Me, "As long as battery technology continues to improve, with how much energy it can store, charging times go down, and autopilot technology continues to improve, we could see flying cars in the not to distant future. Safety of flying car is important. Flying car technology has not taken off because of the fact that people are afraid their car could just stop working and fall out of the sky. As flying drones have shown, as long as you have many electric propellers, if you lose one or two you can still touch down safely.With more propellers you have more safety and with automatic pilot you just need to know how to interact with a computer, telling it what you want it to do."
(Brian German, an aerospace researcher at Georgia Tech. argues that lighter and more powerful electric motors, batteries that can store more energy, and more sophisticated aviation software could transform the market for small aircraft.
Each time batteries improve, electric airplanes can be a little lighter and fly a little farther on a single charge.
German says battery technology isn’t quite there yet. He predicts the energy density of batteries will need to approximately double for small electric airplanes to really take off.
Batteries don’t improve as rapidly as computer chips, so it’s hard to say exactly how quickly batteries will improve. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is currently building a giant battery factory, has said that battery density typically improves by 5 to 8 percent per year, which implies that density could double in the next decade — though that could require finding new battery chemistries.
The other key breakthrough is better software. An airplane with 10 propellers is just too complex for a human pilot to manage effectively. But computer software can easily manage 10 propellers at once, supplying power to the propellers where the most thrust is needed.
And German says multi-propeller designs have significant safety advantages. “If you lose one, you still have some left,” he says. “You can design a lot of redundancy.”
The combination of smaller, more powerful electric motors, better batteries, and sophisticated software will open up dramatically new possibilities for aircraft design.
The vast majority of batteries use organic liquid electrolytes, which are low-cost and easy to prepare.
Higher current densities and quicker charging times are conceivable in solid state batteries (SSB).
Lithium Ion technology is already mature, and the fight for reduced costs (per kWh) and further performance improvement is clearly dominating the market. SSBs will only become a major contender if they can provide a significant performance jump in one or more of the key properties. Usually energy density is considered the top priority, but power density is important when it comes to the need for quick charging. Long-term stability, both long cycle and calendar life (lifetime of batteries in terms of number of discharge/charge cycles and time after production), is another key requirement, as the volume changes of the electrodes during cycling of the SSB cause mechanical strain and stability problems.
Solid electrolytes are often considered ‘enablers’ of high-capacity lithium-metal anodes, as their mechanical strength may prevent dendrite growth. A successful integration of the lithium anode would offer an increase of up to 70% in energy density and serious attempts are surely worth the effort. It is worth noting that lithium-metal electrodes operate well in thin film solid-state batteries with low area-specific capacity, where only about 1 μm of lithium is cycled)
The other key breakthrough is better software. An airplane with 10 propellers is just too complex for a human pilot to manage effectively. But computer software can easily manage 10 propellers at once, supplying power to the propellers where the most thrust is needed.
And German says multi-propeller designs have significant safety advantages. “If you lose one, you still have some left,” he says. “You can design a lot of redundancy.”
The combination of smaller, more powerful electric motors, better batteries, and sophisticated software will open up dramatically new possibilities for aircraft design.
The vast majority of batteries use organic liquid electrolytes, which are low-cost and easy to prepare.
Higher current densities and quicker charging times are conceivable in solid state batteries (SSB).
Lithium Ion technology is already mature, and the fight for reduced costs (per kWh) and further performance improvement is clearly dominating the market. SSBs will only become a major contender if they can provide a significant performance jump in one or more of the key properties. Usually energy density is considered the top priority, but power density is important when it comes to the need for quick charging. Long-term stability, both long cycle and calendar life (lifetime of batteries in terms of number of discharge/charge cycles and time after production), is another key requirement, as the volume changes of the electrodes during cycling of the SSB cause mechanical strain and stability problems.
Solid electrolytes are often considered ‘enablers’ of high-capacity lithium-metal anodes, as their mechanical strength may prevent dendrite growth. A successful integration of the lithium anode would offer an increase of up to 70% in energy density and serious attempts are surely worth the effort. It is worth noting that lithium-metal electrodes operate well in thin film solid-state batteries with low area-specific capacity, where only about 1 μm of lithium is cycled)
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