Remember that all airframes are aerodynamically very efficient in climb and descend because speeds are usually close to minimum drag speed.
That’s right but to clarify it’s not best L/D speed (as I realized after thinking about it) it’s best endurance speed, which is even slower. Regardless, in the absence of an engine inefficiency (extra rich mixture) or a configuration related aerodynamic inefficiency (flaps used or gear not retracted), the plane is more efficient in the circuit than in cruise. The extra fuel (or kW-Hrs) used in climb is saved in the glide to landing.
Allegedly, this TiO2 based cell reaches 70% charge in 5 minutes and has a far longer life.
http://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=809fbb2f-95f0-4995-b5c0-10ae4c50c934
Thoughts?
My thought would be that the energy density would be unlikely to be good enough for aircraft – other than starter batteries. Lithium has an atomic mass of 3; sodium 11; titanium 22…
Another factor is the storage efficiency, about which the article says nothing. Until now, the faster the charging speed, the lower the efficiency. Especially for power hungry applications like cars and aircraft, an efficiency below say 75 percent (i.e. only three quarters of the electricity put into the cells can be retrieved) would be unacceptable. For low power devices like phones and notebooks it would not matter that much.
Low efficiency also translates into massive heat generation during charging.
It’s not so bad if you spend hours on the charging, but if you are putting it all in in say 10 minutes, that’s a lot of heat to get rid of, and it will be a huge challenge to get rid of it from the deeper portions of the battery volume.
Finally, fast charging needs a lot of power available. The most you can get in a typical house, single phase, is of the order of 100A (23kW). Much more than that needs 3 phase… in a previous house (now my ex’s house) we got 3 × 100A put in, which cost about 1000 quid but they only had to run a 30m overhead cable to achieve it, so no road digging. That was 70kW. It was done for Economy 7 (night time only demand) swimming pool heating, after oil became as expensive as electricity, to power a 40kW heater. More than that is not achievable in most urban scenarios because the cables running up and down the street are not big enough, never mind the cables upstream of that…
Of course all the above supposes that the power source is the mains. If it was a 100kw diesel set on the back of an old lorry you could taxi up, switch on, wait 10 mins and taxi away. Presumably it would be red diesel and big diesel sets are easily available with good efficiency. Far cheaper to install than all that 3-phase, especially at a typical airfield.
Sounds a bit like fuel laundering, though!
Finally, fast charging needs a lot of power available. The most you can get in a typical house, single phase, is of the order of 100A (23kW). Much more than that needs 3 phase… in a previous house (now my ex’s house) we got 3 × 100A put in, which cost about 1000 quid
In Germany, every household gets 3 phases and for a single house, the standard is 3×63A (43kW) but you can ask for more, the cabling to the house usually does at least 3×80A. German regulations require every house to draw evenly from the phases and the maximum permitted unbalanced load on a phase is 6kW.
When I got my electric car, I wanted to have the fastest charging possible but unfortunately the BMW i3 only charges single phase (they knew most of the cars would be sold outside Germany). I sent an application to the grid operator asking for an exemption to the unbalanced load limit and to my surprise, it was granted. A few months later I got an email saying they made a mistake granting it [because I posted in a forum about it with a scan of my permission letter and they got swamped by requests] and unless I have already installed the equipment, the permission is hereby revoked. Of course it was already installed. I was sure I would have to break the regulations (how should they know and why would it matter anyway) but to my surprise my installation is 100% legal! 
Lucky you Achim. I have a Renault Zoe, which can draw 43kW, but I’ve got only single phase house in UK.
Upgrade to 3 phases is too expensive.
I have a 22kWh battery, if I want to recharge it to 70% in 2 minutes like proposed in that link, I need 462kW. I can’t see any connectors for this kind of power. With a 2 prong DC connector this will be a massive plug.
In Germany, every household gets 3 phases and for a single house, the standard is 3×63A (43kW)
We are the last house on a long power line and although we have 3 phases, we can only draw 10kW. Switching on the washing machine together with the dishwasher brings us close to that limit already, so (fast) charging an electrical car will never be possible. The power grid will break down anyway as soon as more than 10% of the current cars will have been replaced by electrical ones…
The power grid will break down anyway as soon as more than 10% of the current cars will have been replaced by electrical ones…
Yeah, I don’t think more people should buy electric cars. Just today a guy on the sidewalk gave me a thumbs up when he saw me in my electric car. Happens all the time. A very cheap way to gain a lot of social prestige
Of course they don’t know that I burned 100l of high lead fuel today flying from Oostend to Stuttgart
