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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

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to regulate millions of nobodies with no power than it is to regulate a single wealthy donor.

Even with a car, you aren’t necessarily regulating millions of individuals - primarily just manufacturers. I suppose there is the odd case where “old joe” removed his catalytic converter and is polluting more than others but that is probably rare. I don’t get your point on centralization however - more efficient but less robust (just like in software).

Correction - I do get your point

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

#762
post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What battery pack that I can buy right now is 300Wh/kg? Sincerely curious because that's 50Wh/kg above what people are using in some very expensive UAVs.

Nobody is using 50Wh/kg in UAVs; even 150C racing drone batteries are higher energy density (~135Wh/kg for Tattu R-line V5 1200mAh 6s, 195grams)

Read what I wrote again, I said 300Wh/kg is 50Wh/kg above what's used in expensive UAVs. There are setups out there using high amperage Panasonic cells at 250Wh/kg for 12S systems. You build a pack with 12S strings of high amperage rated Panasonic 18650 or 20700 and then parallel multiple of those strings together for large capacity (such as for something the size of a freefly alta X).

A small quadcopter that uses a gensace/Tattu 1200 mAh lipo pack is not an expensive uav. I think everyone who uses hobby size lipo knows their specs around 135-160Wh/kg.

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

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What battery pack that I can buy right now is 300Wh/kg? Sincerely curious because that's 50Wh/kg above what people are using in some very expensive UAVs.

Based on Google's specs[0], the GMF5Z battery in the Pixel 7 pro is 18.96 Wh and 65 g, which is around 292 Wh/kg. [0] https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/9682...

The design of a battery for a phone is nowhere near the capability of C rate and discharge amperage needed to power multi hundred watt load electric motors. Totally different thing.

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

#765
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UAVs also have higher current requirement, and that means more weight "wasted" for chonkier electrodes Car batteries aren't pulling 50C worth of current

Don't car batteries also have very high current requirements? Turning over an engine takes an enormous amount of power.

This person seems to be getting downvoted but they aren't totally wrong, electric car batteries are massively paralleled so that the amperage draw per cell is kept to a reasonable figure. They are confused about cranking amps to turn over an ICE vs. batteries used in all-electric cars.

The 18650 Panasonic cells used in an older Tesla model S for instance are rated at only 10A draw per cell as their nominal 1S voltage (4.20V when full).

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

#766
post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is eneloop not still very much a thing? Maybe not the brand, but the technology. The vast, vast majority of consumer devices using standardized battery sizes are AA or AAA, and that means NiMH. To go lithium means 18650, and I don't really see much of that happening outside flashlights and other niche products.

There are many companies making rechargeable lithium batteries in AA and AAA form factors. I have a few dozen I use for my door lock and Xbox controllers.

Internally these are a pretty normal small li ion or lipo battery (3.70 to 4.2VDC range) and a DC-DC converter to output 1.5V

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

#767
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is why batteries have become so much better now than they were 20 years ago.

Eh, not really. Most "battery breakthrough!" press releases are about some new exotic chemistry while most mass produced battery improvements in the last 20 years have come from incremental improvements to existing chemistries and better packaging.

Meh, the devil's in the details with a lot of those announcements. A surprising number of them are things like... it will be 50% better 5-10 years from now!

That's actually incremental improvement if you think about it in annual improvement terms.

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

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most batteries that run starters are not energy dense, they're typically standard lead acid batteries. FWIW, to provide the 225 amps (for a V8 starter motor) a Tesla car battery would only need a discharge capability of 3C (1C being around 80 amps), which is within its rated capabilities. This is also for batteries which provide higher voltages, so I'm vastly overestimating the C rate required. C is the unit for char…

Sure but it's not about starter motors - these batteries power 400kW motors, that's a lot of power.

Honest question, though: does "Turning over an engine" (as an earlier commenter typed) have actual meaning for an EV?

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

#769
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The airplane would be a bit heavier at landing, though. I expect that will require a somewhat heavier landing gear. I also think taking out the weight of the tank is unfair if you don’t add weight for the structures for holding the batteries. But yes, for many smaller planes, we’re close to flying electric on shorter flights being economically feasible.

Harbour Air successfully tested electric plane based on De Havilland Beaver. This is still a super short distance but I think the longest route Harbour air has is Vancouver Seattle and it's a 55 minute flight.

Whistler Victoria is about that long too

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

#770
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider Cessna-172S ([4]). Its characteristics: - 130 kW engine, Lycoming_O-360 that weighs 117 kg. For comparison, an electric motor of this range would weigh 11-13 kg (at 10-12 kW/kg, [2]). That saves 100+ kg weight immediately and we can put 50+ kWh batteries instead. - It carries up to 200 liters of kerosene ([3]), which weighs 164 kg. We can place 82 kWh of batteries instead. - The engine consumes around…

> quite practical for recreation and short flights Perfectly agree with everything, but 1.5hr may be very short if you need to have 30 minutes of reserve at landing. On the saving side, you don’t have to have an alternator to transform ICE energy into energy for the dashboard instruments. On the downside, you now need to heat the cabin manually, rather than reusing the ICE heat.

The electric motor is not 100% efficient so some heat must be available for cabin. Large synchronous generators are 97% efficient not sure about 100 kw e vehicle Motors
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