But, then he "called out" Elon Musk and said that he was waiting for his SpaceX rockets to convert to electricity.
...
Honestly, I like the work that this Runkle guy has done and I think his engine is fairly promising, but he lost me with that rocket comment
I think that he was being sarcastic. Not a very pleasant way to behave.
He also wondered why the plane he flew over on wasn't electric-drive.
Here's an idea: why don't we take the biggest, heaviest, most terribly inefficient modes of transportation and convert them to run off electricity. Brilliant!
Yes, battery powered planes exist right now, and they're very popular too -
If you want to use electricity to propel your aircraft, you're going to be limited to propellers, which don't work very well at high altitude. (An
Ion Engin runs mostly on electricity, but is only really suited for space.
) The biggest hurdle right now is still
energy density - 1 gallon of gas = 33kW (2:40 in that second video), and batteries are heavy, which is not good for an airplane. Then again,
if you go solar, battery weight becomes a non issue!
Bramscher made an excellent point about the ICE being less than 40% efficient after 100 years of development, but batteries have been around for about as long. They have been improving, but we're nowhere near gasoline's energy density.
After all that, however, I
still want an electric bike!
