Electric aviation is taking off in unexpected ways

The call came from a home in Hyde County, a rural expanse of coastal farmland and marsh in North Carolina. Paramedic Quinn Reece jumped into an electric aircraft with one seat, two wings, and eight propellers. It is called a BlackFly, and at about 14 feet long it looks like an oversized drone. Moments later it rose like a helicopter, then flew like an airplane. As she raced toward the emergency at about 60 mph, a dispatcher described the location. Reece quickly realized that the app the county uses for emergency response had given the wrong location. Because she had flown over the area before, Reece had an idea of the correct location. She zipped over in the aircraft, confirmed where the call had come from, and relayed the information to paramedics headed that way. She was on the scene and administering care 20 minutes before they arrived. That is exactly what Brook Cox, the county’s emergency medical services chief, hoped to see. She launched the six-month trial with a company called Pivotal in March to see if its BlackFly could help medics more quickly reach patients in a county that covers 1,459 square miles of land and water. The county conducted more than 300 training flights prior to using the aircraft for two 911 calls. Air taxis and flying cars have long defined the promise of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs. This is the vision the Federal Aviation Administration has highlighted through the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, which works with manufacturers to test the emerging aircraft in real-world settings. Last week, Archer Aviation announced plans for aerial taxi services in three Texas cities and Joby Aviation began demonstrations in Florida. Hyde County is among those exploring more immediate uses for these machines. The FAA program considers emergency medical response an important application, particularly in rural areas. Similar aircraft powered by the sun that can stay aloft for weeks are being developed to monitor climate threats like wildfires, methane emissions and ice melt. The great promise of electric aviation is to help decarbonize flight. These developments point to a fast-approaching future for electric aviation. It just might not arrive in the form we expected. Pivotal’s BlackFly can take off like a helicopter and fly like an airplane, making it a promising tool for emergency response in rural areas, where it can launch quickly, fly directly to an emergency, and land close to the scene. Courtesy Pivotal Kristina Menton, Pivotal’s vice president of flight, points to a December 2024 flight as proof the technology could be a boon to EMS. A BlackFly took off from a Los Angeles County fire station and landed in a backyard in Malibu, demonstrating it could fly directly to a private address. Menton acknowledged that single-seater aircraft are a new approach for a field that has typically employed separate crews for flight and EMS operations. BlackFly’s simplified controls allow one person to serve as both pilot and medic. “The aircraft is a breeze,” Cox said. “It really takes the guesswork out of it because you have a screen and you have all these prompts that you have to go through.” Carl Dietrich, who founded Jump Aero in 2019 to build electric aircraft for EMS, sees Pivotal’s work as proof of concept rather than competition, something that can only help the sector grow. “It shows that other organizations believe that this is a real opportunity,” he said. Jump Aero is building a different kind of aircraft, the JA1 Pulse, an aircraft that has been in development for seven years. Dietrich expects it to reach 288 mph, compared with 63 mph for the BlackFly. He said eVTOLs aren’t necessarily replacing helicopters or ambulances, but adding something new to emergency response: an aircraft that is easy to fly and can launch almost immediately without warming up. “It’s ideal for rapid response missions because you don’t pay any maintenance penalty for going to full power instantly,” he said. This is particularly important in a field that aims to arrive within eight minutes of a call, while rural response times average nearly 15 minutes. There are of course limitations, including battery range and weight capacity. The BlackFly can travel 20 miles on a charge and carry 200 pounds, while the JA1 Pulse is good for 70 miles and 350 pounds. The aircraft clearly aren’t meant to transport anyone; their utility lies in being able to quickly reach an emergency and stabilize a patient until an ambulance arrives. Reece carried a cardiac monitor, airway supplies, and a “primary response bag” of essential gear that would allow her to assess a patient and begin treatment immediately. Rural areas may present an easier path to introducing the technology, said April Zhang, director of advanced air mobility at the University of South Florida’s Center for Urban Transportation Research. “In the urban area, it’s probably more challenging to find the right landing and takeoff sites,” she said. Menton said other counties are already looking at Hyde County’s experience and considering similar programs. Zhang points to the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program as a way for manufacturers and public agencies to collaborate on applications. Beyond EMS, she sees traffic surveillance and cargo deliveries as other potential uses. FAA policy may also give public agencies an easier path to using eVTOLs than commercial operators. Andrew Mearns, a commercialization consultant at Multicopter Aerospace Consulting, said EMS organizations can often operate under the FAA’s public aircraft rules, which could allow them to fly without the credentials required of a commercial pilot. Cost is another appeal. Pivotal’s model sells for $190,000, while Mearns said helicopters can cost from $500,000 to $10 million. Operating costs will vary with the specific model, but generally speaking an electric aircraft will be about 20 percent cheaper than a similarly-sized machine that burns fossil fuels, Mearns said. Emergency response is one avenue where electric aviation is beginning to find a practical use. Another is taking shape much higher in the atmosphere. Unmanned stratospheric aircraft can reach altitudes of 65,000 feet, about twice as high as commercial aircraft. Solar-powered versions can remain aloft for weeks or months, making them well suited to long-term environmental monitoring. “If you imagine these solar-powered aircraft just circling the L.A. County area, collecting soil moisture, vegetation moisture data, with complex math models and deep learning mapped to that, you can have improved risk profiles better than the models that are currently there,” said Craig Mascarenhas, an aerospace researcher at Harvard University. The aircraft could also spot fires more quickly and help map them for first responders. Mascarenhas leads engineering research for Harvard’s branch of the Stratospheric Airborne Climate Observing System, where he is helping develop and deploy solar-powered electric aircraft with Electra.Aero, MIT and others. He said their applications go beyond wildfires. “It’s hurricane monitoring and tracking, methane emission monitoring, understanding ice dynamics across the world,” he said. “The instruments will be swapped, but the topology of the aircraft will remain the same.” The aircraft themselves could offer environmental benefits too. Mascarenhas said eVTOLs could reduce greenhouse gas emissions when they replace fuel-burning helicopters, but the climate case is less clear when they replace efficient ground transportation. “Vertical flight is inherently energy-intensive, and an electric aircraft is not necessarily more energy-efficient or lower-carbon per passenger-mile than an electric car, bus, or train,” he said. For Pivotal, EMS in Hyde County is just the beginning. Menton said the company’s broader vision is to “revolutionize transportation” by making short electric flights accessible to more people. But for now, some of technology’s most immediate uses may be the specialized applications already being tested in places like Hyde County and high above it.