The Electric Jet
In 2014, Elon Musk took part in MIT’s Aeronautics and Astronautics Centennial Symposium. During a Q&A at the event, he referenced that he was thinking about how to develop an electric jet, which would obviously be powered purely by electricity rather than use any form of gas or oil.
He also referenced the idea of having it take off vertically and that he’d make sure it reached supersonic speeds. However, nothing like what Musk referenced has been invented by Tesla, SpaceX, or Musk himself. On top of this, Musk was nowhere close to the first person to reference the idea of an electric plane or jet.
In fact, this has been something many people have referenced and even worked on for several years now. Of course, Tesla was starting to take off in a big way by 2014. Therefore, it made sense that if Musk was the “electric car guy,” then he and Tesla would likely also want to make electric planes too, right?
However, the main people who could likely work on that are busy at SpaceX. Therefore, many have beaten him to the punch on it, such as Eviation who unveiled their electric plane prototype in 2021. Airbus has a whole fleet of electric planes, and in August 2022 Harbour Air completed the first commercial point-to-point electric airplane flight.