Jordon at the Limiting Factor is a battery expert and he has had a detailed analysis of a six month old 4680 Tesla battery.
It is a world class battery with an extra 10 watt hours per kilogram of energy density. It achieved with a 15% disadvantage of using a thicker shell around the battery and not using silicon in its first battery versions.
Troy Teslike tweeted out rumors about the state of 4680 battery development and Jordon confirmed the first energy density specification as correct. This would give confidence that the next two energy density rumors for 2023 and 2024 for the Tesla 4680 will also be fairly accurate.
Tesla will be adding silicon to the battery and reducing the shell thickness so those changes will likely enable a 310 watt hour per kilogram energy density. This would make it the best energy density for any battery.
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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Material & Battery chemistry will continue to evolve slowly as real world testing takes time.
Tesla is not waiting around for the “silver bullet”, they are moving forward with implementation of existing tech, slower than Elon wants but moving non the less.
I fully expect that by 2030, battery tech will allow us to drive 500 miles/day at highway speeds and the ICE will be an old dinosaur with 1 foot in the grave and another on a banana peel, a dying relic of a bygone age.
It’s good that predictions are not made beyond 2024.
At that point there should be wide-spread knowledge of Nano-Nuclear Battery technology that will extend the charge of lithium-X (air/iron/sodium/???) exponentially. The proper mix of slow-discharge/ultra-high-capacity Nano-Nuclear batteries combined with fast-discharge/relatively low capacity lithium-X batteries will enable an EV to run for months to years without ever needing to be recharged.
Full disclosure: I just invested in NDB Inc through a private purchase agreement, so I am not a neutral party, though I am not employed or paid by the company to comment either. For more info: https://ndb.technology/company/