Tesla Dry Battery Domination Starts in 2020

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Tesla cars have been able to last for one million miles but starting in 2020 the battery packs will be able to last for a million miles as well. Currently, the battery packs last for 300,000 to 500,000 miles. Most non-electric cars only can last 100,000 to 200,000 miles.

Tesla will start using battery domination starting in 2020 with significantly longer lasting and higher energy density batteries. This will enable Tesla to use a mix of better prices and higher performance to win electric cars, electric trucks and with electric taxis.

Tesla Will Be Ten Times Better on Robo-Taxi Asset Costs

Electric taxis operational costs will mainly be functions of the longevity of the car and the autonomy. Tesla will have million-mile battery packs and million-mile cars. The main asset will have five times the life of competing services. Tesla will also use post-lease cars which means another 50% reduction in the fleet costs.

Tesla completed the purchase of Maxwell Technologies which will give Tesla higher energy density batteries, lower costs for batteries, double battery life and will allow battery factories to have 16 times the production in the same space.

Those who are down on Tesla say that Tesla’s batteries are not that much better than other electric car companies. However, Tesla’s battery dominance will become more clear next year and then Tesla battery domination will grow as they increase energy density to double current levels around 2025

Tesla bought Maxwell Technologies for their dry battery technology. Maxwell has already proved 300 Wh/kg energy density is which 20-40% better than current Tesla batteries. Maxwell has a path with 15-25% improvement every 2-3 years. This should lead to 500 Wh/kg by 2027.

Tesla might be able to get 385 Wh/kg in batteries in 2020.

Tesla could reach $50 per kilowatt-hour with 500 Wh/kg. This would mean half the weight in batteries while producing the same level of energy as the best 250 Wh/kg batteries of today. This would mean $4000 instead of $12000 in batteries for an 80 kWh battery pack.

Maxwell had a 15-page investor presentation from January 16, 2019 from the 21st Annual Needham Growth Conference.

Solid State Batteries Can Compete on Energy Density But Are Six to Ten Years Away

Panasonic has said solid state batteries are ten years away. Volkswagen thinks they can get them by 2025. Fisker has delayed solid-state batteries from 2020 to 2022.

A small chinese battery company, Qing Tao (Kunshan) Energy Development Company, has a production line capable of producing 0.1 GWh solid-state batteries per year, which have an energy density of over 400 Wh/kg. This is enough for one thousand 100 kWh battery packs.

Tesla’s will be producing tens of GWh of batteries from multiple gigafactories.

There are a range of possible competing battery technologies but getting them working at all, and then out of the lab and then to the scale for millions of cars are huge challenges.

Other Dry Battery Research

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden have developed a new production process with the aim of efficient and environmentally friendly future battery production. They coat the electrodes of the energy storage cells with a dry film instead of liquid chemicals. This simplified process saves energy and eliminates toxic solvents. A Finnish company is currently successfully testing the new IWS technology in practice.

The Finnish battery company “BroadBit Batteries”, together with IWS, has commissioned a pilot plant in its Espoo factory, which coats electrodes with dry electrode material instead of wet pastes, as has been common in industry up to now. BroadBit uses it to produce new types of sodium ion batteries.

SOURCES- Youtube, Tesla, Xinhua
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

47 thoughts on “Tesla Dry Battery Domination Starts in 2020”

  1. It’s all down to cost and battery technology at this point. Once you can buy electric for the same price as gas and top up a 50% battery in 10 minutes while you take a typical bathroom break no one will want a gas powered car that leaks oil and exhaust and costs 40 50 60 70 bucks to refuel every single tank. Not to mention improved performance, less maintenance and improved reliability. The age of the internal combustion engine is over. No more radiators to fill, no more oil to change, no more blown head gaskets, no more loud rusted mufflers, no more timing belts to break, etc etc.

  2. Most gas vehicles get 300-400 miles per tank, but do you always let it run down to empty before you top it up? Also, you can’t fill up whenever you want; you have to drive to a station and just like a battery you MUST fill up when you run low. An electric car battery can be topped up just like a gas tank. And you can do it at home parked in your garage every night instead of going to filling station and spending 30, 40, 50, 60 dollars for another 300-400 miles of range.

