[_trackno5]

Would this be something that might make electric aircrafts practical?

AFAIU the good thing about regular aircrafts is that as it burns fuel, it becomes lighter. That doesn't happen with batteries, obviously.

[johnday]

Technically speaking, batteries do get lighter when discharged! But not in any useful way, and entirely unlike the situation with aeroplanes, of course.

[capableweb]

Do they technically actually do get lighter? Since it's a solid-state battery, nothing is actually moving outside the battery (the ions move from one electrode to another, but they remain within the battery while charging/discharging) and because of law of conservation of mass, the weight should stay the same.

But I'm no battery expert, maybe someone knows better.

[capableweb]

I think even with a 50% weight reduction for the same amount of energy, it still doesn't come close to the energy density of jet fuel.

And furthermore, there are more things to consider than just the energy itself, if we want to deploy it widely. Things like charging time, changing existing infrastructure, costs for R&D and development and finally all the regulatory approvals you'd have to go through. Of course not impossible but I think we're still really far away from making it happen.

[cyberlurker]

In regards to charging time, I would think physically switching batteries to a charged one (or many) would make a lot of sense. Just a new form of the current refueling process airplanes go through now.

[throitallaway]

We just need to line the fuselage (or make it out of) batteries.

[ramesh31]

> Would this be something that might make electric aircrafts practical?

Electric will never replace jet fuel. It simply can't compete for long haul heavy airliner flights. But we only need ~1000wh/kg (cheaply, mass produceably) for general aviation to go electric. A 50% increase from current average LiPo specific energies gets us about half way there.