[Flieger]

Originally Posted by red-beard

There are newer Lithium batteries out there. I had a discussion recently with out in house battery expert (Aurel). LiFePo4 batteries are what should be used from now on.

Lithium Iron Phosphate isn't new. We used them for a couple years in our Formula Electric car. First year we used Zero motorcycle battery packs, which are Lithium Polymer I believe. We switched back to LiPo's this past year but had to get a few hundred pouch cells and put them together into our own pack. We did it because their energy density is greater. But the LiFeP had the great advantage of not needing a temperature monitoring system for each cell- just the state of charge. The LiPo's need to have a thermal monitor for each cell which will warn us of thermal runaway, in which case we park, get out, and watch it burn to the ground.

Originally Posted by fast_e_man

Jim,

If you do some google searches you'll find the information on campaign contributions, the amount of taxpayer money that is subsidizing SpaceX, and the loans made to Tesla. I don't have a set of hot links saved to paste in. I think most of that has been in WSJ articles as well.

The SpaceX launch performance and current events on exceptions to gov't shutdown is not in the public domain, so I can't tell you how I know. You could go to youtube and search for Gwynn Shotwell, she is the pres of Spacex. She did a post launch interview where she alluded to "an issue" and then realized that might not be good to advertise (it was an engine problem). After that SpaceX doesn't say anything. Might be a follow up article by one of the trade pubs.

but, this is a thread on Li+ car batteries

Ed

You realize that a loan means you get interest on that money right?