  3. I am looking forward to the development of next generation of batteries that are smaller (1/2 or less the size) than current models, could be charge quickly while the vehicle is running so there’s no need for several hours of charging when not in use and generate more or equal power/output to today’s most powerful batteries and at the same time cheaper and last longer.

  4. Not if Toyota or someone else starts to mass produce solid start the dry tech would not last long. Especially if they are better performers in cold temperatures and you do not need to use the 0.7/0.5 factored on range.

  7. I regularly drive 110 miles a day, in some circumstances drive 200 a day in my effectively indestructible Acura and all of it at 75-85 mph (thanks CHP!).

    So yes it matters. Not just initial capacity I need to know that my batteries will last eight years from now.

    People who drive 20 miles a day… really don’t care that much. They are driving a 2000 Honda and get an oil change every year.

  8. “That was an analogy for you dear sir.  What happened in cars will happen in planes.”

    LOL no. Planes need significantly larger energy margins so that they can loiter and divert when necessary. Cars just pull to the side of the road when they run out of power.

    It is entirely common to add an extra hundred miles of travel distance to planes because their original destination is unavailable due to weather, accidents, etc.

  9. I don’t think the Tesla community fully grasps all the different elements the Maxwell acquisition brings to Tesla. Tesla had a plan – a “strategic rationale” for the acquisition. While we don’t know what that is, we can infer much of it. Obviously, the Dry Battery Electrode opportunity is a major piece. But, it goes beyond that.
    Go back a few years and look at the MXWL cc transcripts up to the present. Pay attention to the megatrends discussions. Look at the UCAP “module” deal with Geeley-Volvo; lithium capacitors (LCAPs) and the CRRC-SRI partnership; the multiple grid storage demos and prospects in this market, which has a CAGR of 35% going forward.

  10. It is an exponential thing.

    It was 100K global PHEV/BEV sales in december 2012
    It was 2M global sales in 2018
    Projected in 2019 is 3M global sales.
    50% increase in sales every year and by end 2026 half of cars will be ICE.
    75% in 2027 and 100% in 2028.

    Given the existing ICE’s supply in circulation or on sale I think you could see a sharp fall in ICEs build way earlier. Less car, less gas stations, less maintenance shops around and so on would make owning a ICE more costly.

    Also, and ICE last 100-200K miles. An electric last at least double than that and more in the future.
    This imply for every EV sold 2-3-4-10 ICEs will not be sold. It is a long term effect not visible in the first years with small a small number of EV and small battery packs. This effect will be more than exponential (because who drive more will convert to EV first because it is cheaper per mile driven and who drive more buy new cars more frequently).

  11. As I understand it, the 2170 cell lines are majority Tesla manufacturing. They own several automation and manufacturing companies now, Panasonic is still deeply inmeshed in GF1 but the “purely” panasonic lines of equipment are fewer than several years ago. its somewhat of a hybrid now. Still, from a capacity standpoint. the same lines will yeild greater Wh/yr with better Wh/kg

  12. Don’t forget, parts count, manufacturability(way fewer castings/forgings), cooling requirements (though battery has much stricter cooling [and heating]) transmission complexity.

    Though the things Electric drive trains have working against them are conflict/exotic materials reliance, huge amounts of copper (vs ICE). I maintain though, that these are not terrible limitations vs ICE trade-offs. the simplest ICE engines are also terribly unreliable and inefficient when you get to comparable parts count and packaging as Electric drive trains.

  13. Take a look at this. The numbers are for energy per kg of material when reacted with oxygen, so the metals give you the ultimate possible energy density for a metal-air battery. Lithium beats any other metal for energy/kg though others beat it for energy/liter. There will be some other stuff in the battery needed to make it work, so the actual practical energy density will be somewhat less, but it’s nice to have some idea of the maximum that is conceivably achievable.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

  14. The problem with Mg, Al though they provide higher energy density but their kations move significantly slower than Li ions.
    So working with them needs higher temperature. There are researches though to fix this.
    In the other hand not only the metal part is what should be changed. Replacing oxidizer SOCl2 to fluorine (or a fluorine compound) also drastically can enhance the energy density.

