Koenigsegg’sTorque-Dense Electric Motor and Hybrid Drive Train

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Biofuels, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Koenigsegg (Cone-igs-egg), a Swedish car maker that enjoys shocking with its sticker prices, is going hybrid with a new, torque-dense electric motor and hybrid drive train.  The Swedish car maker is known for its ultra-exclusive, ultra-high-performance vehicles, which have even undone the Stig, anonymous race driver on the BBC Series Top Gear. David Koenigsegg’s Gemera manages as much as 250 mph on a two-liter, three-cylinder engine, augmented by a set of three electric motors.  Describing him as, “an inveterate tinkerer” who squeezes “extraordinary amounts of power out of internal combustion engines,” Clean Technica explains the “breakthrough products that could transform the world of electric cars.” One “breakthrough” would seem to be a package of a three-cylinder engine coupled to some powerful electric components.  The “Tiny Friendly Giant (TFG) engine pumps out 600 horsepower (450 kilowatts) and weighs only 70 kilograms (154 pounds).  It has no camshafts, relying instead on solenoid-actuated, artificial-intelligence-controlled valves to let the fuel and air in and …

Stanford’s Ultra-thin Solar Cell

Dean Sigler Announcements, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

We’ve noted here recently that early (and even current) examples of solar-powered aircraft suffered from the low efficiency of the panels that collected sunlight to power them.  The panels add weight, and so far, nobody’s flying with more than 29-percent efficiency.  What if a different approach, using ultra-thin solar cells covered the entire aircraft?  That’s the possibility with Stanford University’s “new, ultrathin photovoltaic materials.” Your Editor’s take on this is that 5.1-percent efficiency now offered by the Stanford solar cells could be applied by wrapping the entire plane, much like car customizers wrap high-end automobiles.  That’s occurred to researchers.  “Imagine an autonomous drone that powers itself with a solar array atop its wing that is 15 times thinner than a piece of paper,” said Koosha Nassiri Nazif, a doctoral scholar in electrical engineering at Stanford and co-lead author of a study.  “That is the promise of TMDs.”  TMDs refers to Transition Metal Dichalcogenides. This material is composed of a so-called …

Flying the Atlantic Electrically – The Freedom Flight Prize

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Hydrogen Fuel, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

It almost stops your editor in his tracks when he reflects that 93 years ago, Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in his Spirit of St. Louis.  Even more astounding, competitors may win the Freedom Flight Prize by the 100th anniversary of that flight by making a cross-Atlantic and return flight in a 100-passenger, all-electric airliner. Carbon Footprint Ltd. Lindbergh’s plane, custom built but derived from a Ryan M-1 mail plane, cost $10,580 ($158,357 in 2019 dollars) and earned the $25,000 Orteig Prize.  Now, an organization in England, “Carbon Footprint Ltd. has launched a competition to encourage sustainable passenger flight. It has created the Freedom Flight Prize, a competition focused on crossing the Atlantic Ocean 100-percent powered by renewable energy — with seating for 100. The first to do so will win the prize, which is expected to be worth millions of British pounds by the time there’s a winner,” according to Cleantechnica.com. “The competition is open to manufacturers, research/academic groups and inventors to …

All-Electron Battery – Stanford Strikes Again

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

With recent news of a solid-state battery coming for the labs of Yi Cui, a second solid-state solution seems to follow from another Stanford Laboratory.  The All-Electron Battery, funded at least partly by an ARPA-E grant that underwrote the program from 2010 to 2012, has fostered a startup, QuantumScape. Starting from the stated need for a battery “with twice the energy storage of today’s state-of-the-art Li-Ion battery at 30% of the cost,” ARPA-E worked with the premise that Stanford was “developing an all-electron battery that would create a completely new class of energy storage devices for EVs. Stanford’s all-electron battery stores energy by moving electrons rather than ions. Electrons are lighter and faster than the ion charge carriers in conventional Li-Ion batteries. Stanford’s all-electron battery also uses an advanced structural design that separates critical battery functions, which increases both the life of the battery and the amount of energy it can store. The battery could be charged 1000s of times …