Large electric motors, batteries and vehicles

eggtimer rocketry
SilicdyneTRF
the model rocket show
the rocketry show
The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Yeah, Heart Aerospace appears to have a good future. I was quite convinced that batteries could increase the efficiency of any land vehicle just by retrieving kinetic and braking energy, but it took Heart Aerospace to show batteries could also be used effectively in airplanes.
https://heartaerospace.com/Many range options in specs:
– 200 km all electric
– 400 km electric+hybrid
– 800 km electric+hybrid 25pax
https://heartaerospace.com/es-30/Many good news stories:
https://heartaerospace.com/newsroom/
⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡

This kind of thing makes my jaw drop: a scooter that can connected to other copies so they can be driven together. Useful for a rental scooter company that wants to collect many of them with one driver when scattered all over a city. But I can also imagine a family riding together. This would be possible only with batteries because power has to be synced between the scooters. It's such an easy thing to visualize, it's amazing we haven't seen it sooner.
connectedscooters.jpg
https://www.cycleworld.com/story/mo...scooter/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡

A short video on mining Ni and Co in Finland.

 
Last edited:
I'd say this counts as a real mass market EV, because its new car price is lower than the average new car price of all cars. At this point, in my view, a battery is the single most desirable option a car can have so even though I've never driven a Kia myself, I'd certainly take a ride in this.



And this might be a near perfect car. I say "near" because I assume something is wrong somewhere but I don't know what yet. One of favorites.

 
Last edited:
OverTheTop said:
My wife and other family members have driven Kia cars for a long time. No complaints at all.

(Edit) Kia EV6 has recently won our Wheels magazine car of the year.
Click to expand...
I have little reason to test drive any car these days, but hopefully I'll get to someday. Here's Doug Demuro on the EV.

 
kuririn said:
What is the difference between an EVTOL and an oversized drone?
Click to expand...
I think everything I've seen being called an EVTOL was an oversized drone for carrying people, but I'm not sure if that always holds. Maybe @KC3KNM has ideas, he seems to be the TRF expert on electric flying things.
 
kuririn said:
What is the difference between an EVTOL and an oversized drone?
Click to expand...
Depends if you’re flying in it or not. Would be the same with any aircraft. Think RPA, from my understanding a drone is an unmanned aircraft.

Not sure what “oversized” has to do with it, there are quite a few very large RPAs and autonomous aircraft. Maybe you’re confusing drone with multirotor? I think the distinction there would be if there’s a lifting body/wings or not.
 
For example, this is called both a flying car and an EVTOL.
Looks like an oversized quadcopter drone to me.
What is the distinction, other than the controls are internal rather than external.
 
kuririn said:
For example, this is called both a flying car and an EVTOL.
Looks like an oversized quadcopter drone to me.
What is the distinction, other than the controls are internal rather than external.
Click to expand...

To be fair they could also call it a flying coffee table if they’d like to. None of these words really have hard definitions. “Drone” apparently came on the scene in the 40’s to describe UAVs (now referred to as RPAs), inspired by the name for a male bee.

Not sure what they’ll be called in the end, but “oversized quadcopter drone” sounds like part of an article title from a mainstream news outlet.
 
kuririn said:
Actually it's what it looks like to me.
Click to expand...
Then why are you asking? :)

There’s no real hard naming conventions in the EVTOL industry. Most of it just ends up whatever people call things. Why are these called “flying cars” if they aren’t able to operate as a car as well? If you want to call an aircraft you sit in a drone, feel free.

EVTOL seems to work for now for most people. Here’s a list of some classifications for EVTOLs that are typically used for differentiation between design philosophies (https://evtol.news/classifications/).
 
Good summary of vehicle-to-grid. It will take decades to implement, but so will widespread EV adoption.

"Someday, millions of vehicles could use special bidirectional chargers to absorb energy when it's plentiful and release it back to the grid as needed, helping utilities manage heatwaves and other spikes in demand. This vision rests on something called vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G."

https://www.businessinsider.com/ele...-f150-lightning-2022-11?utm_source=reddit.com
 
Last edited:
Funkworks said:
Just gonna move that to that other thread to try keeping things together.

