What battery pack that I can buy right now is 300Wh/kg? Sincerely curious because that's 50Wh/kg above what people are using in some very expensive UAVs.
[0] https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/9682...
Battery pack energy density, battery, single cell, cathode, and their rated, nominal, and absolute capacity are all different things.
A single cell will always have > absolute capacity than the capacity at which the safety limiter will cut-off charging, and that will be > than the capacity to which BMS will charge/discharge the cell in daily use.
It may well be possible for a cathode material to excel in a small pouch cell, but have terrible thermals preventing its use in larger cells.
UAVs have high C rates and high durability.
EVs or even aircraft don't need anywhere near 40C.
Compare to the discharge rate vs. energy density tradeoffs of plug-in hybrid EVs versus battery-only EVs: A Chevy Volt PHeV has a 16 kWh pack and 87 kW motor, a Chevy Bolt has a 65 kWh pack and not a 65/16x87=350 kW motor but 149 kW.
Edit: well, I'm a dummy and OP said mass-produced. Sorry.
FWIW, to provide the 225 amps (for a V8 starter motor) a Tesla car battery would only need a discharge capability of 3C (1C being around 80 amps), which is within its rated capabilities. This is also for batteries which provide higher voltages, so I'm vastly overestimating the C rate required.
C is the unit for charge/discharge rates, and is based off the capacity of the battery.
Conversely, a BEV traction battery has to support a wider range of loads at any charge state between its minimum and maximum charge levels, in order to have decent driving range. Like a starter motor, the BEV is not going to sustain high power output for very long, since a car only takes seconds to accelerate to legal road speeds. After that, it requires continuous output at lower power levels to maintain a cruising speed.
Even with lead-acid batteries, there are regular starter batteries and then there are deep-cycle batteries which have far less cold cranking amps but more durability when depleted to low charge states before being recharged.
The low density of lead-acid batteries is what makes them unsuitable for mobile applications. They might have 30-50 Wh/kg while various lithium ions might be 100-300 Wh/kg. And now this announcement is talking about 500 Wh/kg so 10x the best lead-acid batteries...
The 18650 Panasonic cells used in an older Tesla model S for instance are rated at only 10A draw per cell as their nominal 1S voltage (4.20V when full).
At say 30C you'd only need 7Ah lithium batery
CATL pushing this sort of capacity, though, is great news. It certainly will accelerate availability.
A small quadcopter that uses a gensace/Tattu 1200 mAh lipo pack is not an expensive uav. I think everyone who uses hobby size lipo knows their specs around 135-160Wh/kg.