<story><title>Ultralight lithium-sulfur batteries for electric airplanes</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/with-ultralight-lithiumsulfur-batteries-electric-airplanes-could-finally-take-off</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phonon</author><text>Electric motors are simpler, more reliable, smaller, lighter, almost perfectly efficient, and have better torque characteristics than ICE.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t compare the energy storage density in isolation. Engines are heavy...Model S&amp;#x27;s motor generates 362 horsepower (according to the official specs), and only weighs 70 pounds...the equivalent ICE would be 500+ :-)&lt;p&gt;(Yes, the inverter weighs something, but the transmission is much simpler as well for electric...overall you save a few hundred pounds easily...A Model 3 battery pack is between 600 and 1000 pounds--so pretty close to the crossover point.)</text></item><item><author>rolleiflex</author><text>&amp;gt; Oxis recently developed a prototype lithium-sulfur pouch cell that proved capable of 470 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg, and we expect to reach 500 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg within a year.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, gasoline &amp;#x2F; petrol &amp;#x2F;  benzin (wherever you are in the world) has an energy density of 12200 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg.&lt;p&gt;In other words, even in a world where all petroleum is perfectly depleted, we would still be producing synthetic gasoline for high-demand applications and capturing 100% of the emissions for recycling —  essentially using gasoline as a battery. It’s just too good an energy storage to ignore.&lt;p&gt;I’ve been looking at cars and geeking out on internal combustion engines for the past few weeks since I had to buy a car, and for the usual Silicon Valley guy such as yours truly whose standpoint on cars hadn’t been much more than ‘I want a Tesla’, it was an outright revelation.&lt;p&gt;ICEs are real technology — and for a software guy it is easy to understand because the complexity is bounded by physical dimensions of parts (i.e they don’t work past a certain small size) so you literally see human-size machinery with human size movements. It’s been a refreshing change from potentially unbounded complexity of software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway189262</author><text>We&amp;#x27;re still not at the point where weight savings from motor offsets battery. Tesla cars are all extremely heavy for their size</text></comment>
<story><title>Ultralight lithium-sulfur batteries for electric airplanes</title><url>https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/with-ultralight-lithiumsulfur-batteries-electric-airplanes-could-finally-take-off</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phonon</author><text>Electric motors are simpler, more reliable, smaller, lighter, almost perfectly efficient, and have better torque characteristics than ICE.&lt;p&gt;You can&amp;#x27;t compare the energy storage density in isolation. Engines are heavy...Model S&amp;#x27;s motor generates 362 horsepower (according to the official specs), and only weighs 70 pounds...the equivalent ICE would be 500+ :-)&lt;p&gt;(Yes, the inverter weighs something, but the transmission is much simpler as well for electric...overall you save a few hundred pounds easily...A Model 3 battery pack is between 600 and 1000 pounds--so pretty close to the crossover point.)</text></item><item><author>rolleiflex</author><text>&amp;gt; Oxis recently developed a prototype lithium-sulfur pouch cell that proved capable of 470 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg, and we expect to reach 500 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg within a year.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, gasoline &amp;#x2F; petrol &amp;#x2F;  benzin (wherever you are in the world) has an energy density of 12200 Wh&amp;#x2F;kg.&lt;p&gt;In other words, even in a world where all petroleum is perfectly depleted, we would still be producing synthetic gasoline for high-demand applications and capturing 100% of the emissions for recycling —  essentially using gasoline as a battery. It’s just too good an energy storage to ignore.&lt;p&gt;I’ve been looking at cars and geeking out on internal combustion engines for the past few weeks since I had to buy a car, and for the usual Silicon Valley guy such as yours truly whose standpoint on cars hadn’t been much more than ‘I want a Tesla’, it was an outright revelation.&lt;p&gt;ICEs are real technology — and for a software guy it is easy to understand because the complexity is bounded by physical dimensions of parts (i.e they don’t work past a certain small size) so you literally see human-size machinery with human size movements. It’s been a refreshing change from potentially unbounded complexity of software.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>outworlder</author><text>Forgot about that on my longer reply. EV engines are _tiny_ and incredibly efficient.</text></comment>