For a city more accustomed to thinking of itself in terms of beaches, arts patrons and development fights, it’s a distinctive claim: a Sarasota-based aviation team says it has completed the first human-piloted electric airplane flight powered by solid-state batteries, a technology that could help answer some of the largest questions still hanging over electric transportation.
The little electric airplane that Helios Horizon, with chief test pilot Miguel Iturmendi, has spent years modifying in Sarasota lifted off Friday from Zephyrhills Municipal Airport. Iturmendi ran a series of short test flights in an aircraft newly powered by solid-state batteries. And while the flight happened in Zephyrhills, the experiment—the battery assembly, the systems work, the nonprofit ambition and much of the human labor behind it—belongs to Sarasota.
The flight was short, but the implication wasn’t. If solid-state batteries can do in the air what they promise on paper—store more energy, charge faster and reduce fire risk—they could begin to solve the problems that have kept electric aviation more dream than transportation.
For Iturmendi, the founder and chief test pilot of Helios Horizon, the flight was less a sudden “Eureka!” moment than the visible result of months of careful testing: first at the cell level, then at the battery level, then on the aircraft itself…