Post #3118494
2026-06-04 20:10 UTC
Replies (4)
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@cjd@pkteerium.xyz 2026-06-04 20:34
Okay so these are lithium-air batteries, they pull oxygen from the air so they don't need to carry as much weight. Presumably they're heavier when discharged because they're carrying a bunch of oxygen with them. The problem is impurities in the air poison the chemistry. So the challenge is getting the air perfect. Currently there has been a lab demonstration of a 1.2kwh/kg battery with 1000 cycles of lifespan. 12kwh/kg is really just a theoretical maximum for the chemistry. CATL is saying "this is the future", and since they're the biggest battery maker in ... the world (?) ... that probably means there's going to be a whole lot of R&D pushed at this. So 12kwh/kg has not actually been shown by anyone, but the way battery density competition has been going so far, we should expect that batteries will cross over the 1kw/kg line in the decade. And given they're about 0.3 now, that's a big improvement already. Enough for short haul aviation. By about 3 or 4 kw/kg, they're going to be competitive with jet fuel given the losses of a jet engine. At this point there will really be no reason not to electrify aircraft since fuel is dominant in the cost of flight.
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@CliffSecord@nicecrew.digital 2026-06-04 21:22
I wouldn't be so sure. First, CATL is a Chinese activity, well-known across industry to be fueled with the end products of industrial espionage- I wouldn't trust their shit to power a flashlight. Second, even this group openly concedes that 12kWh/kg is purely theoretical at this point, as their current prototype arrays are only doing a tenth of this projected performance. They have a long way to go. Third, hype is all good with a proven product that's market-ready, but when false hype on YT by third-party fanboys & influencers flood the space, it does far more harm to any advances in the state of the art than it does good. https://interestingengineering.com/energy/catl-12000-wh-kg-lithium-air-ev-battery
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@notsoloud@expressional.social 2026-06-04 22:03
@cjd@pkteerium.xyz It's not real. It's the theoretical maximum which will never be achieved in practice. But if they can solve the problems getting just part of the way would be awesome. Funny enough, planes with these batteries would weigh less on takeoff than on landing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery @CliffSecord@nicecrew.digital
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@2k115@mastodon.social 2026-06-05 08:16
The 12 kWh/kg is the theoretical max for Li-Air. Practical cells sit around 1-1.2 kWh/kg due to electrolyte degradation. Even with 90% powertrain efficiency balancing jet fuel thermal losses, aviation needs at least 3 kWh/kg at pack level. The real bottleneck isn't just physics; it's the post-2030 geopolitical monopoly over pure lithium metal anodes and open-cell stability.