1,000 SHP AGplane Offers Promising View of Future Performance
Wright Electric and Axter Aerospace capped off a successful flight test using their prototype hybrid-electric agricultural aircraft, proving the viability of a 1.2-Megawatt crop duster. The hybrid aircraft tested sports 800 kilowatts of shaft horsepower, or about 1,073 ponies in the old measure. Wright hopes that the aircraft will be a solid proof-of-concept for the brand's electric motor tech. Their Electric Propulsion Unit, or EPU, can be built with outputs up to 2 megawatts, with tested equipment showing 1.2 megawatts peak output with modern production pieces. That EPU has proven to be quite capable in its own right, falling back to 1.1 Mw of continuous output.