Cleantechnica has heartening news from the Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Battery prices for electric vehicles, a key factor thus far in keeping electric cars more expensive to buy than smoggier alternatives, are dropping, and somewhat quickly. “According to an April 2012 Bloomberg New Energy Finance report, the average price of batteries used in electric vehicles dropped 14% from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012. ‘The average price of an EV battery at the end of Q1 2012 was $689 per kilowatt hour, compared to $800 per kilowatt hour in 2011, according to that report. “Compared to 2009, prices were down approximately 30%. “By 2030, BNEF projects battery prices will fall to $150/kWh (in 2012 dollars).” The report explains, “Electric vehicles such as the Mitsubishi Motor iMiEV, Nissan Leaf or Tesla Model S require between 16 and 85kWh of storage, with a total cost of $11,200 and $34,000, or around 25% of the total cost of the vehicle. Battery pack prices for plug-in hybrid vehicles such …
Quiet May Be the New Black
Noisy airplanes are the bane of modern living. (Well, that and the myriad other intrusive sounds with which we are surrounded.) People can create and easily get signatures on petitions to close 70-year-old airports surrounded by 20-year-old housing developments, so General Aviation’s survival will at least partly depend on hushing our aircraft. We’ve been privileged to see and hear the passage of e-Genius, Pipistrel’s G4, and Chip Yates’ Long-EAS with a Craig Catto propeller, which emitted a barely discernible howl when it pushed the airplane at full power to a new time-to-climb Guinness record at the California State Airshow in early October 2013, reaching 500 meters (1,640 feet) in one minute, four seconds. This quest for quiet presses on the big airplane producers, too, anxious to be good neighbors and give passengers a less raucous flight. One engine make, Snecma, has been working on the problem since before 2009, when this report appeared in the blog Envirofuel. “Volvo Aero will …
EMG-6 Takes First Hops
Brian Carpenter of Adventure Aircraft Inc. (part of his Rainbow Aviation Company) must trust his engineering, since he acted as his own test pilot for the first flights of his EMG-6 ultralight glider, a craft with options of mounting one, two, three (or even four, as Brian suggests) electric motors. As an ultralight motor glider it can carry a pilot, ballistic parachute, and a small powerpack with one motor, controller and batteries. Depending on the pilot’s weight, the airplane might be able to self launch and reach soaring altitude, or for heavier payloads, use the motor as a sustainer unit after a ground or aircraft tow to seek out distant thermals. While waiting for this next development, look at the number three test flight, towed from the runway by a “quad” all-terrain vehicle (ATV) and on landing demonstrating a remarkably short landing roll into only a 9-mph wind. Currently favored, the Plettenberg Predator motor and a Schulze 400-Amp motor controller …
Less Expensive Batteries May Lead to More Homebuilt Electric Airplanes
It came as somewhat of a shock that high-quality lithium battery prices could drop low enough to encourage electric aircraft developers an opportunity to “scrounge” in the style of the original home-built airplane builders. Early aircraft “home-builders” often cannibalized war-surplus aircraft or wrecks of private planes for parts and materials that could be adapted into their own designs. Ground power units (GPUs), for instance, became an early supply point for engine cores that could be converted to aircraft use – possible on “Experimental” homebuilts, although frowned upon by the FAA for factory-builts. Your editor thought at one point that auto wrecking yards might provide a source of used batteries for experimental electric airplanes, but the thought of all the internal fracturing and potential for disaster with batteries of previously stable but now uncertain reliability cooled that enthusiasm. These batteries should not be used, but rather recycled. A discussion in Green Car Congress surprised with seemingly ultra-low, but verifiable prices on …
Biofuels That Avoid Harm to the Food Supply
Biofuel manufacturers seem to be making great progress in the application of their combustibles to aircraft use, while gaining momentum in the amounts produced. Whether these will be economically and environmentally viable remains to be seen, but early indicators show hopeful signs. Biofuels have several advantages over the ancient plant life that has been squeezed for millions of years to give us eons-old pollution. They burn cleaner, can be cheaper to produce, and with distributed growth and refinery centers, could reduce the cost and hazards of distribution. Several issues surround the new fuels, though, including the food-versus-energy debate. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), for instance, has endorsed two widely disparate politicians for a bi-partisan attempt to mitigate problems associated with channeling food stocks into fuel feedstocks. “EWG commends Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) for taking action to address the environmental, economic and consumer harms that result from diverting corn for transportation fuel. The Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act …
