4 ms·
That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
by knownjorbist 5y ago
That's a shame, lets hope progress is made to allow for longer voyages.
- semi-extrinsic 5y agoIt's not going to be, sorry. Having batteries small and light enough for practical large container ships, or transatlantic aircraft, would literally mean reducing the battery in a Tesla down to the size of two gallons of milk. And that is way beyond even the most optimistic estimates of battery technology development. If you look at the cool improvement graphs shown by battery manufacturers, it's always kWh per dollar that is improving. In terms of energy per weight, the best we have commercially is NCA batteries at 220 Wh/kg. The best we have on the prototype stage in laboratories is around 400 Wh/kg, but those last less than a hundred cycles. The theoretical maximum is that of a lithium-air battery, where people have demonstrated 1600 Wh/kg in the lab, but they are not rechargeable. Even if we could somehow make those rechargable, a standard Panamax container ship would require 50 000 tonnes of batteries. But it has a capacity of 52 000 tonnes. So with the most extreme revolution in battery technology, we could just barely make a battery powered container ship that carried 96% batteries and 4% actual cargo.