The world's largest all-electric commercial aircraft has taken off.

MagniX, headquartered in Seattle, USA with an engineering centre centred on the Gold Coast, has sent its all-electric commercial aircraft on its maiden voyage in Washington state.

The Cessna 208B Grand Caravan took off from an airport in last week, using a 751-horsepower all-electric motor engineered in Queensland.

The ‘eCaravan’ is regarded as a significant milestone in further disrupting the airline and transportation industries towards an electric, zero emissions future.

“This first flight of the eCaravan is yet another step on the road to operating these middle-mile aircraft at a fraction of the cost, with zero emissions, from and to smaller airports,” said Roei Ganzarski, CEO of magniX, in a statement.

The successful 30 minute, 160km test flight used less than US$6 worth of electricity. It was also a critical step in the certification and approval process of the magni500 propulsion system, enabling future conversions of additional aircraft to magniX’s all-electric propulsion technology.

In their Gold Coast facility, magniX ran eight versions of the engine in rugged conditions, at all temperatures and for more than 1,000 hours, to stress-test reliability.

They have now demonstrated that propulsion capability can be based purely on battery power.