Lithium-Sulfur Battery Project Aims to Double the Range of Electric Airplanes

When Standard Motors briefly very first wowed the planet with its EV-one electric auto, back again in 1990, it relied on lead-acid batteries that packed a piddling thirty to 40 watt-hrs for each kilogram. The venture eventually died, in element mainly because that metric was so lower (and the charge was so large).

It was the arrival of new battery models, over all the lithium-ion variant, that released today’s electric-auto wave. Today’s Tesla Product 3’s lithium-ion battery pack has an estimated 168 Wh/kg. And significant as this strength-for each-body weight ratio is for electric vehicles, it is much more significant nonetheless for electric aircraft.

Now comes Oxis Vitality, of Abingdon, British isles, with a battery based mostly on lithium-sulfur chemistry that it claims can considerably increase the ratio, and do so in a product which is harmless more than enough for use even in an electric airplane. Especially, a plane created by Bye Aerospace, in Englewood, Colo., whose founder, George Bye, described the project in this 2017 write-up for IEEE Spectrum.