Tesla Battery Researchers Discuss Enabling Electric Aircraft with New Batteries

As reported by Electrek: Tesla battery researchers are pointing to enabling electric aircraft with new next-generation battery cells.

The new battery cell offers breakthrough improvement in energy density.

One important comment that we overlooked is that the battery researchers mentioned this new battery could even enable “electrified urban aviation”:

“Such high energy density can increase the range of electric vehicles by approximately 280 km or even enable electrified urban aviation.” 

They are specifically talking about “urban” aviation, which likely refers to those electric air taxi services that several companies, like Uber, are working on.

These services are based on electric vertical take off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can generally carry a few passengers over short distances.

The current anode-free lithium-metal battery cells tested by Tesla’s battery research team in Canada under Jeff Dahn’s lab are achieving a ~360 Wh/kg energy density and volumetric energy density of 1000 Wh/L.

It could result in higher capacity eVTOL aircraft, but it is also getting really close to enabling commercial electric planes.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously revealed that he had a design for a commercial electric VTOL aircraft and estimated that Li-Ion batteries would need to achieve a 400 Wh/kg energy density in order for batteries to beat kerosene and his electric aircraft to be viable.

Last year, Musk said that he believes this is about five years away.

The anode-free lithium-metal battery cells only need roughly 10% increase in energy density to get there.

However, Dahn’s team is mostly focused on improving the energy density of the cells at the moment since they are currently only achieving 200 cycles — though that’s already a great improvement over what they were achieving last year.

For commercialization, the industry is generally looking at closer to 800 to 1,000 cycles.

Now none of that mean that Tesla would get into the aircraft business, but Elon has been hinting at it for years.  There’s a chance he might just be waiting for battery tech to catch up and it might be about to.

Tesla Begins Construction of World’s Largest Energy Storage Facility

As reported by Forbes: Tesla TSLA +4.3% and PG&E recently broke ground on a record-setting energy storage system in Moss Landing (Monterey) California that, once complete, will be the largest such installation in the world. The battery park will be able to dispatch up to 730 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy to the electrical grid at a maximum rate of 182.5 MW for up to four hours using 256 of Tesla’s lithium-ion (Li-ion) Megapacks. Tesla and PG&E will have the option to upgrade Moss Landing’s capacity to bring the system up to 1.2-gigawatt-hours which could, according to Tesla, power every home in San Francisco for six hours.

The facility is expected to come online in 2021 and will be designed, constructed, and maintained by both companies, with PG&E retaining ownership. The construction of the Moss Landing site and other such mega-storage projects around the world portends a massive shift away from hydrocarbon-based power systems towards renewable generation backed up by utility-scale storage.  According to Fong Wan, a senior vice president at PG&E:

“Battery energy storage plays an integral role in enhancing overall electric grid efficiency and reliability, integrating renewable resources while reducing reliance on fossil fuel generation. It can serve as an alternative to more expensive, traditional wires solutions, resulting in lower overall costs for our customers…the scale, purpose and flexibility of the Moss Landing Megapack system make it a landmark in the development and deployment of utility-scale batteries”

If the Moss Landing site is upgraded to the 1.2 GW capacity as anticipated, its storage capacity will be approximately ten times larger than Australia’s Hornsdale Power station, the previous record holder and another Tesla project. The next largest Li-ion storage system in the world is the United Kingdom’s Stocking Pelham station at 50 MW.

Nikola Wins Order for 2,500 Electric Garbage Trucks

As reported by Yahoo News: Electric vehicle manufacturer Nikola (NASDAQ:NKLA) has inked a deal with Republic Services (NYSE:RSG) to develop and manufacture 2,500 waste and recycling collection trucks, breaking into a huge potential market for electric vehicles.

Nikola said the order includes 2,500 electrified chassis, with an option to increase the order to 5,000 units. The trucks will have a range of 150 miles and recharge overnight, with Republic expecting to introduce them into its fleet in early 2023.

Nikola said the order is the largest single EV commitment by a waste company. The garbage truck design is similar to the Class 8 heavy-duty design Nikola is already bringing to market, making waste a natural extension for the company.

