Let's say I sign up to buy an electric aircraft. I want to be able to zip around my various European investments without leaving a trail of noxious gas behind me, and it seems that battery-powered aircraft might be just a few short years away from making that a reality.

But wait. I have had some teething problems with my electric car recently. Despite the hype, it is sometimes difficult to find a charging point, and occasionally they don't work. The news this morning featured the owner of a chain of petrol stations in the UK who has been looking to the future and installing electric charging points for his customers. But at some locations he has been unable to arrange for a large enough electrical supply, and so they remain out of use.

Charging cars is one thing, but I imagine that charging an aircraft during a fast turnaround is going to draw massively more juice. The batteries in a several-seater will probably need to suck up something between one and ten thousand kilowatt hours. Surely airports need to be digging trenches for some mighty thick cables from their national grids fairly soon?

One of the solutions mooted is to have interchangeable batteries - but this would take common standards and huge stocks, and probably be useful only on regular scheduled routes, not for my business flits.

It's all very well going electric, but what happens if I can't plug in when I land. lt's no good me flying into Paris if the nearest working charger is in Cardiff. And will the sockets be universal, or will we need adapters? My luggage is full of plugs, chargers and adapters for my phone, my laptop, my hair dryer - I can't be remembering to take a set for my aircraft as well.

I know that electric aircraft maker Aura Aero and utility giant EDF have just agreed to look into this whole thorny issue, but doesn't the wider industry need to be involved? Time is short.