The Boeing 787 Dreamliner: The Ultimate Green Fail?

Did you know that the 787 Dreamliner - recently grounded by the FAA due to unexplained battery fires - uses a lithium battery, a larger version of the little button battery that powers watches, calculators, and other inexpensive electronics?

I didn't know that either.  I also didn't know that Obama had designated the lithium battery as the energy source of choice in his future-world of  all-electric vehicles (somebody check his donor list!).  Which is why it is not surprising, given that everything Obama touches turns to sh-t, that Dreamliners are bursting into flames everywhere

Technologists and safety experts had long warned of problems with the lithium ion battery when in 2009 the president began betting billions of tax dollars that it should be the green power of choice for cars, trucks, and even aircraft.

Just three years before that, a UPS cargo plane made an emergency landing when a shipment of lithium ion batteries it was carrying caught fire. The plane landed safely but was destroyed by the ensuing conflagration.


Not the first time we've seen this...let us not forget the Chevy Volt:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a Volt battery pack that was being monitored caught fire on Thursday, a week after it was hit in a side-impact crash test. The agency said another battery that was crash-tested recently gave off smoke and sparks. The latest fires are in addition to a battery fire at a test facility in Wisconsin back in June.


The NHTS cleared the Volt after six weeks. One wonders if they would have been so cavalier if they didn't own the company...

More:

"Lithium ion batteries just won't do the trick in the kind of mass vehicle applications that the environmental community is pushing for," said Jon Entine, founder of ESG Media Metrics, a Cincinnati-based environmental consulting firm.

"It's kind of glib environmentalism or kind of enviro-romanticism," said Entine, who is also a senior fellow at George Mason University's Center for Health and Risk.


A romantic fantasy that our president has lavished with over $1B of taxpayer money (detailed at the link).  Like squandering your inheritance - and your children's - on a whore.  It's too embarrassing to explain it, so you deny it, while secretly going into hock to get just a little more...

Me?  The next time I get on a plane, I'm gonna ask what they've got under the hood...