In a new first for electric flight, researchers at MIT have succeeded in achieving heavier-than-air powered flight using an engine with no moving parts.

The experimental aircraft is paving the way for highly efficient, zero emissions, zero noise, and almost zero maintenance flight.

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Battery technology improvements are expected to soon enable electric flight and companies in the field are preparing their powertrain technology to support it.

In a major move toward that goal, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens have announced a new partnership to gradually convert a plane to electric propulsion.  expand full story

The first electric and VTOL aircraft by Zee.Aero, a startup reportedly heavily funded by Google co-founder Larry Page, is believed to have been spotted at the Hollister Airport in California, where the company has a hangar. expand full story

With quite a few new electric car announcements this week coming from the Paris Motor Show, we thought we’d switch things up a bit and show you all a pretty neat all-electric, “revolutionary and affordable” paramotor aircraft from Revolt in Italy.

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Earlier this year, we wrote a profile on an interesting startup, Zee Aero, developing a battery-powered vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft near Google’s X lab. The company caught our attention when it started hiring talent from NASA, Tesla and Stanford.

At the time, we couldn’t confirm where the money was coming from, but today we learn that Alphabet’s billionaire CEO Larry Page is secretively behind the electric aircraft startup, reportedly financing it with over $100 million, and even setting up a competing startup, Kitty Hawk, to test another model.

The group’s proximity with Google led a lot of people to believe it was financed by the tech giant, but in fact, Page is financing the initiative himself and not through Alphabet or Google Ventures.  expand full story