PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - I can't wait for electric/hybrid aircraft.
Old 26th Sep 2011, 21:56
  #126 (permalink)  
IO540
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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I am deeply suspicious of battery life claims.

I have never had any consumer product, with any battery technology, where the battery has made more than 100-200 cycles.

Just now, I have a Thinkpad laptop, original cost over £1000, whose "6hr" battery now makes about 1.5hrs. To be fair I probably knackered it by frequently topping it off before a trip, but that will happen with a car/plane too.

Only this one I can replace with an Ebay fake one for maybe £100 which will do "6hrs" (really maybe 4hrs, for maybe 100 cycles, before that goes in the bin too).

The £5k battery in your car or the £20k battery in your plane won't have an Ebay option

Presently the whole business, and most of the photovoltaics business, hangs together only due to huge subsidies, and a lot of people being more "green" than having brains, not to mention a lot of bent salesmen.

When I started in electronics business in 1978, my first product was a differential temperature controller for solar water heating Some of the salesmen who sold the systems ended up in jail; in some cases for assaulting customers. Their prey was mostly the retired rich homeowners in the more remote parts of the UK, west of Bournemouth especially. Apart from this "sharp" end of things, little has changed. Almost none of the systems will pay back before they fall to bits. Only swimming pool solar heating makes sense, due to using low grade heat and cheap and dirty materials.

I'd love to see electric cars and planes because it is such a super way to produce motion, but it is many years away before mainstream.
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