  15. The overwhelming majority of us are “Poster Children” for electric vehicles.
    How many of really drive more miles during our average commute than an electric vehicle can accommodate?
    There are some, sure, but most do not.

    Those who do, are not candidates, yet, but I expect soon we all will probably be.

  16. The good thing about electric car batteries is that they are not nearly out-developed yet.
    At this moment e-car batteries largely depend on lithium, but the holy grail would rather be rechargeable Al, Zn, or Mg batteries, (lighter and) cheaper.
    Since for instance Al has a covalence of 3+ and is light and very abundant, this seems ideal to me.
    However, I do not know how present state of technology is with regard to rechargeable Al batteries.
    GoatGuy? Anybody?

  17. Makes sense to license to Panasonic. There is plenty of room at GF1 to expand the building if they need to, so that the new lines can be grown in parallel to existing production. I don’t know what percentage of the building is occupied at the moment.

  19. And the most popular sold sedan last year in America was an EV. The industry is transitioning to electric, it’s not just an almost startup-like Tesla, but the giant VW is very serious to replace Diesel by EV.

  20. The claim, and it sounds reasonable to me, is that designing an electric motor and drivetrain to reach 1M is even easier than for an piston engine.

    • The lubricants don’t have to deal with combustion products
    • The heat is significantly less
    • The power is a lot steadier, whereas pistons apply their torque in “lumps” so the peak torque loading is far greater than the average, and the fluctuations lead to fatigue loads. Some designs (some of the old 90 deg V6s for example) are just horrible if you plot instantaneous torque versus degrees in a rotation. Piston engines usually need harmonic balancers to suppress these rotational vibrations to the point where they don’t break stuff.

    I can easily imagine (no I don’t know) that it could be that going from 300K to 1M in life is just a tiny expense (slightly more robust bearings and better quality lube say) and so totally justified on the grounds that $50 more cost gives extra sales and less warranty claims.

  21. Though we have proof from the 787 that the FAA doesn’t actually require aircraft to have safe batteries.

  22. Fuel makes a much more significant part of the total weight of a plane than a car.

    Of course it depends what you mean by “plane”. A light hobby plane that might travel 250 km per flight? Yeah sure.
    But an airliner is a different matter. The fuel load on a B777 is about 80 tonnes. It isn’t something you can just double or quadruple like the 60 kg fuel load in a car.

  24. What we have is EVs beating ICE cars on every metric and nearly matching them on range despite the current energy density limitations.

  26. So, um , WHO is going to build these dry bats for Tesla? Maxwell don’t have the capacity themselves and they focused on a particular aspect of a cell (electrode). You still need to make the whole thing (electrodes, electrolytes, insulators, packaging, etc). Tesla probably doesn’t want to burden themselves with the capital costs of building out a manufacturing line themselves, and to a degree the cells are not a direct core business technology.

    Will Tesla license to Panasonic, provided they do initial buildout of the manufacturing lines at Gigafactory 1? Would they risk courting someone else? Who could that be?

  28. See my reply to “vboring”.  

    The moral of the story is really this: just as in the Scientific American article of oh, perhaps 1995 or 2002 (I just don’t remember), their hypothesis was that the electric car powertrain was to be so reliable and non-fatigue-sensitive that it’d easily last a megamile or more. But manufacturers would take ’em back in their used-and-often-abused state, unbolt the upper shell, seats, driving wheel, electronics doodads and all, and simply swap that part out for a new one.  

    I personally found the idea deeply appealing.  
    Still do.  

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy ✓

  29. Its true… long-haul diesel “semi” truck engines regularly last 1,000,000 road miles. A relatively surgical overhaul at 300,000, 600,000 and 800,000 gets it to the Big Mil. Mostly its about the pumps, the bearing sleeves, the cylinder rings, fuel injectors and overhead cam valve-stem wear. Specialist shops can “do an engine” in less than 3 days downtime, on a scheduled basis. Almost assembly-line efficiency.  

    My very, very old BMW 733i made it all the way to 500,000 miles without an overhaul. The Big Kid killed it in an accident, but even at the end, it wasn’t consuming more than perhaps 1 qt. of oil between oil changes. Nothing more done than BMW recommended periodic servicing. Sweet sedan.  

