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I don't think it can be stated enough.

THIS IS INCREDIBLE.

TLDR: Solid State batteries with a new material allowing them to discharge electricity as close to a lithium-ion battery.

Basically solid state batteries can cut weight up to 40% and store up to 3x the amount of energy in the same space. Solid State batteries lacked the functionality to discharge that electricity at a high rate when compared to lithium-ion batteries.

Solid state batteries also offer other benefits to include less risk for fire and issues when exposed to extreme temperatures relative to lithium-ion batteries.

Wait just INCREDIBLE? Meh.

Next flying cars

Man it was three days ago here the Negative Nacies were crowing about how electric planes could never be viable.

This is amazing.

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So it should not be believed?

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What’s the catch?

NASA's own article on the topic contains a lot more useful information and seems less sensationalized.

The article doesn't claim that NASA invented solid-state batteries.

Fingers crossed on this one. Unfortunately the chemistry sounds expensive so it might not translate to civilian applications in this iteration, but what theyve learned should help advance the tech. Could be a nice big step forward!

If they're not viable, someone should tell Air Canada - they just bought 30.

It is less sensationalized, but it has bazically the same claims, and does use the word "incredible" - which, if it pans out commercially, is true. This is breakthrough stuff.

This is like the 100th battery breakthrough article I’ve seen in the past 5 years. Is it safe to get excited this time?

I know it's a long way off, but how awesome would it be for a publicly funded organization like NASA to produce this sort of breakthrough for the world?

It would clearly demonstrate that profit doesn't need to be at the forefront of everything.

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My father in law works on this project and he gave this context, fyi:

“This is an all-electric propulsion technology demonstrator. Electric propulsors over the wing are used for landing and takeoff. Otherwise, they are shutdown/stowed and aircraft flies with wing tip propulsors only. I have covered this technology in my Future Propulsion book”

What’s the Moore’s Law for batteries?

I think it’s the opposite. He’s saying it uses lots of motors to use lots of energy for high acceleration for takeoff, and then goes down to a more efficient, less powerful system for sustained flight. You can see the folding propellers along the wings in the picture with the article, and the wingtip propellers don’t look like they have piston driven aircraft engines behind them. He also used the term “all electric”

That’s what I get for trying to add anything to the conversation I know nothing about :)

My father in law works on this project and he gave this context, fyi:

“This is an all-electric propulsion technology demonstrator. Electric propulsors over the wing are used for landing and takeoff. Otherwise, they are shutdown/stowed and aircraft flies with wing tip propulsors only. I have covered this technology in my Future Propulsion book”

So it sounds like it’s to make takeoff more efficient, but it’s not a 100% electric solution.

Moore is better.

Does this mean potentially new car batteries in the future too? If the weight is less and the amount is more plus they are safer it sounds like the perfect use case. I’m sure I’m missing something though as to why it wouldn’t work great for cars.

Toyota and a few other companies have been researching this as well.

The output was an issue and charging them was an issue/expensive to manufacture. When charging the solid state battery would cause a type of leak (oversimplifying this) and to manufacture it correctly would cost a lot.

We’re seeing the early adopter phase of the EV I feel like. Obviously the whole process isn’t green, it will take time for that. Same goes for the batteries. We have wet batteries now, but they’ll develop better ones.

Now THIS is what I call “uplifting”

Short range and low carrying capacity.

I feel amazing! Yes yes yes! I can win! I. Can. Do. This.

No.

It's tech, we rarely have revolutions, we usually have evolution.

All those breakthroughs will help battery tech getting better, one step at a time.

Hard to say, this particular application is pretty early in the R&D phase, but that said, solid state batteries in general are really picking up steam lately, we’ll be seeing a lot more of that tech coming to market over the next decade hopefully. I’m cautiously optimistic

The more weight you have, the more battery power you will need to achieve lift tho. And then the more power, the heavier the battery(s). Hopefully, one day this will be viable but i just dont see it on commercial and freight jets for quite some time

Even with this advancement electric is still leagues behind jet planes. Aviation will be the last form of transport to go green because of simple physics. Unlike most forms of transport the weight of an aircraft is not supported by the ground/sea and has to be constantly counteracted with lift generation. As a result every aspect of a modern plane is designed with weight in mind.

