Comment by trhway
5 days ago
i don't see them mentioning of price and C-rating. Suppose their C-rating is sufficient. Current widely available cheap batteries are almost 300Wh/kg. So, on a 3 kg drone with up to 3 kg payload (say RPG-7 single shaped charge warhead) with say 30 min flight time the new battery will give you 10 min additional flight time. At what price? If the price results in having only one 40 min drone instead of 2 30 min drones, then in the current war, only say 10% drones would need to be with new batteries, while it would be most effective to have the rest with the old batteries as the current war seems to be about horizontal scaling.
Overall - their page sounds like a revolution in battery industry as they hit all the points - durability, capacity/weight, fast charging, etc. It is like Musk should just close his GigaFactory. I mean, i would like such a revolutionary development as in particular it would mean we'll soon get personal VTOLs (where price aspect is less important than in the case of drones mentioned above) ...
Yeah, I was noticing that too. There is a company out there, Amprius, which has validated their silicon anode lithium ion batteries that can discharge at 10C (or 20C pulses), have varying densities from ~345wh/kg to 450wh/kg, and are shipping them to customers for drones and VTOLs.
I think until we have an independent lab verify the results, it's pretty much impossible to say if their (Donut Labs) claims are true or not. The only thing I'm particularly suspicious of is that they claim their battery was verified but didn't say by who or provide a whitepaper on it. Both of those seem to be the bare minimum for most battery manufacturers, and with their extraordinary claims I'd assume they'd have them front and center.
I agree, but I suppose most batteries in circulation at the front lines are not fresh, and likely have 75%-90% of the original capacity after intense discharge-charge cycles multiple times a day. If his battery does not deteriorate as quickly, it may be worth the price, for non-kamikaze-type drones. Not a shaped charge and ramming into armor, but a mortar round dropped from 300-500m, undetected. There is a ton of videos on YouTube with footage from such bomber drones.
10 extra minutes may mean extra 5 kilometers of range, or of a patrol / recon route.