas plane can land at almost any airport in the world
05:53and fill its tank.
05:54An electric plane needs a charger powerful enough
05:56to get it back in the air in under an hour.
05:59Beta's installed over 120 of them across the country.
06:03And the company's not keeping the technology to themselves.
06:05The same charging hardware that powers its planes
06:08is available to any other electric aircraft
06:11that wants to use it.
06:12In other words, they have the vertical integration.
06:15They're owning the charging.
06:16They're owning the batteries.
06:18They're building the planes.
06:19And it's all happening right here.
06:24So to take off and stay flying with such heavy batteries,
06:28the CX-300 is maximized for aerodynamics.
06:38Every inch of this plane is tackling the same problem.
06:42How do you stay in the air without burning energy
06:45you don't have to spare?
06:46The first thing you'll notice is this tapered wing,
06:49which makes the CX-300 more like a glider.
06:53The design was inspired by the Arctic Tern,
06:55which is the world's longest migrating bird.
06:58And when I was at Beta's HQ,
07:00they had graphics all over the place
07:02with a bird skeleton superimposed
07:04over this top-down view of the plane.
07:06This 50-foot wingspan is a way to eliminate
07:09every bit of drag and maximize range.
07:12Then there's this V-tail.
07:14Instead of a conventional upright tail,
07:17the two surfaces angle out and meet in the middle.
07:20That shape further reduces drag
07:21and keeps the plane stable at lower speeds.
07:26Finally, you'll notice that the plane's propeller
07:28is in the back.
07:30It's called a pusher engine.
07:32The pusher, rather than tractor placement,
07:34keeps the wings leading edge in clean air
07:36for efficient lift.
07:38Today's Aliyah can only take off and land
07:40on an airport runway.
07:42But Beta doesn't intend to fly this exact version
07:45of the plane forever.
07:53Eventually, rotors on top of the wings
07:55will allow the Aliyah to take off and land vertically.
07:58It's what they call a V-tail.
08:00And I got to see what that will feel like in a simulator.
08:03We'll have you take a seat right in the left seat there.
08:05All right, wow, all right.
08:06Get you all set up.
08:07So I'm going to start bringing this lift motor up.
08:09OK.
08:10And we're going to start to climb here in a second.
08:11Whoa, OK.
08:13So this is a vertical takeoff.
08:14This is similar to how a helicopter takes off.
08:17Similar, exactly.
08:18The difference is, unlike a helicopter,
08:20we've got a wing that we're trying to get airflow over.
08:22Because we want to be flying on that wing,
08:24not on that lifting system.
08:25Got it.
08:26On that thrust-borne system.
08:27Got it.
08:27It's much more efficient.
08:29This flight simulates a potential route
08:31in my hometown of New York City,
08:32from LaGuardia Airport to Wall Street.
08:35I can see my house from here, yeah.
08:38It's weird for me to say this,
08:39but I got a little bit of motion sickness just there,
08:41you know, just like from the simulation.
08:43OK, here we go.
08:45OK, we're going into EV toll mode.
08:48We're going into EV toll mode.
08:48And we're just basically going to work our way down
08:50to that pad.
08:51So what I do with my left hand-
08:52Where's the pad?
08:53I think it's a little out front of me right now.
08:55OK, I think I see it.
08:56Yeah, so it's that sort of L-shape.
08:58Yes, OK.
08:59So what I'm doing,
09:00all I'm really doing with this lever in my left hand
09:02is I'm controlling a descent rate.
09:03Got it.
09:04I figure out how fast we go down.
09:05Oh, wow, wow, wow.
09:07Oh, yeah, baby.
09:11That was super fun.
09:12And there we go.
09:13We're down.
09:13Oh, man, I made it.
09:14OK, I'm going to go to my office now.
09:16Perfect, we'll let you hop out.
09:17It's right that way.
09:18OK, awesome.
09:22So the crew is still in there,
09:23but I just got to do the simulation,
09:25which is really cool.
09:26And when you're sitting in the cockpit in the simulation,
09:29you can really feel that difference, right?
09:31So you're taking off kind of like a helicopter,
09:34and then you're moving forward like a plane,
09:36and then you're landing sort of like a helicopter.
09:38Well, excellent.
09:40For now, passengers can't fly in the VTOL,
09:43but we did get to fly in a real CX 300,
09:46which takes off conventionally.
09:48Probably use, I don't know,
09:50probably 25 kilowatt hours of our entire 200 plus kilowatt hour
09:55charge.
09:56It'll cost us maybe, I don't know,
09:58a dollar to do this flight.
10:01And you're going to experience electric flying firsthand.
10:04There for you.
10:05OK.
10:07And then either side works.
10:10OK, so the engine has started.
10:14It's a little louder than I thought it would be.
10:17It's not quiet,
10:18but it's also probably less loud than a jet engine.
10:22Is that safe to say?
10:23Yes.
10:24And we're accelerating 45 knots right now.
10:2750 knots.
10:29There's 60 knots.
10:31We're going to rotate it about 87 knots.