Even with this technology batteries are still way less energy dense than jet fuel which means less range and less passenger capacity. Batteries would need to advance an incredible amount in the next few decades to make it commercially viable. Were talking 6x the capacity. (or a tesla that can do 3000 miles)

And even then there's the issue of speed. Electric aircraft use propellers which struggle to go over 400mph ( and most large propellor aircraft cruise at 350) whilst jets can cruise at 550mph easily.

And SUSAN looks like a good possibility

https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/aeronautics/eap/airplane-concepts/susan/

Likely, if NASA has gotten this far, it means it's within 5 years of being put onto the public market.

Think rechargeable cordless power tools and mowers: the concept came from the need for fuelless, cordless, low energy chargeable battery powered tools to repair the space station. They weren't expected to catch on as long as there were the older methods of running power tools on earth. But, when an innovation like that was not only plausible, but cheaper and more convenient, corporations paid attention, worked with NASA's research, and made it happen.

They focus on aviation because selenium seems like a lot more scarce than lithium, so looks like it will never be use in mass production until they found a replacement for this compound.

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May be but it is still in research, not in production.

It's exciting if you want battery-powered short&mid-range aviation. Otherwise...eh. Depends entirely on how much the battery costs.

Increasing solidstate battery output is one of the things the industry has struggled with over the last 30 years though.

Apparently investing 20 billion a year gets you something beneficial every now and then. Who needs profit?

Solid state batteries with twice the energy density of lithium is a big deal.

Now what is the cost, life, and can it be mass produced?

It's going to be pretty important for short range aviation (electric engines are more reliable, deliver a lot of power compared to their size and weight and jet fuel is a major cost) and it could still be a major boon for long range aircraft. For example using lightweight electric engines to boost aircraft power during takeoff and climb and then cruising on jet engines specialized for efficiency at high altitude and cruising speed.

>using innovative new materials that have yet to be used in batteries

In other words, the things are going to be prohibitively expensive.

--> If they'd made a really good breakthrough that respects all relevant factors we wouldn't be reading it on MSN of all places.

If you're thinking "that's a weird looking aircraft" it's because the X-57 Maxwell uses a series of electric engines (with collapsing propellers) to boost airflow over the wings during takeoff (and landing?). This means that they can use smaller and more narrow wings which reduces wind resistance once the aircraft is up to cruising speed. Electric engines are sufficiently compact and efficient (and easily supplied with energy) that this is a viable solution for aircrafts using electric engines.

No. Batteries have a quite expansive list of relevant factors. If there was a breakthrough that doesn't have a major negative downside on any of those factors we'd be reading it in the respectable science magazines, not on MSN.

Cost.

NASA really should be making shit tons of money from all the stuff they've developed a la how the agency was self funding in For All Mankind.

Selenium? You mean the stuff farmers give to sheep to prevent sleeping sickness?

In that movie with David Duchovny, they manage to get loads of selenium from Head & Shoulders shampoo bottles and kill the huge alien with it.

The ones they bought are hybrid. They hold 30 passengers and have a range of 200km on electricity only. Electric planes are and can be viable in some niches, but when people say "electric planes could never be viable" that's not really what they mean.

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You gotta go read your FIL’s book, when he asks what you thought you can simply say “I’m making the necessary corrections”.

Eyyyyy

Narrow it down a bit, I’ve ignored a lot of David Duchovny movies

Evolution (2001). Comedy Sci-Fi

Careful you’ll get blocked

I'm imagining how this could affect Battle Bots.

Guaranteed that this technology will be given to another country and that country will benefit and not USA.