"The refuse market is one of the most stable markets in the industry and provides long-term shareholder value," Trevor Milton, Nikola's founder and executive chairman, said in a statement. "The Nikola Tre powertrain is ideal for the refuse market as it shares and uses the same batteries, controls, inverters and e-axle. By sharing the Tre platform, we can drive the cost down for both programs by using the same parts."

Republic is the second largest U.S. provider of recycling and waste services.

Nikola is pre-revenue, and it's stock trades more on the company's potential than on current results. The company has a lot to prove, but if it is able to design a reliable truck that helps Republic and other waste collectors reduce greenhouse emissions and cut fuel costs, this deal could be a key step in transforming that potential into actual sales.

Spacecraft of the Future Could Be Powered By Lattice Confinement Fusion

Photo: NASA

Dr. Theresa Benyo documents beam conditions during NASA’s lattice confinement fusion experiments while Jim Scheid and Larry Forsley discuss the beam stability data.

Nuclear fusion is hard to do. It requires extremely high densities and pressures to force the nuclei of elements like hydrogen and helium to overcome their natural inclination to repel each other. On Earth, fusion experiments typically require large, expensive equipment to pull off.

But researchers at NASA’s Glenn Research Center have now demonstrated a method of inducing nuclear fusion without building a massive stellarator or tokamak. In fact, all they needed was a bit of metal, some hydrogen, and an electron accelerator.

The team believes that their method, called lattice confinement fusion, could be a potential new power source for deep space missions. They have published their results in two papers in Physical Review C.

“Lattice confinement” refers to the lattice structure formed by the atoms making up a piece of solid metal. The NASA group used samples of erbium and titanium for their experiments. Under high pressure, a sample was “loaded” with deuterium gas, an isotope of hydrogen with one proton and one neutron. The metal confines the deuterium nuclei, called deuterons, until it’s time for fusion.

“During the loading process, the metal lattice starts breaking apart in order to hold the deuterium gas,” says Theresa Benyo, an analytical physicist and nuclear diagnostics lead on the project. “The result is more like a powder.” At that point, the metal is ready for the next step: overcoming the mutual electrostatic repulsion between the positively-charged deuteron nuclei, the so-called Coulomb barrier.

Photo: NASA

Deuterons have been forced into the atomic lattice structures of these samples of erbium used in NASA's fusion experiments.

To overcome that barrier requires a sequence of particle collisions. First, an electron accelerator speeds up and slams electrons into a nearby target made of tungsten. The collision between beam and target creates high-energy photons, just like in a conventional X-ray machine. The photons are focused and directed into the deuteron-loaded erbium or titanium sample. When a photon hits a deuteron within the metal, it splits it apart into an energetic proton and neutron. Then the neutron collides with another deuteron, accelerating it.

At the end of this process of collisions and interactions, you’re left with a deuteron that’s moving with enough energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier and fuse with another deuteron in the lattice.

Key to this process is an effect called electron screening, or the shielding effect. Even with very energetic deuterons hurtling around, the Coulomb barrier can still be enough to prevent fusion. But the lattice helps again. “The electrons in the metal lattice form a screen around the stationary deuteron,” says Benyo. The electrons’ negative charge shields the energetic deuteron from the repulsive effects of the target deuteron’s positive charge until the nuclei are very close, maximizing the amount of energy that can be used to fuse.

Aside from deuteron-deuteron fusion, the NASA group found evidence of what are known as Oppenheimer-Phillips stripping reactions. Sometimes, rather than fusing with another deuteron, the energetic deuteron would collide with one of lattice’s metal atoms, either creating an isotope or converting the atom to a new element. The team found that both fusion and stripping reactions produced useable energy.

“What we did was not cold fusion,” says Lawrence Forsley, a senior lead experimental physicist for the project. Cold fusion, the idea that fusion can occur at relatively low energies in room-temperature materials, is viewed with skepticism by the vast majority of physicists. Forsley stresses this is hot fusion, but “We’ve come up with a new way of driving it.”