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy ✓

  31. The BIG problem really remains… for e-planes of commercial service size … remains that of “total trip” dynamics.  

    Speed is central, with mass a very close second

    • Airspeed
    • Speed to recharge / swap battery packs
    • Rate of climb

    And all-in battery pack (i.e. in an FAA certified-as-totally-safe configuration) killing the per 18650 cell Wh/kg spec, and rendering the whole liquid-cooled enchilada closer to 150 Wh/kg or perhaps 200.  

    When then really challenges your design point: 1,400 km (750 nmi) range, one presumes competent-airspeed-for-that-range 450 MPH (225 m/s, 800 kmh), competent flight ceiling and so on. 

    Not losing the 25% to 30% of at-takeoff fuel mass is a substantial “cost-of-levitating” energy gotcha.  

    As you say though, the mass-savings for high power electric motors compared to turbojets is significant, and perhaps entirely compensating for the extraordinary mass-burden of the FAA-cert battery packs.  

    Just saying,
    GoatGuy ✓

  33. Engines can also be designed for million+ miles of life. Passenger cars have engines designed for their expected service life for economic optimization, not because designing them to last longer is hard.

  35. If you take an Airbus A220 with 70 tonnes max takeoff weight and 17 tonnes of fuel sure it seems strange to compare.

    But if you consider the ticket might be 30% cost in fuel (and electric cuts that by 80%, so 24%), and you could reconfigure that plane to have 20% less seats but 14 tonnes + 17 tonnes of batteries, then yeah it might be workable because you don’t need the 6,200km full range for all markets.

    Planes with 25% fuel fractions do get lighter as the trip continues, but takeoff weight can actually be higher with electric fans because of better peak power. So that’s probably a wash.

    Is there a market for a 1400km range electric plane with about 100 seats where tickets are 24% cheaper? There probably is. Will it replace all turbine/fuel based planes? No way.

  37. kind of makes you think about these lyrics:

    Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer
    Came down upon GM and ford’s head
    Bang! Bang! Maxwell’s silver hammer
    Made sure that she was dead

  38. when i can drive 1000 miles on a single charge of a tesla car, then i will buy an electric car…
    Actually, I would settle for 500 miles… I just know you have to shoot high with batteries..otherwise they say 500 miles and give you 390 miles…

  39. “Maxwell has a path with 15-25% improvement every 2-3 years. ”

    Wow, that type of progress is unheard of for battery tech… Is “maxwell’s law” the new moore’s law for batteries? …given that moore’s law has hit the icelake…

  41. Plus with the IC engine I won’t have to worry about buying my grandchildren birthday presents because they will be dead from the effects of the IC engine.(Both climate change and air pollution)

  42. This battery story goes with the AV story to argue that Tesla will gradually come to dominate the global industry. Having batteries that can last for 10 years of 100k mile per year service is completely meaningless for legacy sell to owner-driver business models but critical for MaaS robotaxis under Tesla Network. Each 100k mile per year Tesla Network vehicle displaces 5-6 new legacy industry vehicles.

  43. In his dreams. Avgas gives you 12,500 Wh/kg. Even with an IC efficiency of around 30%, you are still looking at 10 times the energy density for a fraction of the cost.

  44. As a comparison, a modern IC engine gets 4000 Wh/kg (that includes factoring in IC engine inefficiencies).

  45. If you care about the money you shouldn’t own a Tesla – though maybe a Bolt or Volt would be ok. Teslas are very expensive to insure – it will cost more than the fuel savings each year. $55k model 3 costs more to insure than a BMW M3.

    Of course, if you like the car, then none of that matters.

  46. Tell me this won’t boost tesla’s stock price significantly. I always thought the $4,000 a share they talked about was impossible, but now I am not so sure.
    The only things holding me back from buying a tesla was the limited mileage on a charge, the life of the battery and the expense of that battery but they will very soon have all those fixed.
    I am excited! And at 72 years old few things excite me anymore.

  47. 380 Wh/Kg for next year is very close to the 400 Wh/Kg that Musk said is needed for electric planes.

    I guess we know what comes after the semi. Amazing times we live.

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