Okay, while this is great news, I know many battery engineers who would have a big problem with how this article presents every bit of the battery as some sort of world wonder. They’ve figured the theories out for almost everything in this battery decades ago, it’s the applications that have eluded engineers. A friend of mine even saw hand-made vertical stack prototypes 10 years ago that he was excited to sell to our company, but they were quick to say they have no idea how to make them except by hand. He also brought back some funky prototypes - a circular pack, a triangular pack, and one shaped like a splatter.

Selenium? You mean the stuff I use in my hair for dandruff?

Solid state batteries are the future and they will make gasoline engines obsolete…….once we can scale them up to be used in vehicles. Not just a gamechanger an Earthchanger.

and are they eco friendly to produce ? withou the need to mine our planet to death.

ok so for now its kinda useless until they find a way to make it easy , cheap and eco friendly (aka no more mining)

ecological disaster by mining the planet to death ?

CA CAW CA CAW TOOKIE TOOKIE

Basically*

Are you... Arguing against NASA?

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>I have covered this technology in my Future Propulsion book...

... if you had read my book itsfuckingpizzatime, you would already know this. –FIL

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Oh god, I saw some of that! Awful.

Not useless, just not universal either. Like the article suggests, there's enough selenium to use it in planes-- yknow, if it works out-- just not for cars, phones, everything else in the world that needs batteries.

You mean that science documentary, Evolution? It’s quite simple, as Arsenic is poison to Carbon based life forms, it follows that Selenium, the next element over, would be poison to Nitrogen based life forms.

Awfully good you mean

A humorless ice princess in need of a good humping

You don't need battery production to be eco friendly.

That is big oil's propaganda argument. Oil extraction and refining is terrible for the environment on top of the usage of the final product being bad.

Batteries can be recycled and will be due to the high value of their materials. Also, the usage of the energy can be clean unlike Oil. Therefore batteries are the clear environmental winner over time. With batteries most of the environmental friendliness happens during the mining phase. After that it's not too bad for the environment and can benefit society for decades of clean energy.

I've been reading about battery tech breakthroughs since 2008 or so. It's normal that such things take 5 to 10 years to become commercially available and only a fraction manages to get there at all.

Most people aren't aware however how much battery tech developed in a disruptive way. For the past 2 decades, battery prices per kw/h halfed roughly ever 4.5 years. This is due to all these advances that people think never arrive in products because there are so many news on it.

You can see the historic price development graph here: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

And btw, for photovoltaic and wind energy, the price development looks fairly similar.

Gimme

Let's give em 40 billion and a fuck ton of coke and see what these science boys can do!

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Definitely an underrated comedy classic.

Yuma

A lot of these resources are far more abundant in ocean water than lane. Desalinization is the future. With fusion having been unlocked, (a net return tokamak testing complete, with a newer more efficient design coming online in a few years) we’ll have more than enough electricity for electric cars, desalinization, recycling, and other needs we’ve been neglecting due to energy cost.

Wow that's 'incredible'

i thought we established that Ca Caw and tookie tookie doesn't work...

oh...nevermind.
Sing! Sing! Rub some funk on it!

(love that movie)

That movie also established that "cacaw cacaw" and "tookie tookie" don't work

I love that this is in "Uplifting news"!

Literally uplifting

This is literally uplifting

Backpack flight next plz

No. The news that will cause people to actually get excited is when large scale manufacturing is figured out for any of these tiny and lab created proof of concepts.

We've had "better" battery technology for years. We just can't make any of it at any kind of scale.

or we can ungrowth economicaly and demographicaly, go low tech, stop oil and use battery only when absolutely necessary ;)

there is no winner between oil or mining, they both sucks and destroy the planet. Do you know that due to the surge in EV and tech gadgets , we are going to mine our planet as much in the next 30 years that we did from antiquity until now ? thats just insane and wrong

Which is exciting in its own way. But more of a "I'm really happy to see progress" and not "the world will be forever changed after this comes out" kinda way. I'm excited that we are getting more and more knowledge about the subject and am hopeful for great things in the future.

Looks like the only downside here is the scarcity of selenium.

