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As experimental prototypes, electric airplanes have been around for decades. But the nagging question remains: Will they ever be commercially viable?

Zunum Aero thinks so. It has 20 full-time employees and 20 contract workers spread across facilities in Kirkland (software operations) as well as Chicago and Indianapolis (electric manufacturing and propulsion work.) The company recently received its first order from charter jet operator JetSuite, and it expects to employ about 100 by the end of this year.

“We’re in the middle of a hiring ramp,” says CEO Ashish Kumar, who cofounded the Kirkland company with Mike Knapp. Their wives introduced them to each other after discovering that both husbands had an interest in electric airplanes.

Knapp, an engineer with a master’s degree from MIT, had worked as an aeronautical engineer for two local plane design firms that had struggled financially. He was intrigued by the role electric planes could play in reducing greenhouse gases. Kumar was a former aeronautical engineering professor at Brown University who had worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co. and moved to Seattle to handle global sales and marketing for Microsoft. He liked the idea of developing a hybrid-electric passenger airplane that could use traditional fuel as a backup.

The pair brainstormed the idea of a hybrid-electric passenger aircraft, then did deeper research on the business niche they thought looked most promising: small passenger planes serving small airfields less than a thousand miles from their hubs. These airports serve communities where the population isn’t big enough to justify anything but the smallest passenger aircraft: Think Quincy, Aberdeen or Pendleton. (While larger conventional craft might be able to land there, they’d have too many empty seats to make regular passenger service feasible.) And while there are 12- to 20-seat planes serving some small towns, they are relatively rare. Just 140 hubs handle 97 percent of the nation’s air traffic to roughly 13,500 airports, according to Zunum Aero.

Knapp and Kumar believe small electric passenger planes will serve the smaller markets more economically because they are cheaper to fly. Electric jet turbines, even when combined with their batteries, are far lighter than fuel jet turbines and their liquid fuels.

“We’re very serious and pragmatic,” Knapp says. “[And] we’re more of a propulsion company designing an aircraft around a propulsion system.”

Zunum’s initial aircraft design, the ZA-10, weighs 11,500 pounds when carrying 12 passengers, 800 pounds of emergency fuel and batteries capable of producing a megawatt of power. The plane requires only 2,500 feet of runway to take off. On the downside, it cruises at a top speed of 340 miles an hour and has an initial range of 700 miles, although that will later be extended to 1,000. By contrast, the Gulfstream IV and Cessna Citation X private jets carry up to 19 passengers and can fly faster and much farther. But because they weigh more than three times as much when fueled up, they require as much as a mile of runway to take off, preventing them from landing in many small airports.

Zunum cofounder/chef engineer Matt Knapp with engineer Petek Saracoglu.

Cofounder/CEO Ashish Kumar (standing) with, from left, director of certification Randy Griffith and engine3ers Brad Fanton and Patrick Noble

So, Kumar and Knapp saw an opening.

“It was very hard at the beginning,” Kumar admits. “People were telling us we were idiots.”

At the time, Tesla car batteries were catching fire, some in collisions and one in an auto mechanic’s shop. But the two founders remained convinced of the feasibility of a 12- to 20-passenger electric plane with a backup fuel tank. “At that point, you couldn’t walk away,” Kumar recalls. “You had to make it happen.”

They founded Zunum Aero in 2013 and soon after obtained the first of several patents on their design. (Zunum, alternately spelled tzunuum, is the Mayan word for hummingbird.)

Kumar says Zunum’s small hybrid-electric passenger plane will be ideal for business travelers, regional cargo carriers and military organizations. He says Zunum is talking with potential customers, including several airlines, and admits it will take “a couple hundred million dollars” to see the project to fruition. Zunum has backing from the venture capital arms of Boeing and JetBlue Airways, as well as an $800,000 grant from the state of Washington.

“Just like the auto industry is being transformed by electric cars, the regional airline industry is ripe for disruption by electric propulsion,” says Bonny Simi, president of JetBlue Technology Ventures. “After monitoring the space for a while, we believe Zunum is well ahead of others in efforts to transform the industry, and we are excited to have a seat at the table.”