electric catamaran boat to set world record

[WavetoWave]

So solar farms wind generators the power grid and everything else is compact and elegant huh? Nuclear power is completely safe? Hydrogen the most abundant material in the world is difficult? Nice try but not making any sense...

No, the beauty of electric battery storage is it is completely agnostic to the source, it could be hydro, nuclear, solar, coal; doesn't matter. Nuclear is safe for sure.

Hydrogen is a tough cookie to crack, Toyota still can't pull it off after billions invested, the German companies have abandoned it mostly. It being abundant doesn't make it easy to isolate and store, gaseous or liquid. Tons of energy to do so. If it was possible, it would already dominate, but it has almost zero market use right now from a cost and efficiency standpoint.

[PanRonnie]

Jared that is not really the case in europe
Germany is building hydrogen stations in ever faster pace
But they will probably be aimed at truck transport and the occaisional car

[pcrussell50]

No, the beauty of electric battery storage is it is completely agnostic to the source, it could be hydro, nuclear, solar, coal; doesn't matter. Nuclear is safe for sure.

Hydrogen is a tough cookie to crack, Toyota still can't pull it off after billions invested, the German companies have abandoned it mostly. It being abundant doesn't make it easy to isolate and store, gaseous or liquid. Tons of energy to do so. If it was possible, it would already dominate, but it has almost zero market use right now from a cost and efficiency standpoint.

Agree. Hydrogen is a great fuel. But you either have to get it from petrochemicals, or split it off H2O, which is very energy intensive. Really, you could never do it to the worldwide scale you need without nuke. Sounds like you know this already.

The Germans have been playing with hydrogen for at least 20 years now. Before battery mania took hold. They are great at developing the tech in the lab. But nobody has solved the problem of getting it on on worldwide scale without bankrupting whole economies, or going all in on nuke.

One thing is for sure, if human beings survive the next thousand years, we will not be a spacefaring technological society without the atom. Period. The energy requirements will be far too great.

-Peter

[WavetoWave]

Jared that is not really the case in europe
Germany is building hydrogen stations in ever faster pace
But they will probably be aimed at truck transport and the occaisional car

That's actually not true, they haven't even built 100 stations yet. You can't even buy a hydrogen car, other than experimental ones that are prohibitively expensive. BMW, Mercedes and Audi are going all in on battery EVs. Hydrogen is too expensive and inefficient right now. Lot's of companies are working on it, including Bosch but it's not viable yet. Not even close and might only work on a long range truck, still not a great solution.

https://www.glpautogas.info/en/hydro...s-germany.html

[PanRonnie]

Jared you are a bit late to the party
I said in previous post battery cars yes but it,s going to need some serious main grid upgrade
Everything else without another battery chemistry not so much
And hydrogen still in it,s infancy
Betting on hydrogen see attached german goverment document

[pcrussell50]

Jared you are a bit late to the party
I said in previous post battery cars yes but it,s going to need some serious main grid upgrade
Everything else without another battery chemistry not so much
And hydrogen still in it,s infancy
Betting on hydrogen see attached german goverment document

Yep. and we're going to have to get used to some BIG weights, even at that. Right now, most of the battery car market is rich man's toys, Tesla, Rivian, Porsche/Audi. A Ridgeline-sized Rivian with the long range battery is pushing just under 8000lbs (GULP!) If battery cars ever become affordable enough to where they become the standard car for the suburban family of four or five, can you imagine what a full-sized SUV with useful range would weigh? 10,000lbs maybe? Maybe 9000lbs for a minivan?

-Peter

[David]

Air Canada, which is a private company, is buying hybrid airplanes from a Swedish company. Short haul only, but I never thought I would see electric planes or even hybrid planes.

Air Canada to buy 30 electric-hybrid airplanes, invest US$5-million in Swedish developer - The Globe and Mail

[Chaz]

Hey .. I got a great idea !!

More oil in the USA than we could ever use , how about we send a message to Washington in November ... your fired !

New blood that will take their foot off the necks of the oil companys .. and the American people !

Save the battery's for flashlights

[John S]

And the tech wave just keeps on a rollin...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news...ow/ar-AA11SO0s

[pcrussell50]

Air Canada, which is a private company, is buying hybrid airplanes from a Swedish company. Short haul only, but I never thought I would see electric planes or even hybrid planes.

Air Canada to buy 30 electric-hybrid airplanes, invest US$5-million in Swedish developer - The Globe and Mail

Damn. I hate to be such a Debbie downer here, but these kinds of sensationalist clickbait stories are borderline cruel to people holding out hope for a different future.

Air Canada gave only $5M dollars for this. To them, that’s cheaper feel-good money than if you or I bought Girl Scout cookies to help the local troupe or pack. That plane… If it is ever built and sold, will be at least four times that, just for one of them.

