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CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

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Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#161
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it populist to call this a tax on poor people?

It's not populist to call things what they really are.

You know how I know you aren't poor? You think anyone in the bottom quartile will buy a new car. This is hardly a regressive policy. It directly targets the wealthier populations.

That said, in the interest of honest debate, it will shift the used car market prices significantly initially until supply of used EVs spins up. Although this is very secondary.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#162
post #42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Also... kerosene gets spent. Pilots can also dump fuel in emergency when it's too heavy to land. Battery powered planes can't dump electricity, so I'd imagine some trade offs that have to be made.

Electric planes could recharge using solar or wind. As efficiency increases with these technologies, it would mean planes wouldn't require carrying the same watt-for-watt energy as fuel.

> Electric planes could recharge using solar or wind. As efficiency increases with these technologies, it would mean planes wouldn't require carrying the same watt-for-watt energy as fuel.

Those are pipe dreams :-)))

Solar recharging for electric cars is not realistic, let alone for electric planes.

Wind charger... maybe there's something there, but the fact that nobody has tried it probably means it's not good enough.

https://www.arenaev.com/why_solar_panels_on_cars_are_beyond_...

> So under optimal conditions the Hyundai solar roof would yield 280kWh *yearly*. In London you'd get 164kWh.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#163

> World’s largest battery maker announces major breakthrough in energy density > This is a little under 2x the density of current batteries. Anything less than a ~400x increase is a minor breakthrough based on my expectations. I would like to charge my phone once a year.

Do you not feel this is an unreasonable expectation? I wouldn’t think we would ever get to the point where phones are only charged once a year. This assumes that power consumption would not increase over time.

It's possible that this was sarcasm relating to how people like to move goalposts all the time regarding EVs.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#164
post #42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Also... kerosene gets spent. Pilots can also dump fuel in emergency when it's too heavy to land. Battery powered planes can't dump electricity, so I'd imagine some trade offs that have to be made.

Electric planes could recharge using solar or wind. As efficiency increases with these technologies, it would mean planes wouldn't require carrying the same watt-for-watt energy as fuel.

It's way cheaper and more efficient for electricity consumers to purchase power from the grid, and for the grid to figure out the most optimal way to produce and deliver the power.

Solar and wind are in many areas a) only available during certain hours b) expensive.

To ensure you have a stable power cost, and stable power availability, you as a large consumer (In the EU) make PPA agreements with power producers for specific KW rates, for specific KWh amounts, for specific times. These are complicated agreements.

A few panels on some warehouses and hangers close to an airport could keep the lights and the A/C on in the terminal, but that's about it. No one is putting up wind turbines anywhere close to an airport.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#165
post #53
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric planes could recharge using solar or wind. As efficiency increases with these technologies, it would mean planes wouldn't require carrying the same watt-for-watt energy as fuel.

Recharging a small plane with solar power would either take ages or hectares. Pick your poison. Recharging multiple airliners will take a nuclear reactor at the airport.

Recharging would take a lot of energy but it's not unthinkable to have 1-3 GW supplied to an airport (which is what a reactor would likely supply), large metropolitan areas and large industrial factories already get to similar amounts. It's a couple of transmission lines and most large airports are close to population centers anyway.

The challenge would be getting the right amount at the right time, like now with quick charging. Like there, you'd probably have buffer storage at the airport so that it consumes electricity when available (e.g. during the day from solar) and dispenses it to aircrafts when needed. Luckily, most airports in the world have nearly all take offs and landings during the day, so there's a big overlap. Dubai would be an example where likely all would come from solar but a lot is needed over night (if we ever get electric long-haul flights).

So overall I don't think that this would be the limiting factor. But I guess larger airliners are more likely to run on synthetic fuels than electricity for a long time. And I guess that's fine, we have a lot of areas where cheap and/or dense batteries can help us much more in the short term (grid storage, cars, trucks).

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#166
post #23
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does 500wh/kg make electric aircraft possible? 6x less than kerosene Where did you read that kerosene is at 3000Wh/kg? My googling says 12,000Wh/kg The tweet thread from TFA and its replies just says that for aircraft, weight impact is important. See https://twitter.com/__bdimitrov__/status/1298753593638440960 : "260 to 400 Wh/kg should lengthen flight time by 90.8% --- assuming that 100% of the drone weight is…

Yes. 12kWh/kg chemical energy for kerosene, a little more for avgas. But with a 25% efficiency you are only getting 3kWh out of a kg of fuel. Electric motors tend to have higher efficiency -- maybe up to 75% so you might nearly get 500Wh from a kg of battery.

Electric motors are over 85%, some reaching 95%, from what I remember.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#168
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that synthetic kerosene via electrolysis is a far more viable path to sustainable aviation than battery-electric engines. The energy-inefficiency doesn’t really matter as long as you can keep the total cost of the flight within consumer reach.

Carbon neutral synthetic fuels might make sense for airliners, because they're already pretty efficient, reliable and incomprehensibly powerful and there's tons of other stuff in them that'd require maintenance even if you took out the engines. They don't make sense for general aviation planes that are usually a fifty year-old engine design that requires expensive overhauls and guzzles expensive fuel wrapped in a bit…

But do we really need to focus on general aviation? I don't have numbers but believe it to be a pretty small part overall. In transportation, it's also fine if we keep some gasoline speciality vehicles for a long time, as long as we're able to convert the vast majority of cars and trucks.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#169

Another reason we will all rely on China…

I believe car manufacturers are already big in battery production, for them it's as crucial as ICE production was before. It takes time to ramp up but I'd expect battery tech to be a key component that large manufacturers will want to have in house. But it could be one of the first key technologies where Chinese companies are a few years ahead of European and American companies.

Re: CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg

#170
post #133

I just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible. A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy. By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted ar…

The 272 Wh/kg is at cell level not pack level which the Tesla weight refers to. In my X has about 92 kWh usable energy when new and it uses around 225 Wh/km at 120 km/h and 170 at 90.

The 3 and Y is even more efficient, mostly due to size. But it has a smaller battery, I can get about 69 kWh out of my AWD 3 after losses and it hovers around 170-180 Wh/km at 120 km/h and 130-140 at 90.

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