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

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 of ground electric vehicles here.”