You see people, if you actually read the article you’ll see that the 10x better performance brings structural batteries up to 20% of Li-ion, from 2% therefore, with no factor for weight reduction, and 1/3rd of the tensile strength of aluminium, equals, er, useless. Tripling power - to 60% of Li-ion - and tensility is theorized and would be actually useful for two wheel, & car & van transport, & boats if the high tensile components were significantly lighter and all stored power. You’d save 20% in battery dead weight for a start. A decade away if at all.
If we are not blind. Commas are useful for not eating grandmas. 
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Asp says it will probably be more than a decade before structural batteries are deployed in vehicles because of their significant power demands and regulatory challenges.
But don’t worry.
Stay tuned. (A volcanic winter or two might slow some things, though.)
Li ion battery technology has nearly plateaued. We can’t squeeze much more out of them as far as energy density. If airplanes do go electric we will need an all new battery technology. Structural batters actually have more mass per watt than their non-structural counterparts, so it makes no sense to call them massless, weightless, or invisible.
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Yes, that is probably overstatement. But if your smartphone battery was its case, it would be effectively invisible, and if the combined weight of a separate case and battery was comparable (or more) than its structural battery phone equivalent, what would you call that? (We had already discussed the likely plateau of battery chemistries.)
I would hope that my phone wouldn’t be invisible since I lose it too often as it is.
I really don’t see Li+ fueling airplanes because it doesn’t have the needed energy density. Li+ might work for fun little 1 or 2 person vehicles that fly around for less than hour, but it isn’t a solution for commercial aviation. If materials advance to the point where Li+ start to be a possibility it will still be far cheaper and efficient to use carbon based fuels. You would also have to factor in the cost of building planes with cutting edge materials. Why pack around tons of batteries when you can take up that same weight with cargo and passengers? Until batteries can reach 30% the energy density of fossil fuels it is going to be hard for them to compete.
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I do think there is some cool technology in the pipeline, though. Did you see the one about Jetoptera, above? They already have a drone in operation.
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Technological development is hardly dead in the water. It hits speed bumps on occasion, but usually find a workaround. And this gives me hope.
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It is cool, but not practical for commercial aviation.
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That is too premature a lay conclusion, I think.
I share the same hopeful attitude. We will need to invent brand new technologies, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be overcome.
In the mean time, algae derived biofuels might be a viable stopgap. Algae contains a lot of fat which allows it to replace kerosene as aviation fuel. There are a few research groups breeding and genetically manipulating algae for just this purpose.
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Energy density:
Li ion batteries: 0.8 MJ/kg
Aviation fuel: 46.2 MJ/kg
Whatever you can do with batteries you can do 50 times better with aviation fuel.
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Jetoptera is not using batteries, nor will it within the near foreseeable.
What an absurd waste of temperate resources. Nuclear backbone electricity for hydrogen is the only sustainable way.
Which is 250 times better than what you can do with structural batteries that have insufficient tensile strength other than as seats.
I do agree with hydrogen from nuclear. However, it would take a lot of retooling and R&D to make hydrogen work in commercial aviation. Biofuels could be plug and play, and algae could have a lot less environmental and resource impacts than other sources (e.g. corn oil). Algae could never fuel all the vehicles in the world, but it could fuel niche markets like commercial aviation.
We got a couple of decades to develop H fuelled jets, trucks, tractors. Nobody is going to create vast alga pools with refineries to maintain millions of people in the sky. Concurrently. Not even the Saudis. Certainly no other G20 economy, let alone a G7 one. All biofuels come at an obscene opportunity cost.
Agreed. The only way it would work is through government subsidies which is what currently props up corn ethanol production. Heck, even oil production is subsidized here in the US.
What hydrogen is found in the atmosphere is not from water, but from radioactive decay and primordial sources. Atmospheric hydrogen is steadily lost to space, given its molecular weight and relatively high velocity.
To replace fossil fuel by electrolysis, water is broken into hydrogen and oxygen, and reunited when used. What concerns me is that hydrogen will escape between electrolysis and use, and will do so on an industrial scale. Water depletion may not be immediately noticeable, but neither was CO2 at the dawn of the industrial revolution.