61–70 of 163 posts
I had the opportunity to work in one of the world best nano technology lab. My supervisor once told me that he refused to work on nano-structured batteries for an obvious reason: These are impossible to recycle. Science these days is often more about the headline (even better if you do the cover of Science) and less about real (societal) benefits.
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Not even close, but that's not so bad. ICEs will probably always have their place but most people can go without, especially in Europe (Americans are very loud about how they need to drive 3000 miles to work everyday so I won't bother arguing that)
You can fit an entire Italian town in the size of a freeway interchange in Houston: https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/highway-interchange-ho... Our cities were designed to be spread out to make them less susceptible to atomic weapons in the 1950's (not a joke). So... Yes, we need cars. It really is a long way for many of us.
I agree that very common suburban and rural vehicles, respectively, are SUVs and pickup trucks. But I am curious what portion of urban drivers use a vehicle that most of the time far outclasses their average use case. I would like to find data on this but it seems to me like often people own a vehicle for the extreme outlier use case.
IF this is true, it would be a massive breakthrough. Truly monumental. Hence, I am skeptical. But otherwise, this would be a massive thing. a 2x capacity per weight advantage of batteries? Without an increase in space? That comes down to doubling the range of EVs, and making electric planes and rockets a lot more viable. A 3x capacity per space advantage means roughly a 3x improvement in your phone and laptop battery…
>Or, more likely, a slight improvement in your phone and much thinner phones. On laptops, we might see the return of more ports. // Please, no. I don't understand the utility of making something so expensive be so fragile and hard to hold. My phone is 5mm thick, that's already too thin for me. Does anyone want thinner phones or is it just a marketing thing?
I've yet to see these carbon nanothings on the market. It's been 10 years now that we hear about carbon revolutionizing everything and it never pans out.
It's probably going to be like with AI. People talk about it for years and nothing substantial happens and then suddenly it takes off. I was working on AI around 2005 (we called it neural networks). There were no good libraries, the literature was difficult to understand and nothing really worked (at least I didn't get it to work). I was still a student and pretty disillusioned by the whole idea. A few years later th…
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No, current batteries have about 1 percent the energy density of gasoline.
Note that most of the energy in gasoline gets wasted as heat in a car, only a part gets used in winter to heat the cabin. So there's a factor of ~3 that you get back in that comparison. So the more comparable number is more like 3-4%. Still very low of course. The electric motors are also lighter than what creates equivalent power for gasoline so there's another small amount you recover there. ~5% is probably reasona…
Actually good article if you continue reading. Comment from an independent expert: "Research has shown vertically aligned – or even just well distributed – carbon nanotubes have far greater properties than randomly placed carbon nanotubes," said Dr. Shearer. "I am not surprised a x10 in conductivity is possible. Controlling the placement of carbon nanotubes is really the way to unlock their potential. The issue in co…
Given that presumably Tesla's goal is to take battery costs down by 56% in 3 years from (108 - 140 $/kwh) to (50 - 70$/kwh) and widely held consensus is that 100$/kwh is the price point at which EVs are no brainer on upfront costs with ICE cars, i feel that there is a long way to go. However, i think any successful real world demo starting with niche applications will help. We need all the battery tech to succeed.
IF this is true, it would be a massive breakthrough. Truly monumental. Hence, I am skeptical. But otherwise, this would be a massive thing. a 2x capacity per weight advantage of batteries? Without an increase in space? That comes down to doubling the range of EVs, and making electric planes and rockets a lot more viable. A 3x capacity per space advantage means roughly a 3x improvement in your phone and laptop battery…
A 3x increase in density does approximately nothing to make electric airliners more viable. We need more like a 100x increase before we see an electric 737 or A320.
Those are (in most peoples terminology) entirely different things.
Having viable light electric aircraft could revolutionize flight even if every aircraft for more than 20 people would run on kerosene for the next century.
I don’t think anyone is expecting a battery powered 737 any time soon. But a battery powered Cessna 172 with a 30 minute range would be huge.
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Electric airplanes need significantly better energy density.
I don't know. Sure, if you can build batteries with the energy density of gasoline, you can build an electric plane with them. But is this really necessary ? Right now, we have relatively large, relatively fast, jet planes. Do we need that size and that speed to be commercially viable? Could we also run a larger fleet of smaller, more automated planes or helicopters? If there was no kerosene left by tomorrow morning,…
Only if you value overseas travel... It currently takes ~16 hours to fly from SF to Singapore depending on weather. Any longer, and you're going to see a lot of that travel disappear.
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I don't know. Sure, if you can build batteries with the energy density of gasoline, you can build an electric plane with them. But is this really necessary ? Right now, we have relatively large, relatively fast, jet planes. Do we need that size and that speed to be commercially viable? Could we also run a larger fleet of smaller, more automated planes or helicopters? If there was no kerosene left by tomorrow morning,…
> I don't know. Sure, if you can build batteries with the energy density of gasoline, you can build an electric plane with them. But is this really necessary? Only if you value overseas travel... It currently takes ~16 hours to fly from SF to Singapore depending on weather. Any longer, and you're going to see a lot of that travel disappear.
It takes that long because it's more efficient to do it in a single flight. Taking off and landing are a massive waste of time and fuel. If we only had short range planes people would change their destinations in some cases or they'd plan layovers as part of the trip. I don't think you'd see that many people just stop travelling abroad.
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Electric airplanes need significantly better energy density.
I don't know. Sure, if you can build batteries with the energy density of gasoline, you can build an electric plane with them. But is this really necessary ? Right now, we have relatively large, relatively fast, jet planes. Do we need that size and that speed to be commercially viable? Could we also run a larger fleet of smaller, more automated planes or helicopters? If there was no kerosene left by tomorrow morning,…