A few weeks back, a flight from San Diego to Newark, New Jersey, had to turn back because a laptop with a lithium-ion battery caught fire.
The plane’s crew was unable to extinguish the flames or to even get the battery pack into a fire bag to prevent the fire from spreading.
Fortunately, the flight wasn’t very far from its origination airport and was able to land safely with no injuries to passengers or crew.
That’s great. But it really got me thinking about the future of flight…
I mean, we’re supposed to be reducing or eliminating our carbon emissions, and jets emit more of that stuff than just about any other machine on the planet.
So you hear a lot of talk about electric airplanes these days. But electric airplanes have a critical flaw in their design…
Batteries Explode on Airplanes!
They’re powered by those same lithium-ion batteries that have a bad habit of exploding when you take them on an airplane.
Cue face-palm moment in three… two… one…
I mean, there are signs everywhere in the airport, on the airline websites, on the booking sites like Kayak…
They all say not to check anything with a lithium-ion battery. No laptops, no electronic cigarettes, not even a cellphone.
And why?
Well, its because, when they’re exposed to the immense pressure changes that go along with flying, they warp, crack, and expose an extremely volatile chemical to the air that ignites it.
So why would anyone think anything other than that would happen to the lithium-ion batteries powering the electric plane?
Now, I’m sure the solution to that issue is to pressurize the whole plane, not just the passenger cabins.
But mid-air explosions aren’t the only thing keeping battery-powered planes on the ground…
Where You Gonna Put the People?
You see, aviation fuel has what’s known as an extremely high energy density. That just means it packs a whole lot of potential energy into a very small package.
Lithium-ion batteries, while they have a greater energy density than other kinds of batteries, don’t even come close to aviation fuel.
In fact, jet fuel is more than 50 times more energy-dense than batteries. That means you need 50 pounds of batteries to replace one pound of fuel.
And in case you didn’t know, jet airliners use a whole lot more than one pound of fuel per flight…
A Boeing 747 can carry 433,195 pounds of fuel in its tanks. And on long flights, it needs every last drop.
You could get an equivalent amount of energy from batteries, but you’d need 21,659,750 pounds of them.
Considering a 747 can only take off if it weighs less than 910,000 pounds, I’d call that a limitation.
The amount of batteries you’d need to replace the fuel and provide the same amount of energy would literally make it too heavy for the plane to get off the ground.
Even if you could create a battery with half the energy density of aviation fuel, you’d need over 800,000 pounds of batteries.
Add in the empty weight of a 747 (around 412,300 pounds) and you get another plane that’s too heavy to even make it off the ground, let alone stay in the air.
That begs the question: Where are you going to put all the passengers and their luggage?
And that explains why literally nobody is working to design large commercial aircraft that are battery-powered.
Batteries simply can’t power them. They can power smaller planes that hold a handful of passengers and a carry-on bag for each of them.
But even those can barely take off, fly across a city, and safely land with the power provided by their weighty batteries.
Eventually, we might have batteries that are good enough to power an airplane, but not today. And probably not tomorrow either. Join Wealth Daily today for FREE. We’ll keep you on top of all the hottest investment ideas before they hit Wall Street. Become a member today, and get our latest free report: “How to Make Your Fortune in Stocks”The Best Free Investment You’ll Ever Make
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Zero-Emission Jet Fuel?
That doesn’t mean you or I will never take flight in an electric airplane. It just means the plane isn't likely to be powered by batteries.
But there is an alternative to carbon-intensive aviation fuel and explosive, unwieldy batteries…
And it’s already being used to power industry around the world. So it’s just a matter of time before it makes its way into aircraft.
You see, these machines are powered by electricity. But not the kind you might be thinking about…
Instead of carrying “pre-made” electricity with them in the form of a massive bunch of batteries, these machines create their own electricity as they need it.
And they do it by “burning” a zero-emission fuel that was developed for a top-secret NASA project, no less.
The only byproducts produced are pure oxygen and water clean enough for you or me to drink.
And the power created is just out of this world. Remember, batteries, even the very best of them, have about 50 times less energy density than jet fuel…
But this zero-emission alternative has three times MORE energy density than that same jet fuel…
Making it 150 times more energy-dense than lithium-ion batteries!
But the thing is that everyone is only thinking about lithium-ion batteries when they think about clean transportation options.
A Diamond in the Rough
So they’re completely overlooking the company mainly responsible for getting this zero-emission alternative, the ONLY real alternative, out there.
That means, despite being founded by the very person who first invested this power system for NASA…
Despite having tens of thousands of products already on roads around the world…
Despite inking partnerships with some of the world’s biggest automakers and heavy-equipment manufacturers…
This company’s stock is still trading for less than $10 a share!
Despite potentially holding the most valuable intellectual property in the world, this company is trading for peanuts.
But that’s something I expect to change very quickly…
More people are noticing the progress this company’s made. And more investors are betting it’ll completely change the future of transportation.
And with every new convert it gets, the share price gets a little higher. Like I said, it’s still trading for less than a tenner.
But I could see its share price getting as high as $100 in short order. Eventually, I see its overall gains surpassing those of the gold standard in alternative transportation: Tesla.
From its IPO in 2010 to its most recent peak in November 2021, that stock scored investors a ridiculous 25,640% gain:
And I’m convinced that’s going to amount to child’s play once all’s said and done for this company.
In fact, around the office, we’ve taken to calling it the “Tesla Killer” because it’s destined to steal so much market share from Elon Musk's crown jewel.
So to help make it as easy as possible for you to get a piece of this action before all the gains are gone, I’ve compiled everything I’ve learned about this company, the zero-emission fuel source its founder pioneered for NASA, and the opportunity it represents to investors and the environment.
You can get the information by watching this short presentation.
And best of all, it's 100% free for you today.
I’ve done all the legwork so that you can reap all the rewards.
All you’ve got to do is get yourself invested for the win that’s all but guaranteed to come.
To your wealth, Jason Williams After graduating Cum Laude in finance
and economics, Jason designed and analyzed complex projects for the U.S. Army. He made the jump to the private
sector as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, where he eventually led his own team
responsible for billions of dollars in daily trading. Jason left Wall Street to found his own
investment office and now shares the strategies he used and the network he built with you. Jason
is the founder of Main Street
Ventures, a pre-IPO investment newsletter; the founder of
Future Giants, a nano cap investing service; and authors The Wealth Advisory income stock
newsletter. He is also the managing editor of Wealth
Daily. To learn more about Jason, click here. Want to hear more from Jason? Sign up to receive emails directly from him ranging from market commentaries to opportunities that he has his eye on.