Action at the sixth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium did not stop at the end of each day’s presentations, but carried into the evening hours on Friday, April 27. Three theme dinners allowed additional speakers to present materials on motors, aerodynamics, or energy. Paul Peterson, the founder and CEO of Volta Volare’, introduced the dinner crowd to his Volta Volare’ GT4 high-performance, hybrid aircraft, which joins Pipistrel’s Pantera and John McGinnis’ Synergy in the realm of fast, roomy airplanes that will have operating costs far below those of similar traditional airplanes. When your editor saw news about Peterson’s creation in Popular Science, he asked Dr. Seeley if CAFE could invite him to the EAS, which received an immediate, positive response, and Peterson unveiled his airplane to an appreciative and knowledgeable audience. The GT4 is a four/five seat canard, currently flying and originally designed with a Continental TSIO550 engine in mind, but re-engineered from the firewall aft to house the hybrid EViation …
Better Batteries: 3x Life, 30-Percent Cost
The CAFE blog’s recent news about graphene electrode developments by Argonne National Laboratory in applications by Envia, a startup battery company in Newark, California, led to an almost immediate follow-up by another startup, California Lithium Battery (CalBattery), but with a different form factor in mind. The company’s purpose can be divined from their mission statement. “Our mission is to become the leading United States-based developer and manufacturer of advanced, safe, high-performance Very large Format (VLF) lithium batteries for utility energy storage, EVs, and specialized industrial and military applications.” These batteries would be used in transportation and stationary power markets in North America, Europe and Asia. Asked to define VLF batteries, founder and CEO Phil Roberts said that their transportation batteries would come in 40 Amp-hour prismatic packaging, and those for the stationary power market would range up to 400 Amp-hours. This large format approach allows more active materials to be packed into a single package, increasing the total energy density …