It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Bye Aerospace and Oxis Energy: an electric plane revolution or more Moller nonsense?

page: 1
6

log in

join
share:

posted on Nov, 30 2019 @ 07:26 PM
link   
Bye Aerospace is a company based in Colorado. They have been working on electric personal planes for some time now. Their goal is make purely personal aircraft capable of being used in place of piston powered equivalents, like the Cessna. They are planning on getting an aircraft purely electric with double range of what is possible now with sparky planes. They even have a proof of concept aircraft. The secret sauce is the battery tech from a company called Oxis Energy.

Oxis Energy has been working on improved Lithium-Sulfur batteries. This battery tech has been known since the 1960s. While the energy density is good, no, not even just good, it's great! it has a problem with the lithium polysulfide cathodes dissolving away into the electrolytes. Oxis claims they have a new secret electrolyte that preserves the cathodes for far, far longer. The other problem with LiS batteries is their tendency to catch fire. It's some ugly chemistry in their. OTOH, Oxis claims they have solved this, too.

How much better is better for the claimed energy storage? The LiS batteries Oxis has supposedly pack a whopping 500 Wh/kg. In comparison, the Tesla Model 3 batteries have an estimate between 168 Wh/kg to 250 Wh/kg. At worst, that's twice the energy density of Musk's current generation of Li-Ion batteries. The other primary competitor to the Li-Ion battery was the Aluminum Ion battery, but it's energy density is only about 20% more than Li-Ion. That said, the Al-Ion batteries are ridiculously safe with a demo by Stanford showing a drill go through a battery in use and no fires or sparks. Still, Al-Ion has mass manufacturing problems, still.

I don't want to sound like a total debbie downer here, but the question becomes why hasn't Oxis been either bought out or selling its battery tech to more than just Bye Aerospace? The military, transportation, even energy storage companies would be wildly all over this. And yet...there's very little press on this. Even the announced partnerships on their website seem anemic.

So what is going on there? Is this actually a revolution? Or is this a dead end tech that has nontrivial problems Oxis isn't discussing? Or are we seeing a faux breakthrough much like Moller?

Moller claimed, fwiw, he was working on flying cars and soaked up most of the capital available for that development. He kept claiming the flying car was just around the corner and he needed just a little more money to be put in. He was sued multiple times and lost. Now there are others working in that space and they have made far, far more progress than he ever did.

Oxis' tech has enormous potential. if it's real. The electric plane revolution could be big. The personal vertical flight regime could be even bigger: pushing a 'flying car' to 100 km and an hour+ flight capability would be a big win for the business model. If the whole Oxis thing is actually real.

spectrum.ieee.org...
newatlas.com...
oxisenergy.com...
en.wikipedia.org...



posted on Nov, 30 2019 @ 08:41 PM
link   
a reply to: anzha

Airbus Defense put Li-S batteries on their Zephyr HAPS, and flew it for 14 days. It used solar power during the day, and battery power at night.



posted on Nov, 30 2019 @ 08:46 PM
link   
From the first link....
"The company says it has 186 patents, with 87 more pending..."
It could be very informative to have a look at these patents to see just how viable this technology is.



posted on Dec, 1 2019 @ 03:09 PM
link   

originally posted by: Osirisvset
From the first link....
"The company says it has 186 patents, with 87 more pending..."
It could be very informative to have a look at these patents to see just how viable this technology is.





Correct me if I'm wrong, but patents don't have to be overly technical. It may or not explain exactly how the proposed device works. Lots of things have been patented that weren't the best idea.



posted on Dec, 1 2019 @ 03:30 PM
link   
The crash'em-up-derbies of the future are going to kick ass!



posted on Dec, 1 2019 @ 07:47 PM
link   
a reply to: anzha




the question becomes why hasn't Oxis been either bought out or selling its battery tech to more than just Bye Aerospace? The military, transportation, even energy storage companies would be wildly all over this. And yet...
...
Oxis' tech has enormous potential. if it's real.


You kind of answer your own question, no?

I'm not going to convert to joules, but even twice a Tesla battery is eight times less weight -efficient than avgas.


originally posted by: RadioRobert

We are nowhere close enough to batteries with enough energy-density to make battery-electric air vehicles make any sense. Anything all electric is a PR effort, college program, and/or straight scam.


Goes double for any VTOL project.



posted on Dec, 3 2019 @ 06:42 AM
link   

originally posted by: RadioRobert
a reply to: anzha

I'm not going to convert to joules, but even twice a Tesla battery is eight times less weight -efficient than avgas.


This is why any attempts at electric aircraft that are anything more than giant quadcopters with 40 minute endurances that hop from charging station to charging station delivering Amazon packages are nothing more than investor scams, Moller 2.0.



posted on Dec, 11 2019 @ 02:16 PM
link   
A bit of semi competition:

www.theguardian.com...




top topics



 
6

log in

join