{"id":16245,"date":"2018-06-15T13:47:01","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=16245"},"modified":"2018-06-15T13:47:01","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:47:01","slug":"electric-planes-hurdles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/06\/15\/electric-planes-hurdles\/","title":{"rendered":"Electric Planes Hurdles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve briefly mentioned electric planes <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/04\/18\/that-darn-climate-change-consiracy-ctd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">before<\/a>, but now there&#8217;s the tragic news of a crash of an experimental electric plane. This <em><strong>IEEE<\/strong><\/em>&#8216;s <em><strong>EnergyWise<\/strong><\/em> blog <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/energywise\/aerospace\/aviation\/prototype-electric-plane-built-by-siemens-and-magnus-aircraft-crashes-in-hungary-killing-both-on-board\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a> suggests the batteries might have caught fire:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A local news site report, translated by Google, <a href=\"http:\/\/hirosveny.hu\/hirek\/kecskemeti-pilota-zuhant-le-pecs-mellett\">reports that<\/a>\u00a0&#8220;The aircraft ignited during the crash, the flames were extinguished by professional firefighters in P\u00e9cs and Sikl\u00f3s within a few minutes&#8230;.&#8221; However, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.avweb.com\/avwebflash\/news\/Two-Dead-In-First-Siemens-Powered-eFusion-Crash-230912-1.html\">AVWeb cites witnesses<\/a> who saw\u00a0the aircraft \u201cmaneuvering at low altitude before catching fire and crashing in a near vertical dive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If indeed the fire began in the air, and if the airplane was\u00a0indeed a pure electric version of the eFusion, then one might speculate\u00a0the problem could have started in the lithium-ion battery pack. Such\u00a0batteries\u00a0can undergo thermal runaway, in which one\u00a0cell\u00a0suddenly releases a lot of\u00a0heat, causing neighboring cells to do the same in a chain reaction. Thermal runaway\u00a0has plagued\u00a0cellphones, laptops, and <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/consumer-electronics\/portable-devices\/exploding-ecigarettes-are-a-growing-danger-to-public-health\">e-cigarettes<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But it&#8217;s too early to tell.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose there are two approaches to this problem. The more desirable is to construct batteries that just don&#8217;t catch fire, while the less desirable, but analogous to the fossil fuel world, is to have a fire suppression system that hardly ever fails. It&#8217;ll be interesting if they go one way, the other, or both. I suspect the latter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve briefly mentioned electric planes before, but now there&#8217;s the tragic news of a crash of an experimental electric plane. This IEEE&#8216;s EnergyWise blog post suggests the batteries might have caught fire: A local news site report, translated by Google, reports that\u00a0&#8220;The aircraft ignited during the crash, the flames were \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/06\/15\/electric-planes-hurdles\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16246,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16245\/revisions\/16246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}