The only problem here is scarcity. The selenium required by the battery is much rarer than the lithium that batteries use now. So, unless they can find a replacement for the selenium, it's a no go for mass production.

i'm excited because it's NASA, not some private engineering firm making spectacular claims for publicity.

Those planes are still intended to run on electric-only the majority of the time.

And yeah, "that's not what I meant" is the traditional naysayer god-of-the-gaps argument.

"Electric planes aren't viable."

-- Short range planes become viable --

"Well I didn't mean those ones, that's a niche."

-- The niche expands --

"Well I didn't mean those ones either"

​

etc, etc, etc

Unfortunately… rich will hoard it up and force the price up so no one can afford it. It will be simialr to what happen with Concorde.

Selenium? You mean the open source umbrella project for a range of tools and libraries aimed at supporting browser automation?

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Ungrowth and go low tech..... essentially regress as a society. More death, less security, more susceptibility to climate change, environmental disasters, and disease. Lower standard of living and lower lifespans. No thank you.

Farming land destroys our planet. Building homes destroys our planet. It's not about destroying that planet. What's the point of having the planet if we don't use it?

What matters is are things sustainable? Are there long term consequences to the environment? Are those consequences worth it?

For mining, it's a no brainer, yes. Tear up large patches of land and extract needed resources. The world has tons of land so we can absolutely sacrifice some to for more valuable resources. There is lots of land which isn't utilized and likely won't be.

Society is moving forward and progressing. I hope that we work to progress in a more environmentally sustainable way. However, utilizing natural resources has been the only way mankind has improved our quality of life for thousands of years.

I will add that advances in energy technology will allow man to recycle more and do things in a more sustainable way. There is a lot to unpack there.

sorry, but price is - at least for me - not THE relevant factor, but energy density is.
Look at this brand new electric vehicle - it only costs 37000€ instead of 38000€ but you still only get 200km range out of it.
yeah.

Not really, nobody really says that very short range airplanes aren't viable. I mean sure, some idiots might. But what most people mean when they say that electrical airplanes doesn't really work is simply that the fuel density of batteries are orders of magnitude too low compared to fossil fuels, and that it will pretty much forever remain cheaper to use fossil fuels and then just compensate with direct-air capture on the ground to reach the same 0 co2 emissions. Sure, some miraculous new battery tech might come and change that, but some miraculous direct-air capture tech might come and make the electrification of planes completely useless too. Airplanes (most of them) just simply doesn't make sense to electrify due to basic physics. Rockets is another application where the biggest downsides of electrification are some of the most important aspects.

It’s on NASAs website too and it’s pretty significant. I’m an EV engineer and I’m excited.

Daily, few ppl need more than 100km if they can charge at home

There's not a ton of data in the NASA article, but it's made out to be a new architecture with unprecedented chemistry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if it's as wildly successful as they predict would it not be revolutionary?

This is the one thing keeping me from getting an electric vehicle. There is exactly a 0% chance my apartment will put in a charger so I'm stuck for now

Could you please provide examples of drastically improved batteries that are unfeasible for general use? Genuinely curious.

The worst part is they just need a couple dedicated normal outlets in the parking section. Most people would be fine charging their car off a tradional 13A outlet. 1.5-2 kWh would result in 6-8 kWh over night. And at an avr of 0.2kwh per km we get between 6-8km/h so over night that should be 30-50km which is much more than the average city travel.

"The density of batteries is too low" he writes in the comments section of an article about making denser batteries more suitable to air travel.

yeah, but i don't drive daily, i do most of the stuff in 20km radius with the bike or the cargobike (or with my 50ccm moped)
The distances i use my car for are usually between 400-1100km...

For situations like Urs it would never really be green or economical to go electric. If you can use ur personal transport vehicle or public transport the majority of the time it would be more polluting to get an electric car than it would be to just continue as your were and rent gas when you need distance. Untill we hit some massive breakthrough in battery tek I really see electric as the way to offset our daily travels and then maybe a hybrid solution for long distance

https://news.utexas.edu/2017/02/28/goodenough-introduces-new-battery-technology/

https://web.archive.org/web/20131107054525/https://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/09/18/solid-state-battery-developed-cu-boulder-could-double-range-electric-cars

Basically we've been able to make better batteries at the micro scale in labs for years. We just haven't been able to make them for industry.

