CATL battery successfully powers electric plane with 1,800-mile civil aircraft expected

schizoidman@lemmy.ml to Technology@lemmy.world – 190 points –
CATL battery successfully powers electric plane with 1,800-mile civil aircraft expected
electrek.co
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I seriously doubt the viability of this, but I'm looking forward to being proven wrong.

Possibility for private planes, but none for commercial planes. Just imagine a commercial passenger plane or cargo plane that needed a giant amount of electricity and like 12 hours of charging in between every flight.

Then, for safety reasons you'll need to have two batteries in case one goes bad.

You can simply do battery swaps. Plane refueling already requires heavy machinery and industrial scale. I bet battery swaps will be faster than refueling.

And, no more tedious fuel calculations, just charge it all the way up, it doesn't add any extra weight to do so.

Oddly enough I do actually think a charged battery is heavier, just as a full hard drive is heavier. But not to a degree that would matter.

https://toolsweek.com/do-batteries-weigh-more-when-charged/

That article you linked is utter trash, but it is correct about battery weight of a charged battery....technically....very technically....barely.

Like, a 4,000 mah lithium battery fully charged should weigh about 30 picograms more than when dead.

To put 30 picograms into perspective; a single 5 inch long human hair weighs around 0.04 grams. Well that's 40,000,000,000 picograms.

Haha, that's fair I didn't really vet the article as I've read about the concept and know it's true (although as you point out only on a technical level).