EV-6A: A Thought Experiment

[David Z]

Nuclear fusion is 30 years away (still). By 2050, we'll be charging our EV-x for 65 cents.

[YvesCH]

Originally Posted by rv8ch

Salty! and true. When I was a kid in the 70s we were sure we'd have flying cars before 1999. Not sure how they were supposed to be powered - I should have been paying more attention in school.

No doubt dead dinos are amazingly energy dense.

Look at the solar impulse - they kind of proved the concept of an electric aircraft - now it's up to the rest of us to take that work and run with it.

https://aroundtheworld.solarimpulse.com/

Some of the guys that built that are on this forum building RVs - I'm sure that they can chime in with their views.

Come on Mike,

I am not building anymore I am flying...

And yes Solarimpulse was quite a extreme project and not very userfriendly for the pilot.. But we also had to fly through the night several days in a row.

Some of my ex-colleagues are now working on small propulsion systems for GA aircraft but still there is no chance in more than 90min of flight.
check out https://www.h55.ch/products

Cheers Yves

[kaa]

Originally Posted by scsmith

I can’t prove this but my suspicion is that as battery energy density increases, the potential hazards increase too. Li-ion are already pretty dangerous. After working on an electric V-TOL for a couple of years At Zee.Aero I decided against an electric self-launch sailplane. The folks I worked with were top in the field and we had a couple of spectacular accidents. Boeing and Tesla have both had big mishaps and you can bet they really know what they are doing.
It is not a realm for amateurs. It is really easy to turn a $20,000 battery into hazmat.

Interesting, could you elaborate your thinking about sailplane? Is it the fact that high-density batteries don't tolerate being damaged or shorted or is there something more subtle to this?