Is Greatly Extended Battery Life Coming Soon?

[dronezone1010]

I am currently selling my Phantom 3, mainly for 2 reasons - the battery life, and the quality of the stills camera. Overall though I have to say that I enjoyed using it, and would be interested in buying another drone.

So my question is, do you think that in the next year, we could see a drone with greatly extended battery life, of lets say 40 to 60 minutes?

 

[Fly Dawg]

So my question is, do you think that in the next year, we could see a drone with greatly extended battery life, of lets say 40 to 60 minutes?

The only problem with that is primarily weight. Higher capacity batteries come with that drawback. Sure you can get that today, but not with a Phantom. It is weight vs lift capacity. I don't see anything close to that in the Phantom size coming any time soon. There are other variables as well, such as current draw, but bottom line for now is the answer would be no.

 

[BigAl07]

I agree with @Fly Dawg . While there is the potential for "A" sUAS to have those kind of flight times we aren't going to see it in the off-the-shelf and budget friendly products for a good while I'd guess (And it's purely a WAG) we won't see those kinds of flight times from this class of sUAS for another 5 years or more.

We are currently seeing small time increases but we're talking about going from 26 - 29 minutes (Mavic Pro to Pro Platinum as an example). The bigger the battery the more weight and you get to a point of eight diminished returns or the cost/complexity take it out of the realm of "Consumer" aircraft.

I'd imagine we'll need to see some significant "Battery Composition" breakthrough in the industry to see a significant jump in flight times. I'm sure people around the world are experimenting with new battery technology right now that would blow our minds but getting it SAFE, reliable, and cost effective takes time ( a lot of it), money, and some degree of LUCK!

 

[David_Cambridge]

Highly unlikely. Much research has already been spent getting us to the lithion ion batteries we have now. Additionally, there is a huge amount of money to be made with a higher performance battery worldwide for aviation purposes think Boeing Dreamliner. The fact that it doesn’t yet exist suggests it is not close.

 

[solentlife]

As Fly Dawg says .. its a trade-off scenario.

Flight time = watt/hr capacity vs watts to fly.

People modify Phantoms to carry extra batterys .. but that is not a straight linear increase. The more weight - the greater the lift required ... so its a diminishing return item.

 

[solentlife]

If you want long flight time ... then a Multi Rotor craft is NOT the way to go ... you need to combine glide with lift .. and is why long distance Military Drones are big wing jobbies.... not wingless multi-rotors

 

[Adamborz]

It would be cool to run a aux battery that you could eject once it was spent (to get rid of the dead weight). , but that would create all kinds of other problems. Mainly finding it to recharge it after.

Sorry that didn’t help. I see DJI does offer 2 different battery capacities for the 4 pro. Although the smaller capacity batteries say not available in US, off the top of my head it’s 5300 vs 5800 mah... there does appear to be plenty of room for more added mahs in the current design. There appears to be lots of empty space in the battery for cooling or whatever.

 

[PhantomWetSuits]

I am currently selling my Phantom 3, mainly for 2 reasons - the battery life, and the quality of the stills camera. Overall though I have to say that I enjoyed using it, and would be interested in buying another drone.

So my question is, do you think that in the next year, we could see a drone with greatly extended battery life, of lets say 40 to 60 minutes?

Technology has come to a stand still in the energy department when it comes to size , thus the only way to increase power x 2 is to make batteries bigger or add more of them as it is on the DJI bigger drones.

This size limitation is not going to change anytime soon as all the tech companies struggle with this.
Its a technology wall that has yet to be broken thus we will be charging our phones for the rest of our lives. lol

Phantomrain.org
Gear for you Phantom to fly in and out of the storm.

 

[landmannnn]

In the last five years, battery range has gone from just over 20 minutes to just over 25 minutes. So expect the range to move to 35 minutes by 2024.
Anyway with the VLOS rules in most countries, it isn't a hardship to land and replace the battery.

 

[bdooley]

As Fly Dawg says .. its a trade-off scenario.

Flight time = watt/hr capacity vs watts to fly.

People modify Phantoms to carry extra batterys .. but that is not a straight linear increase. The more weight - the greater the lift required ... so its a diminishing return item.

Agreed, it's hard to fool Mother Mature, the laws of physisics, and the laws of economics!

 

[NM_Quad]

There's a lot of power in that Phantom battery brick ... 4480 mA at 17v, about 70 watts. Pretty much pushing current technology for power vs. size vs. weight. Furthermore, with the Phantom line apparently being discontinued, future improvements to battery technology will be for the newer product lines, not the "obsolete" Phantoms. More efficient battery technology is driven by the cell phone, laptop, etc. industries.