10:35The plane will want to start flying.
10:37Oh, my God.
10:38OK.
10:39How are we doing?
10:40This is not like taking off in a regular plane, baby.
10:43This is fast.
10:44Woo-hoo!
10:46Yeah!
10:47I'm just going to show you how easily this thing rolls.
10:50All right?
10:50OK.
10:51You guys ready?
10:51Yeah.
10:52We're rolling.
10:53Oh!
10:55Oh, my God!
10:58It's like a roller coaster.
10:59Oh, my God!
11:03Awesome!
11:06That, like, this plane is very, very stable and maneuverable.
11:12And all of that was built into the overall design of the airplane.
11:18This is no autopilot.
11:20This is just...
11:21What?
11:22And now the engine is totally off.
11:25Oh, my God.
11:25He just turned off the engine.
11:27He just turned off the engine.
11:27He turned off the engine.
11:28The engine is completely off and we can just glide.
11:31This has about a 17 to 1 lift over drag ratio.
11:36And we'd be able to glide to an open strip or a grass strip, you know.
11:41Yeah.
11:41There's literally no engine on.
11:43Yeah, literally we're just...
11:43Right?
11:44Zero torque right now.
11:45Everything is turned off.
11:47Zero.
11:54And we're down.
11:55OK, we landed.
11:57All right.
11:59Survived.
11:59Survived.
12:00We're on the ground.
12:01We survived.
12:02I had no doubt in my mind that we would survive.
12:06It was a great day for flying.
12:08Did not disappoint.
12:09No, that was so fun.
12:11And I think we burned about 35 kilowatt hours.
12:15A few bucks.
12:16Yeah.
12:17We were probably airborne for 20 minutes or so.
12:22Got something to hold on to here.
12:25Cool.
12:26Nicely done.
12:27Wow.
12:27Thanks, guys.
12:28Yeah, of course.
12:29From what I could tell, it was a very smooth, awesome flight.
12:33What did you think?
12:33It felt safe.
12:34It felt controlled.
12:36And it was just, like, proof of concept.
12:39Like, honestly, as someone that has been in a lot of these, like, I'm still unsure about
12:43the eVTOL.
12:43And I'm excited to see that later.
12:44But this is a plane and it does exactly what you expect a plane to do.
12:49So now I know it works.
12:51And we did see BETA's VTOLs fly and land in formation.
12:55But at this point, flying safely isn't the biggest hurdle to putting an electric aircraft
13:00in service.
13:01It's actually the federal government.
13:03Certification is always going to be the biggest hurdle, I believe.
13:06In general, certifying a new plane in an existing category takes the Federal Aviation Administration
13:12five to nine years.
13:14For example, the VTOL category existed on paper since 1997.
13:19But there were no rules for actually certifying an aircraft until 2024.
13:24And before that, the FAA hadn't invented a new category since helicopters in the 1940s.
13:31So the most boring but the most important part of BETA's business model is getting each
13:35new development through the seven-step process of certification.
13:38For example, the current FAA rulebook written for combustion engines doesn't quite translate
13:45to electric ones.
13:46One of them is uncontained fire.
13:49So we look at that and say, OK, well, the continued rotation of the propeller can't
13:56cause an uncontained fire.
13:57Well, our problem is we can't cause a fire.
14:00We're like, well, show us how to start the fire and we'll show you that it's contained.
14:03But we can't start the fire.
14:05Other EV companies are taking a different route to market.
14:09China certified the world's first passenger-carrying electric aircraft with no pilot at all.
14:14These aircraft aren't remote-controlled like a DJI drone.
14:18Passengers enter a destination and the plane flies itself using pre-programmed routes and
14:23real-time sensors.
14:24There is a ground-based control center monitoring the flight and an operator could take control
14:29if something goes wrong.
14:30But unless that happens, the aircraft makes its own decisions in the air.
14:38So if Beta can scale up production, expand the charging network, and meet regulators' standards,
14:44where will it actually start flying first?
14:47We are entering the market with medical and cargo first.
14:50We're including defense in the medical and cargo applications with a conventional takeoff
14:56and landing airplane that goes airport to airport.
14:58Then we're moving to vertical takeoff and landing, then passenger, and then passenger VTOL.
15:04They're approved already to use this plane to basically deliver organ transplants,
15:09which is something that, first of all, is super expensive.
15:11We did the math on this, and there could be as much as dozens, if not hundreds, of organ
15:18shipments happening every day.
15:20And for now, those delivery runs are in places hard to reach by road.
15:25Beta completed projects with Air New Zealand and in Norway.
15:28And when it's time to carry passengers, the first ones won't be boarding in big airports.
15:33There's something called essential air service, which is basically a program where the government guarantees
15:39rural routes that wouldn't otherwise be served by commercial airlines.
15:44The airlines love it because it's guaranteed revenue.
15:47Airlines running regular jet fuel planes trying to make a profit from that essential air service program,
15:53they're not able to do it because it's expensive to fill up the planes and sell the tickets.
15:58So Beta is hoping to build an economy around underserved smaller airports.
