10-50 seat commercial passenger aircraft are a thing.
And BTW NASA (well the first A) has been looking at way to simplify regional airline operations and make regional airports (of which I believe the US has quite a number) more useful and active (y'know increasing economic around the US, something close to the heart of the D himself).
Thumbing through an old Popular Mechanics for (IIRC) 1975 I see a blurb about the first flight of an all electric light aircraft (2 seat) with an endurance of 15 mins. Obviously knocked up by a home builder who took the statement "building a human carrying electric aircraft is impossible" as a personal challenge ( the dad of the guy who built that pong game from discrete transistors?)
4 decades later and behind all the massive hype batteries really have improved quite a bit, as has the generator and power electronics technology (so you can directly connect your generator/alternator to a turbine without a gearbox and then dial in whatever voltage and current you want from the battery pack output).
The question of course (which being at home with the Kumars failed to answer) is wheather the technology has gotten better enough to built a flying Prius.
There is a fine line between spotting when all the pieces are available to carry out a truly bold piece of disruptive technology and selling the idea that their might be.
Time will tell if this is John Carncac's old company or if this is the Oculus Rift of aerospace.