I know plenty of people who have an electric car in nyc. Apartments don’t have them there. They charge when they go grocery shopping or travel. I do realize that we don’t drive as much as most people though so that might not be realistic for everyone.

> orders of magnitude

The OLED screens that are starting to appear in consumer products were first developed 15(?)ish years ago. It takes a long time to go from "developed technology" to finished product. There are also possible unknown issues that may keep this tech from scaling up to useful production. On the other hand, when you see lots of promising developments in a field in a short period of time you can be pretty sure that some of them are going to work out. So you can't bet for sure on this tech, but it's a good bet that something in development now will work out.

Are you excited about the battery development or did you have a cupcake?

I hate to be skeptical but I wouldn't be too optimistic, Exaggerated claims are made all the time by government funded researchers to get budget increases from the engineering and Science illiterates in charge of making the funding decisions.

Lol actually the battery development. Too early for Pam’s cupcakes. What I like about this is that it’s being used on a functioning prototype vehicle, not a bench test in a lab. I’m sure it’s outrageously expensive still and the cycle count is probably lower than ideal but private sector engineers should be able to improve those factors over time.

Anyone know what companies are researching solid state batteries or trying to produce prototypes?

Selsun Blue is the one with selenium, Head and Shoulders has zinc

What the fuck is wrong with my brain that I remember everything about that scene and can even picture it.

Any idea what the energy density is compared to kerosene (jet fuel)?

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Solid state has been around for some time since its inception. But practically, all its testing has been ultra-promising for some time. It's a matter of manufacturing capability now. Keiichi Kanehori laid the groundwork, while John B. Goodenough added much to material science and helped make it a breakthrough in its development. NASA has since been able to clearly display its far more capable use.

Sine for you price is not a factor will the Mercedes EQS with a range of 780km will be enough?

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/best-cars-vans/108345/top-10-longest-range-electric-cars-2022

edit correction range

Hmm, 500 watt-hour/kg. Could be something for local aircraft. An ATR42-600 needs about 2800kW when cruising so for an hour of flight you need 5600kg worth of batteries. "only" 1100kg more than the max fuel weight now.

I don't know what you would use it for, maybe amsterdam to london?

So, no.

That's not even the craziest supposition

Nasa claims 500 Watt-hours/kilogram in their solid state battery, or in other words 1.8 MJ/kg. Kerosene is rated at about 42 MJ/kg (and gasoline is about 44 MJ/kg) so there's a factor of 20 between them. Thats actually not as bad as it sounds, considering that electric motors are much more efficient at energy conversion than combustion engines that would be used to drive a prop.

One other important element is that you get rid of your kerosene as you use it, reducing your mass and thus your propulsion need. But your battery is still there at the end of the flight.

I really like how GPS is paid for with my taxes at the rate of about $6/year per US resident. That's cheaper than buying a map.
I am not down for the $9.99 silver tier Amazon WhereAmI subscription which works on up to three devices within 10 miles of my house and only works on Alexa watches and phones and cars.

Thanks, that's really interesting - it looks like electric motors are about 2X as efficient as gas? So this tech would mean that the overall non-waste energy density is about 10X?

That does seem like it's starting to get in the same ballpark, even if it is still somewhat distant.

What would be a good way to normalize this? Newton * second / gram of fuel considering a typical jet turbine and an electric one?

I like the movie a lot, but the copy I got did not have the scene with the suburban moms, I miss it; “I don’t have A dog!”.

Because it’s horribly embarrassing.

The pipistrel airplane is available today. It’d be nice to increase its range.

Why do the electric plane prototypes I’ve seen all have a large number of small engines/motors? It’s my understanding that electric motors do best at high-torque & lower rpm applications so I was expecting designs like the V-22 Osprey with two large props.

Is it a weight issue as electric motors scale up?

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