(My POV is that an engineer working on batteries and motors would not be working on self-driving software, and vice-versa, so I'd give them different threads. Each specialty is demanding enough on its own.)
Click to expand...
I was not aware of the other thread. Thanks. :)
 
Pete.D said:
A month ago, a friend of mine purchased a new Prius "Prime", which is a "plug in" hybrid that's supposed to run most of the time on its battery. The manual states that a full charge requires 5 hours from a standard 120 volt outlet, or 2 hours from a special 240 Volt outlet (the type used by an electric clothes dryer). Her round-trip commute is 125 miles at highway speeds; when she works from home she generally drives 30 to 40 miles locally, and she frequently makes daily trips of 220 to 330 miles on work assignments, visiting her friends or on weekend get-aways.

Unfortunately she's had a few issues:
First, the car's on-board charging cable is not long enough to reach a suitable outlet in her house, and it's specifically stated in the manual that it not be used with an extension cord. Therefore she cannot charge at home or when visiting friends or get-aways. There are suitable charging stations at work, but they're sometimes occupied. She's used a public charging station once, but was dissatisfied with the multi-hour wait while charging.
Second, the car's battery apparently has a range of only 20 to 25 miles when fully charged (the dealer said that's typical). Since the majority of her trips are much longer than that and she can't charge at home, her car's battery is nearly always discharged. Fortunately the car is a hybrid, so the engine runs constantly unless she's braking, moving slowly or stopped in traffic.
Thirdly, her mileage is nowhere near the 50+ MPG that was claimed; it's actually not much more than her previous conventional Toyota RAV-4.

So how practical could a pure-electric car be for her? I'm feeling that for the charging time to be reduced to 5 or 10 minutes for full charge at public charging stations (such as at gas stations), charging systems and/or batteries will have to evolve to a much higher level than is currently attainable.

I don't see that rapid charging at home/work/friends will ever be economically feasible: It's my understanding that all existing and proposed rapid-charging stations require industrial-grade 3-phase power far in excess of that available in residential areas. Even when a medium-power 240 Volt dryer-grade connection (generally installed in a garage, which my friend doesn't have room for) is used, full-charge time for a modern long-range electric car exceeds 10 hours.
Click to expand...
I installed a Level 2 charging station in my carport. Solved some of the issues you stated.
 
Greg Furtman said:
Aptera is subcontracting building its body components to an Italian company who will make them out of carbon fiber.

Click to expand...

I can't think of anything else I'd rather test drive.

⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡

A few bits of info on grid scale batteries.





Interestingly, NASA came up with a kind of battery in the 70's for space-based solar panels, that happens to be so scalable it's presently being used for some of the largest grid storage systems in the world.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19830006412
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19850004157/downloads/19850004157.pdf
 
Last edited:
Funkworks said:
Anyone wants to build a Cybertruck?

https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/careers/search/?department=6&site=US&state=TX
Nikola and Chargepoint to cooperate on charging infrastructure.

https://nikolamotor.com/press_relea...elerate-charging-infrastructure-solutions-212
Battery recycling bins at Audi dealerships:

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/news/redwood-audi-consumer-battery-recycling-partnership
Click to expand...
@Funkworks , I tried messaging you but for some reason I can't. I was wondering if there is a solar energy thread like this & the Wind Power one.
 
Greg Furtman said:
@Funkworks , I tried messaging you but for some reason I can't. I was wondering if there is a solar energy thread like this & the Wind Power one.
Click to expand...
Found it!

https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/solar-power.175265/
Yeah I think I disabled messaging when I first created my account as a way to control how much time I spend in this hobby. Hopefully I'll get to go to launches one day and meet people but I'm just too busy these days. I prefer posting publicly as it makes writing for an audience second nature (I'm sort of a technical ghostwriter/editor/assistant in real life).
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Winston
Putin's six "superweapons"
Replies
10
Views
2K
Winston
Winston
luke strawwalker
Went to JSC today...
Replies
2
Views
1K
luke strawwalker
luke strawwalker
goldlizard
Living on Mars from
Replies
15
Views
2K
aerostadt
aerostadt
M
Space Shuttle Models
2
Replies
36
Views
10K
lw_hughes
L
Peartree
Is your rocketry/auto parts collection insured?
Replies
12
Views
3K
luke strawwalker
luke strawwalker

Latest posts

Back
Top