This engineer lived in an RV in Tesla's parking lot — now he's on a quest to build electric planes

Because Impossible offers free help to police and fire departments near its office, Gore and employees at his company sometimes answer calls to bring a drone out to a fire or crime scene in the middle of the night.

Impossible Aerospace has raised more than $11 million from venture investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Airbus Ventures and Eclipse Ventures, where ex-Tesla executive Greg Reichow is a Partner. While Reichow sits on the board at Impossible Aerospace today, the two hadn't worked together directly at Tesla.

Several other companies are working on electric and hybrid-electric planes, including Pipistrel, Joby Aviation, Eviation, XTI Aircraft and others.

Gore said he'd be happy to see them all succeed, though he favors a pure-electric approach:

"These drones are direct predecessors to the aircraft that I think we'll be flying on in the future. The real question is is not when will we have electric airplanes, but when we have electric airplanes that fly far enough to start replacing conventionally fueled air transport. We're not going to stop until until it's possible to travel anywhere in the world emissions free. It has to be done."

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