Rolls-Royce ACCEL – very serious indeed.

With all the raging hype about eVTOLs and focus on zero CO2 emissions in aviation, a small start-up in Gloucestershire Airport called Electro Flight (and a rather large aircraft engine manufacturer based in Derby) along with an electric motor manufacturer called YASA – now owned by Mercedes) quietly set about using battery propulsion to break the world speed record for electric aircraft. Not only did they break the record, they smashed it – beating the previous record by an astonishing 132 mph.

Using a modified Nemesis NXT kit aircraft, the Rolls-Royce ACCEL reached a speed of 345 mph (556 kmh) for the required 3 kilometers (under the FAI World Air Sports Federation rules) during its total flight time of around 15 minutes on 16 November 2021. ACCEL took a mere 202 seconds to climb to 3,000 meters (another record) and at one point, actually reached a top speed of 387 mph (623 km/h).

Under normal conditions, the aircraft has enough power to fly the aircraft from London to Paris on a single charge. With 6,480 battery cells on board, it also has enough battery power to charge 7,500 mobile phones, uses the same thermal protection casing (Portuguese cork) as you find in bottled wine and has the equivalent motor power that you find in a 535 bhp supercar. Serious enough for you?

As Phill O’Dell, Director of Flight Operations Rolls-Royce and pilot of ACCEL’s record-breaking flight said: “Electric aviation is absolutely and utterly here to stay.”

In any event, who would have thought being green could also be so fast?