The manufacturer, Heart Aircraft hasn't even built a full sized cardboard model much less a prototype with battery and engines, much less taxi-tested one, which has to happen before “first flight in 2024” as the article claims. If they go from nothing, to even a first empty test flight of a prototype in a year and a half, it will have been the greatest achievement in the history of aviation. Not. Going. To. Happen. At least not anywhere near the time scale they are publishing for investors. Oh and hybrid propulsion of paying passengers is ten years away at least, from the FAA buying off on it's reliability. The FAA takes engine reliability VERY seriously, and especially new designs that have never been certified before.

===

If you are interested in electric airliners, the leading candidate by years is the Alice, by Eviation. A 9 passenger commuter. In 2019, they “sold” 75 of them to Cape Air, to run richies on the short hops to Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Nantucket etc... At least they’ve actually built a non-flying prototype with running engines, which is where we are now. It was supposed to be in service by 2022. It has not flown yet. Not even a single hop with just a test pilot. They have had setbacks. In 2020 the only one they had, burned to the ground in … you guessed it… a battery fire. After that, they were supposed to get one off the ground with only a test pilot on board “in summer 2022”. Nothing yet. Eviation's press release from yesterday says they are going to begin "high speed taxi testing" soon. That is a very big deal and is the last phase before an actual flight. It can take a while though because at high speeds on the ground, aerodynamics begin to be a factor and they will have a lot of data to crunch through before they can let it leave the ground with the required degree of confidence. It will be years if ever, before the FAA clears them to carry passengers for money. And they are years ahead of everyone else, even though they have yet to even test fly one. Still, looking at their numbers, their plan could actually work, as long as they keep their flights under about 200 miles. But the cost, waste, and inefficiency ... Three times the power and weight to do the same work ... ouch!

A little more: Cape Air is currently flying nine passengers at a time in piston twin airplanes with 300hp per side. The battery plane will also carry 9 passengers but (if it ever comes to reality AND meets FAA certification), it requires 850hp per each of it's two engines to carry 9 passengers because of the weight of it’s battery.

And more still: In order to carry passengers for money, there are certain range and endurance requirements. Every time you take off, you have to be able to fly to your destination, then fly to your bad weather alternate, and then for 45 more minutes just in case, all without landing to refuel. With a 1200lb Tesla battery, you get about 5 minutes at 1700hp before you hit zero, no reserve. Of course once airborne you could probably throttle back to half that. It doesn’t use a Tesla battery, I just threw that in for reference. It’s battery weighs 8300lbs. About 30% more than the entire FULLY LOADED weight of the planes they fly now, and again that’s just for the battery alone. All told, it will weigh two and a half times as much to carry the same 9 passengers, as the piston Cessna 402's they use now.

===

Bottom line: These sensationalist click-bait articles come up all the time. None has ever matured. And probably won’t for a very long time. I’ve been watching it for years. If you are truly interested, let's mark today’s date and we can revisit when we can actually buy a ticket on a Heart ES-19 like the one in the link. I'd even tip my hat to see a youtube clip of a prototype actually getting airborne with a live human test pilot. At that point, they'd still be years away from carrying paying passengers, but at least having one built, and capable of getting off the ground at all would be quite an achievement.

The article says Air Canada gave $5M. That’s probably about what they spend on wear and tear for brakes in a week of flying. That $5M is throwaway marketing hype for pennies on the dollar when people read those headlines ... And actually believe them. In marketing, believing is way more important than producing.

-Peter

[Chaz]

And the tech wave just keeps on a rollin...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news...ow/ar-AA11SO0s

MSDNC /// LMAO .. jonboy .. are you really trying to take the village idiot title away from the CRUM .. ???

Since none of you leftie lunes can come up with a single weekend cruiser .. I'll throw you a bone ..

[kelvin523]

yawn...

[PanRonnie]

it,s why i don,t get the mercury V12
especially the the big multi engines boats would have been a start to electrify
electric outboards with LS3 generators inside running on LNG
A battery for in harbour operations which may or may not set your boat on fire
and then hopefully within the decade replace the LS3 generators with Fuel Cells
with hydrogen generation being done close to the harbour so it does not have to be trucked in
the Yasa motor doubles as generator so that is 24 kg for a 100/60 KW generator

[PanRonnie]

it would be even better with the effeciency of the oppossed piston engine for immidiate future
instead of the LS3 but that engine still has to come mass market

[John S]

I looked around a little bit, but it would be interesting to know if they put a full battery set in the vision boat, or limited it to stay light. Same as you'd do with an ICE mota. I doubt any of them are running full tanks. Can't wait to hear what Darris says when someone sets up an A-bote with electric. He was quite opposed to 3L hanging off the transom, so....

The lake by my house that I paddle board on is pontoon central. More and more are going to EV outboard. Chatted with a guy that threw me a beer one day that had one, he loved it for that application. Then he did a fly by to show me the speed, not thinking aboot blasting me with his wake. I got a good laugh out of it. And another Modelo when he realized he almost flipped me.