A five-passenger electric airplanes start to take off: All you need to know

Aerospace giants and startups are developing electric aircraft that can navigate autonomously and take off and land vertically, and potentially shuttle thousands of commuters around cities and suburbs

A five-passenger airplane took flight near Los Angeles recently with one important modification: an electric motor.
 
The nearly 50-year-old plane, retrofitted by California-based startup Ampaire, still used a normal combustion engine to spin a propeller in its nose for the test flight. But engineers replaced a second engine with the electric motor, which powered a propeller in the back of the plane.
 
“It’s kind of like a plug-in hybrid car,” said Kevin Noertker, the co-founder and chief executive of Ampaire, which used some parts initially designed for automobiles to modify the plane. “We are really riding the coattails