The annual EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, drew 700,000 attendees and 20,000 campers this year, but for those paying attention to electric aviation, the real story was not the flying cars promised by urban air mobility startups. Instead, the event showcased a broader and more immediate electric aviation market, with conversions of traditional aircraft and a focus on scale that could reshape the industry.
Lisa Wright, founder of Landings, a company building a network of vertiport and charging infrastructure, spent the week at Oshkosh attending both the main event and the Vertical Flight Society's Electric Aircraft Symposium. Her observations challenge the dominant narrative that electric aviation is primarily about eVTOLs for passenger transport. “What was interesting to me was there was great representation of electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, the ones we talk about,” Wright said. “But on top of that, a lot of the traditional aircraft are also converting to be electric. Cessna Caravans that land on water are being electrified. There were a lot of Pipistrels. Traditional aircraft that are being converted to electric as well.”
The conversions are significant because they expand the use case ecosystem immediately. An electrified Beaver (the eBeavers Wright observed) can operate commercially right now. So can Pipistrels running electric powertrains. These are not theoretical future aircraft waiting for certification; they are flying today.
The conventional industry story focuses on certification timelines for passenger eVTOLs, with progress from companies like Joby and Archer. But at Oshkosh, the electric aircraft market proved far more diverse. One company, Israeli-based Air EV, caught Wright’s attention because of its production ambitions. “They’re focusing on producing not 300 aircraft a year, but like 30,000 aircraft a year,” she explained. “They’re really looking at it as basically wanting these sold like cars. The new Mosaic rule has opened up a lot of opportunity.”
That production vision represents a fundamental shift in how manufacturers approach the market. Instead of building boutique aircraft for wealthy early adopters or specialized operators, companies are positioning to manufacture at automotive scale. That only makes sense if the market is broader than flying cars for commuters. Skyfly is another example, pursuing Mosaic-level approvals for light sport and non-commercial aircraft, which frees them from many restrictions faced by traditional commercial aircraft.
A moment that crystallized this shift occurred during Tim Jackson’s presentation. Jackson, author of “Dude, Where’s My Flying Car,” was discussing electric aircraft when Wright spotted a Beta aircraft taking off outside. She interrupted the presentation, and the entire audience ran outside to watch the conventional-wing Beta fly. “It was a really magical moment for people to be listening to someone tell them about these aircraft, and the talk get interrupted by the aircraft actually flying,” Wright said. “Beta was saying that particular aircraft has flown 60,000 miles, and their fleet that they’re testing right now has flown 175,000 miles.”
The significance extends beyond the spectacle. These are not prototypes accumulating test hours in controlled environments; they are putting serious operational miles on aircraft designed for real-world deployment. The data they generate informs actual certification pathways and operational readiness.
Walking through 700,000 people and hundreds of thousands of aircraft spanning generations, Wright encountered something many infrastructure developers miss: aviation has been solving design problems for a century through radical diversity of approach. “When you see 20,000 planes in front of you, and they’re all totally different – some 70 years old, some 10 years old – you realize that innovation has always meant every plane is so totally different,” she observed. “There’s a lot of weird looking stuff, but aviation has been figuring out how to keep redesigning things as long as they fly.”
The implication for electric aviation is profound. There isn’t one right way to build an eVTOL. There isn’t one correct charging standard or one optimal aircraft design. The industry is in the phase where everyone is trying something different because no one knows yet what the best practices will be. That’s not a problem; that’s how aviation innovation works.
For commercial real estate owners, communities, and infrastructure developers, Oshkosh signaled that the electric aviation market is expanding faster and broader than industry projections suggested. It’s not waiting for Joby or Archer to capture the imagination. Conversions of existing aircraft platforms are already operational. Manufacturing at automotive scale is being planned. Use cases across emergency services, agriculture, and logistics are being validated in real time.
The infrastructure opportunity that follows isn’t limited to passenger vertiports in cities. It extends across rural networks supporting traditional aircraft conversions, emergency response operations, agricultural applications, and logistics. The market Wright is building infrastructure for isn’t emerging in 2028 or 2029. It’s arriving now, across multiple aircraft categories simultaneously.
