I have been touting this beauty for almost a year now. Pipistrel Panthera
Available IRL as petrol, hybrid or electric.
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Thought some may find this interesting. I love to see the progress.
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Electric Beaver!
Electric plane makes successful test flight - Victoria Times Colonist??utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=snd
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Some interesting electric airplanes coming to market. Air Canada just ordered some of these Heart Aerospace ES-30 electric planes from Sweden. 4 electric propellors, 30 passengers, 200 KM all-weather range on battery, 400 KM with backup generators. I wonder if an electric power source can fit with the current MSFS flight models or do they have to make a new one?
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I would like to see the existing and most likely useful electric aircraft:
- Pipistrel Velis Electro (first electric aircraft production)
- Eviation Alice (first commercial transport, currently in testing)
Those are the most relevant near-term in my opinion.
I think it would truly be fantastic!
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I’m really hopeful that Lionheart Creations will bring their fancy “Proton Stingrey” to MSFS, though I haven’t seen any news on their Facebook yet.
‘I don’t fly in real life due to the carbon emissions’. The environmental impact of manufacturing batteries is in no way a clean process. Both mining for minerals and disposal are problematic in themselves, so I don’t feel at all guilty about taking flight in a gas guzzler. Of course opinions differ on this so each to their own.
Planes need energy and lots of it at various stages of flight so engineering a plane as all electric has its own hurdles to jump over. I’m thinking of a flying battery…I have no doubt with advances in technology we will see some interesting designs come through though.
I would welcome any plane in the sim but I like combustion engines so probably not something I’d purchase. If somebody produces a study level model then it might be of interest to some people. Not my cup of tea but I can see how it would spike the interest of others.
With a 50 minute flight time you could do short hops only. I bet the cold is no friend of the battery either and would think it is tested in temperate climates so on a cold day would be less. I can only think the design will improve though as battery technology improves.
You recognize how much problematic issues there are until you can fly in a gas guzzler? Drilling offshore, environmental issues and catastrophic accidents, transportation, refinery, transportation again, then burning with an efficiency of around 30% (!) whereas electrical motors are well above 90%?
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There are many problems in the world Mimi and the ones you listed are not at the top of my list. Fly safe and enjoy the sim.
The issues mentioned by @MimikriX may not be at the top of the list of concerns for most folks in aviation today. They most certainly should be. Aviators embrace the laws of physics and know full well that they cannot be argued, reasoned with and certainly not ignored without consequence. We must reduce our emissions drastically and very quickly if we wish to sustain the economic drivers of our industry. Electrifying aviation is one pathway to ensuring that we have an industry that can provide us with employment in the years to come. It is for this reason that I am excited to see the advancements made in this field and support them being embraced in the sim. Cheers.
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The United States Air Force is actively evaluating aircraft which have the potential to operate independently of traditional fuel supply chains. This is another one that would be cool to see in the sim.
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Someone has made an “engine swap” mod for the DA62 so that it flies like it’s electrically powered.
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Public transportation isn‘t clean and will never be. We can do what we can to make it better, modern engines are cleaner than older ones and I‘m sure battery production etc will become cleaner, too. Nevertheless, as long as you want to use anything that requires to transform forms of energy into kinetic energy that‘s not your feet or a horse, it will pollute the environment. Electric transport is not cleaner, it‘s different. The final product might appear clean but the process to get there is just as bad as drilling for oil.
The cleanest way of flying is probably gliding but of course it‘s not suitable for commercial use. As long as we rely on stored energy, be it in oil or in a battery, transport remains a dirty business.
Can you please elaborate on what you mean? 
The chief environmental/emissions advantage of battery-backed electric power is that the source of the electric generation is fungible – it could be coal (yuck! carbon!) but it could also be “cleaner” solar, hydro, wind, nuclear fission, etc which don’t emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as you use the generator.
A separate issue is that manufacture of the engine and battery is different between gasoline-burning piston engines and electric motors with lithium batteries. Different materials, different steps involved, different shipping, etc, so they’re hard to compare head-to-head.
We’re drifting off-topic from aviation though; there’s plenty of off-site sources of info for this stuff. 
The people who did the DA62 conversion mod have now given the DA40 the same treatment.
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