111–120 of 205 posts
Flight is a luxury of the current times that will likely not last another 100 years except for the very rich.
Actual comprehensive high speed rail networks would reduce the overall carbon footprint of travel by a huge factor, while still permitting a high overall degree of affordable mobility.
:(
Finance bro decides tweets are better evidence than physics… nothing to see here
I suspect that there's niches where battery electric boats and maybe planes do make sense. My state's ferry system is investing in electrifying, because they project it reduce operating costs. The 'easy' part is moving towards hybrid systems that can move with diesel or battery; this is projected to save fuel even without shore charging. The hard part will be making shore charging work. Our grid is mostly hydro, so s…
Where I live companies are moving to electric ferries because they’re cheaper to operate, require less maintenance, and are much quieter for the passengers. Plus they don’t emit any exhaust fumes while idling at the dock. The port also has an electric tug boat, which their reports say is very handy because it changes power output much faster than diesel tugs. Charging times are not a factor according to their reports…
Current lithium batteries Tesla - 270+Wh/kg, cheap AliBaba - 250+Wh/kg. Gasoline/jet fuel - 12KWh/kg, with 30% thermodynamic efficiency - 3.6KWh/kg. If one takes into account piston engines weight and their expensive maintenance or how expensive jet engines overall, the electric seems to have a very good niche of short range planes, and for multi-rotor VTOL it is unbeatable.
Jet fuel still maintains an 18-19× energy density advantage (3.2 kWh/kg vs. 0.17 kWh/kg) at the system level, which explains the fundamental range limitations we're seeing in electric aircraft development.
For VTOL applications specifically, it demands 2.5-3× more energy per mile than conventional flight, electric air taxi prototypes remain limited to 60-80 mile ranges—impressive engineering, but not yet practical for replacing most aviation applications.
But one thing I would agree with is that Li ion is not the ultimate battery chemistry.
Several others with greater density, increased cycle counts, and more readily available minerals are in development.
Of course there's BYD, which was a battery company before an EV maker:
https://engineerine.com/byd-blade-battery/
And a survey of upcoming chemistries and technologies:
https://thecalculatedchemist.com/blogs/news/the-future-of-en...
Just another indication of why we should have started emphasizing battery electric power, and the chemical research into possible solutions, 50 to 75 years ago when the problem of CO2 altering the atmosphere became scientifically indisputable.
I remember seeing loads and loads of analyses like this back in the 2000s on a site called The Oil Drum about why electric cars would never work at scale. (Spoiler: My family has two EVs.) They always assume that the technology will never get better, that industrial economies of scale don't exist and therefore that prices don't decrease with scale, that currently developed reserves of resources like lithium equal tot…
I bought $TSLA and sold almost at the top as well, but for different reasons than fundamentals. (Greenback boomerang CCP dollars etc...)
Chemistry doesn't lie and it imputes all of human behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting idea, but that would require more than a square kilometer (or a 100m strip 10km long) of solar panels (not accounting for the additional power required to tow the panel array).
Solar power being useful doesn’t require 100% of propulsion to come from solar panels. You see solar panels added to a wide range of boats because even bunker fuel isn’t free and panels are light for the power they provide over even a few days. A current 399.9 * 61.3m container ship doesn’t need panels everywhere to benefit, but the potential savings is significant if they do.
The profitability will come when we factor in the environmental damage in the prices. However the elephant in the room at least for aviation is that the energy per kg is about 50 higher for kerosene than for lithium batteries. A very large part of an airliner is fuel already. 50 as much? Not gonna happen. This will remain a really short range thing unless a really amazing breakthrough happens.
One can imagine regenerative braking in the fans, for example to recover energy as aircraft descend, and also with batteries providing emergency backup power.
i would have given this guy credit if he compared cost of production for petro fuels when talking about energy debt. also conflates power with energy, but fine. if you talk about cost (dollar or kilowatt hour) per joule delivered to a vehicle and then compared the total cost of electric vs. the total cost of petro, i would listen. but he ignored the fact that petro fuels cost money, energy and water to produce. and t…
This is a really nice article, in that its long and provides a good example of knowing everything yet nothing. Setting aside individual problems with it, this is because it suffers from a broad and blindingly obvious problem: investment is occurring in this area b/c it will be absolutely politically unpalatable in 20 years to still be emitting CO2. A long analysis showing lithium is more expensive than just using gas…
What's wrong with CO2? It's not a serious issue, it's just an easy proxy for real environmental damage, focusing on CO2 simplifies complex issues like deforestation, pollution, resource depletion, and actual toxic emissions from the rest of the world. The idea is we're going to implement another tax on the plebs to drive a carbon economy and that will compensate for the damage the elites and 3rd worlders are doing. T…
I don't know how "we collectively de-fossil fuel and some prices may go up who knows, science!" becomes "damage by elites and 3rd worlders" and "tax" becomes "lithium batteries" "transmission" "windmill subsidies" "solar recycling", and given all that, how it's being done on the backs of the most productive in society (is this a fancy way of saying: people who buy things will buy things with batteries?)
If the idea is strictly "What's wrong with CO2"...who said CO2? :)