72 Hours of Flight, Exercise, Rest, and Hypnosis
The first Solar Impulse airplane, HB-SIA, has demonstrated repeatedly that it can stay up all day and all night. The idea of perpetual flight has enticed designers for years, but the idea of a perpetual pilot has not – until the space age. Charles Lindbergh had a restless night before his May 20, 1927 takeoff for Europe and spent much of the 33-1/2 hour flight battling his nearly overwhelming need for sleep. A solar-powered flight will be considerably slower, and thus longer in duration, than Lindbergh’s epic voyage, however. With planned flights for HB-SIB, the second Solar Impulse craft, anticipated to span continents and oceans, the need for maintaining pilot health and alertness becomes imperative. As the team explains, “Over the several years Solar Impulse has proved that is its possible to fly with unlimited endurance. But as we know, Solar Impulse is more than a technical challenge. It is also about pushing human limits to new levels. “The Transatlantic …
Algae to Crude While You Wait
Engineers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington have beat nature by millions of years in turning algal glop into crude oil, cooking a “a verdant green paste with the consistency of pea soup” into oil, water, and a nutritious batch of byproducts. Douglas Elliott, the laboratory fellow leading PNNL team’s research says, “It’s a bit like using a pressure cooker, only the pressures and temperatures we use are much higher. In a sense, we are duplicating the process in the Earth that converted algae into oil over the course of millions of years. We’re just doing it much, much faster.” “Faster” means an hour or less, researchers having combined several chemical steps normally associated with bio-fuel production into one continuous process. Wet materials in this process reduce costly and time-consuming steps normally required to dry the algae. This simplification, among other steps, makes the process commercially viable. Elliot notes that, “Cost is the big roadblock …
Dendrites Grow Like Kudzu
Getting your fiber is a good idea for digestion and general health, but what if those fibers get you first? Or at least destroy your battery? This is the situation as described by a report from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in which the writer tells us that dendrites are hairy little lithium fibers that “sprout from the surface of the lithium electrode and spread like kudzu across the electrolyte until they reach the other electrode.” These 3D reconstructions show how dendritic structures that can short-circuit a battery form deep within a lithium electrode, break through the surface and spread across the electrolyte. Besides resembling a fast-growing invasive plant, the dendrite bridge across the electrodes can cause an internal short circuit and possible fires in the battery, making dendrites extremely unwanted intruders. Because they pop up from the surface of electrodes, dendrites might easily have been understood as a surface phenomenom. Nitash Balsara, …
Racing Improves the Electric Breed
September 2014 will mark the debut of a new electric racing series, Formula E, with all the things essential to aeronautical design – light weight, strength, speed, and power – highlighted in abundance. Staged as a series of 10 races around the world on city streets, the series will field 10 teams, each with two Spark-Renault SRT-01E racers. This is the first electric race vehicle to be homologated, or approved, by the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile), the international body overseeing formula and rally car racing. The cars’ monocoque aluminum and carbon fiber chassis “fully complies with the 2014 FIA crash tests – the same used to regulate Formula One. The French firm Spark Racing Technology, along with others including Italian Dallara, constructed the vehicles, and McLaren Electronics Systems the electric powertrain and electronics. Williams Advanced Engineering supplies the 200 kilowatt (270 horsepower) batteries, and a Hewland paddle shift sequential gearbox transmits all that power to Michelin 18-inch tires. Renault …
Hykangoos for the High Alps
The French Postal Service has run a small fleet of electric Renault Kangoos for at least the last five years, and has over 10,000 on order for their fleet. With additional orders from postal services in Europe, Asia and Australia, the Kangoo may rival the Leaf or Tesla’s Model S for ubiquity. The little van’s 170 kilometer (105.4 mile) range works perfectly well within towns and cities, but is not nearly adequate for extended drives into the mountains and rural stretches of France, a country the size of Texas and far more mountainous. A hybrid solution comes to mind, but La Poste has come up with a very different type of hybrid – one that may have an application in aircraft. The fleet will begin testing Symbio FCell fuel cell range extender kits on postal routes longer than 100 kilometers (62 miles), with UTBM (Université de Technologie de Belfort-Montbéliard) monitoring the trials. Runs through the countryside in the Franche-Comté region …