Tesla has battery cell manufacturing research at a “skunkworks lab” at Tesla’s Kato Road facility near its car plant in Fremont, California. Employees in Tesla’s battery R&D teams are now focused on designing and prototyping advanced lithium-ion battery cells, as well as new equipment and processes for higher volume battery production.
Tesla will have an investor battery and powertrain day before the end of 2019, where they will likely discuss the production of Maxwell dry cell batteries.
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.
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.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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When and if, I think they may be able to increase the power density but what of safety?
Quote R. Kimhi ” my bet is on zinc air”
And just how much money is that? Or are you just blowing hot air?
He’s trying to cow us into silence.
In the first place they can’t reveal the use of that new battery pack in their car till they actually start selling them. Who would buy a tesla this month or even in the next six months, if you knew the price was going to drop $8,000 and you would get 25% more milage while at the same time the battery would last 1,000,000 miles, if you just wait?
In the second place can you imagine what the announcement of that new battery pack actually selling in teslas, would do to the stock? The tesla would be the most demanded new car in recent history.
The sooner they release a car with the maxwell technology the bigger the scoop and the longer it will last.
You’re saying our knowledge isn’t even half-assed?
Apparently the energy density of these batteries will make all electric commercial aviation possible. I am not sure on the range, but easily regional.
I hope so, just bought property outside of Homer Alaska and there is no power to the property.
And yet coal consumption grew at its fastest pace in five years in 2018. We aren’t even slowing down when it comes to FF consumption. If anything we’re mashing the accelerator.
Meanwhile something like 13 international airports are under construction and electricity demand is only going to ramp as the world gets hotter and a billion more people get AC.
Really, how can you claim this. Keep in mind I only really care about battery technology that is out of the lab…. with that criteria 99% of the announcements I suspect your referencing dont count.
the DBE tech counts because when you do the home work you learn that Tesla actually built cells and tested them BEFORE they purchased Maxwell. The details of that testing I expect to become obvious at their battery investment day later this year.
As for the vague references to solid state battery development. if you read the slick sheet above you will notice the DBE technology can be foundational to the development of solid state batteries. So even in a future where solid state batteries hit the market before the DBE stuff does. Tesla still has the ability to swallow the loss. license the technology and begin ramping production at their dedicated manufacturing facilities. Compared to other battery manufacturers whose manufacturing capabilities are shared across car makers. which means in the absolute worse case as everyone (tesla included..) Is ramping up solid state manufacturing tesla will be able to ship more cars since their production is dedicated to them. I think the only other auto maker who will end up with a similar capability is VW given their investment in battery manufacturing.
Cow farts aren’t the big issue. Almost all their methane emissions are from burbs.
You guys seem half-informed by rather recent waves made in political commentary.
It’d actually get worse at first, as the sulphates keep the temperature down by about 2C. It’d get better eventually, but it definitely needs to be a phase out with carbon removal.
A lot of car companies have introduced major price drops, and the customers HATE IT. Even the new customers (who should be happy with lower prices) now look at the expected depreciation on that model, see that it’s -77% or something, and so buy something else. Even if they don’t look at depreciation, the bank lending them money will.
The approach that works is to bring out another model. Same car really, but with a different plastic moulding on the nose and tail, and a couple of other cheap cosmetic changes. And most importantly a different model name. And that you sell cheaply.
The people who bought the old one are happy. The people who bought the new one are happy. You can probably even still keep the original model on the books to sell to those people who want to pay a $10k premium for the same model with a better badge.
I eat as many cows as I can to reduce the climate change they cause through flatulence.
It’s my green act for each day.
Are you actually going to take an article seriously when the second sentence claims that
Like I’ve said before, others companies have similar battery tech in the works so, though this might be revolutionary, they likely won’t hold this big lead over the other established major players.
They can claim anything they want…Until its in production and available for purchase its a Unicorn.
Not to throw stones it looks strangely like a Rossi E-cat setup.
From your link:
“This time around, they will begin with pilot production at their R&D center in Bruschal, Germany followed by licensing partnerships with major battery and automotive companies. ”
So Tesla can license it just like everybody else? So they wasted $200 million on Maxwell, oh well. Well, not all wasted because they can still sell capacitors just like Maxwell was doing.
But the longer you wait, the larger the change will be.
One where you start as CEO and leave as a janitor.
Claiming and doing are different things.
Wots a “descent” job?
If you stopped every coal power station dead in its tracks by 6 o’clock tonight it would have little effect upon the climate. The carbon needed for climate change is already in the atmosphere.
Big advantage would be less battery for same same range.
Lower material costs per vehicle pack and a higher number of vehicle packs ‘per factory day’. Question is can they get these new cells to take the SuperCharger++ high kW charge.
$30k car (with $8k battery) that does 250 miles becomes
$25k car (with $3k battery) that does 250 miles
On another note, Innolith claims it’ll soon have 1,000 Wh/kg batteries.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/04/swiss-startup-innolith-claims-1000-wh-kg-battery-breakthrough/
NBF is too Tesla/Maxwell-centric on battery tech IMO.
Bread,
we will NEVER kill off climate change, that is impossible.
when a cow farts in a meadow, the climate changes, when you light a match the climate changes, now if you’re referring to the warming of the climate from atmospheric CO2, then maybe it can be slower slightly,
maybe.
Why would assume Tesla isn’t examining all of the possibilities? You’ve probably got it reversed; it is the other companies putting all their eggs in one basket and falling on their face from the risk (e.g. Dyson and Sakti3).
Yep we shouldn’t question the Musk mental dominance that quite obediently to your master you are hammering onto us. But is it really a smart move to put all the eggs in an intermediate solution while other companies are going for a better one that will come out only very few years later? At any rate there is a horde new batteries that will be coming out soon, my bet is on zinc air for the middle run which is seeing the first steps of commercialization at currently half the price of Li ion and expected energy densities as high as what Li ion batteries will have in 10 years.
https://www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/130380-future-batteries-coming-soon-charge-in-seconds-last-months-and-power-over-the-air
Cost savings? If they are cheaper to produce, and it means they can increase capacity of Giga1 because it is less space intensive. Tesla says they are still cell constrained. I suspect they stopped building out Panasonic battery lines once they decided to buy Maxwell, and will instead build out that technology.
I suspect technological process and scaling in renewables, etc. will curtail carbon emissions before governments get their act together on regulating emissions.
The first batteries/packs using the new tech built at GF1 might be used for the Semi in 2020 which will have a new pack design and be small run size initially. New packs for other models follow.
Tesla needs to lower the prices as this new technology rolls out. Why would some one listen to whining Tesla owners who bitch about someone buy the car for less than what they paid. They were first buyers and all the glory and bragging rights that went with that, So stop the bitching and lower the prices and start selling a million cars a year.
Why bother? To crush those few competitors, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!
Revealing the nextgen battery and serially producing it are two completely different things.
Tesla’s Gigafactory-1 (Nevada) was opened back in 2017, and we won’t likely see a “dry” car for another 3 years. There is but few competitors capable in 250kW/h, so why bother?
At that price, it’ll make great load balancing tech for home solar. We might just manage to kill off climate change yet!