16:03The VTOL version is actually the big game changer.
16:07Being able to hop from city to city without an airport using existing helipads.
16:12So it's a better mousetrap than the helicopter.
16:15It's when you start to compare it to an aircraft, when you have an airport,
16:20you can take off and land conventionally, then it starts to be less competitive.
16:26But against a helicopter, a VTOL will be a good alternative.
16:30However, all of these routes make up a fraction of the total industry right now.
16:34It's targeting a small sliver of the market.
16:39About 0.2% of the entire aviation market is sort of addressable by these aircraft.
16:48So here's the reality check.
16:50Since 2004, the industry has poured more than $20 billion into electric aviation,
16:55with nothing to show for it.
16:57Where do you think that money has gone to so far?
17:00What has that gotten us?
17:01The overwhelming majority of companies that have been stood up for electrical aviation
17:05are going to die.
17:07It's just a matter of time.
17:08Zunum Aero raised money from Boeing and JetBlue.
17:11Its hybrid electric regional plane was designed to carry 10 to 50 passengers on short hops.
17:16By 2019, the company went under.
17:19Aviation was further along.
17:21The Alice nine-seater all-electric commuter plane made its first flight in September 2022.
17:26But after an internal shareholder revolt, the company closed in 2025.
17:32Then there's Lilium, a German startup that raised over $1 billion and went public.
17:37This aircraft was genuinely different.
17:40Thirty ducted fans embedded directly into the wings.
17:44And quiet enough that you could hold a conversation standing right next to it.
17:48The company had over 700 orders and was nearly certified with European regulators.
17:53But the German government denied it a 50 million euro loan and everything fell apart.
17:59Aviation companies burn cash at a rate that would kill most businesses.
18:03Because almost everything they spend on won't start paying back for years.
18:08Last year, Beta made a little more than $35 million against $400 million in operating expenses.
18:15Neither the aircraft nor charging stations earn revenue until there's a whole network of planes flying real routes.
18:22And you can't build that network without a huge investment.
18:25Beta went public in November 2025, raising over a billion dollars on the New York Stock Exchange.
18:31It was the largest founder-led industrial IPO in history.
18:35So, how does Beta plan to grow?
18:38One answer is inside the company's IPO filing.
18:41Beta is betting on what comes after building and selling the planes.
18:45The company's aircraft have swappable batteries that need to be completely replaced every 12 to 24 months.
18:52That's a shorter lifespan than a car battery because aviation is more demanding.
18:57The batteries cycle through fast charges, deep discharges, and have mandatory safety reserves that mean pulling a battery before it's
19:05actually dead.
19:06Beta projects that each plane has a 20-year lifespan.
19:09So, those replacement contracts are projected to bring in more money than the original sale of the aircraft.
19:14And the batteries are actually, the exchange for the batteries after 2,000 flights or 4,000 flights is actually
19:22the major cost of the operation.
19:24Beta is also selling technology to its competitors.
19:27The propulsion systems inside their own aircraft are already going to other electric aircraft makers,
19:33including Textron E Aviation, a company that could end up going head-to-head with Beta.
19:39In other words, if a competitor builds a better plane, there's a decent chance it's running on Beta hardware.
19:45For Beta, I think they are one of the more competent and sensible organizations in this field.
19:53So, I rate them as the top dog, okay?
19:56In terms of being sensible about it, being also not over-optimistic in their claims.
20:03So, the biggest question isn't the technology.
20:05It's whether Beta can certify and then build its planes fast enough before the money runs out.
20:14Electric airplanes are having what you might call a 747 moment.
20:18What does that mean?
20:19Until the early 1970s, to fly internationally was only something that super rich people could do.
20:26Then, when the 747 came out, you know, these big planes with two decks of seats,
20:32the price and cost of flying people on international flights dropped dramatically.
20:37So that, now, the average Joe could afford to fly on an international flight.
20:43That's something that could be happening now with these smaller planes and electric flight.
20:48These routes are going to be flown for luxury users, let's say, right?
20:53Maybe getting an electric plane from New York City to the Hamptons, okay?
20:59So that's what's going to happen at first.
21:00But as these things become more widespread, as the charging network grows,
21:06the cost of this is going to lower,
21:07and those small rural airports are going to start to see the benefits of this.
21:11But until that network is built out,
21:13cars like this could remain Beta's main competition.
21:17The market that they're competing against is not going to be airplanes.
21:20It's going to be cars.
21:21And it's an Uber ride versus Uber Air and a helicopter ride, for example.
21:28So when will you get to fly in an electric plane?
21:31If everything goes according to plan,
21:33Beta will be getting an FAA certification to carry passengers by the end of 2027.
21:39So that means Beta could be bringing an inter-island flight to Hawaii within the next year or two.
21:49Actually, what it does is it takes off vertically with these propellers spinning,
21:56and then the pusher engine takes over and pushes it.
21:59And then when it lands, this one, the back one stops and it goes down.
22:03So it's kind of a cool experience.
22:05So it's a cool experience.
22:05Let's go.
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