Photo: NASA

Bayarbadrakh Baramsai and Philip Ugorowski confer on the neutron spectroscopy system used to detect fusion neutrons.

“Lattice confinement fusion initially has lower temperatures and pressures” than something like a tokamak, says Benyo. But “where the actual deuteron-deuteron fusion takes place is in these very hot, energetic locations.” Benyo says that when she would handle samples after an experiment, they were very warm. That warmth is partially from the fusion, but the energetic photons initiating the process also contribute heat.

There’s still plenty of research to be done by the NASA team. Now they’ve demonstrated nuclear fusion, the next step is to create reactions that are more efficient and more numerous. When two deuterons fuse, they create either a proton and tritium (a hydrogen atom with two neutrons), or helium-3 and a neutron. In the latter case, that extra neutron can start the process over again, allowing two more deuterons to fuse. The team plans to experiment with ways to coax more consistent and sustained reactions in the metal.

Benyo says that the ultimate goal is still to be able to power a deep-space mission with lattice confinement fusion. Power, space, and weight are all at a premium on a spacecraft, and this method of fusion offers a potentially reliable source for craft operating in places where solar panels may not be useable, for example. And of course, what works in space could be used on Earth. 

Modified Cessna is the 'Largest' Electric Aircraft to take Flight

As reported by Engadget: Electric aircraft are ever so slightly closer to becoming a practical reality for travel. Magnix and AeroTEC have flown what they say is the world’s largest all-electric aircraft. Their modified Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, the “eCaravan,” flew for 30 minutes around Washington state’s Grand County International Airport using Magnix’s 750HP Magni500 motor instead of the usual turboprop engine. The flight was “flawless,” Magnix chief Roei Ganzarski said in a statement to FlightGlobal.

There are compromises. Batteries consume massive amounts of space and weight, and the current eCaravan could haul just four to five passengers (instead of as many as 14) for a distance of 100 miles. Magnix and AeroTEC hope to eventually carry nine people 100 miles once the technology has advanced, but that won’t happen until after the initial aircraft’s expected certification in 2021.

Still, this could be useful in the long run. The companies envision these Caravans reviving short-hop flights that became impractical for many airlines. The operating costs would be much more feasible (a 30-minute flight costs $6 in electricity, for instance), and emissions wouldn’t be an issue. It will take a while before you could take a longer electric journey, but this could beat many alternative and less eco-friendly transport options when you need to get from city to city in a timely fashion.

Microsoft's OpenAI Supercomputer has 285,000 CPU Cores, 10,000 GPUs

As reported by Engadget: Last year, Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI, a company co-founded by Elon Musk that focuses on the development of human-friendly artificial intelligence. Today at the Build 2020 developer conference, we're seeing the first results of that investment. Microsoft announced that it has developed an Azure-hosted supercomputer built expressly for testing OpenAI's large-scale artificial intelligence models. 

While we've seen many AI implementations focused on single tasks, like recognizing specific objects in images or translating languages, a new wave of research is focused on massive models that can perform multiple tasks at once. As Microsoft notes, that can include moderating game streams or potentially generating code after exploring GitHub. Realistically, these large-scale models can actually make AI a lot more useful for consumers and developers alike. 

The OpenAI supercomputer is powered by 285,000 CPU cores and 10,000 GPUs (each of which are also united by speedy 400 gigabit per second connections). And while Microsoft didn't reveal any specific speed capability, the company says it's the TOP500 list of publicly disclosed supercomputers.

At this point, it's unclear how, exactly, OpenAI will take advantage of such a powerful system. But we can at least expect the results to be interesting. The non-profit is best known for developing an algorithm that could write convincing fake news, as well as proving that even bots learn to cheat while playing hide and go seek.

Maybe OpenAI will take a note from Microsoft and develop something like its Turing models for natural language generation, a large-scale AI implementation that's powering things like real-time caption generation in Teams. It's backed by 17 billion parameters for understanding language -- a particularly impressive number when competing solutions clocked 1 billion parameters last year. Microsoft also announced that it's making the Turing models open source, so developers will be able to use it for their own language processing needs soon.