Tesla has created a battery that could last one million miles

[Judi Lynn]

A research group attached to Tesla has been experimenting with battery pouches that last for decades and that could eventually be used for lorries and autonomous taxis

By MATT REYNOLDS
Wednesday 11 September 2019

In April, Elon Musk stood before a crowd of investors at an invitation-only event at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto. On stage, he made a series of wild predictions that might stretch the credulity of the most bullish Tesla fans. By the middle of 2020, he said, Tesla would have put one million 'Level 5' (completely autonomous) taxis in the hands of customers. Currently there are zero Level 5 cars on the road.

But another of Musk’s predictions might be on its way to becoming reality. At the Palo Alto event Musk promised that Tesla would soon make cars that could last for at least a million miles without requiring any significant maintenance. Now, a scientific paper published by Jeff Danh – an academic at the University of Dalhousie in Canada who also leads Tesla’s battery research group – suggests that Musk’s prediction may already be possible.


In a paper published in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society Dahn and his co-authors detailed tests of a new kind of battery that could drive more than a million miles and lose relatively little of its capacity. In ideal circumstances, the researchers suggest, the batteries could last for decades and be driven for a little under two million miles.

“We conclude that cells of this type should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometres (1 million miles) and last at least two decades in grid energy storage,” Dahn and his co-authors write. Such long-lasting batteries would be particularly useful for vehicles that travel much more than the average car – such as lorries and taxis – as well as feeding energy from car batteries back to the grid so electric vehicles, in effect, become mobile forms of energy storage. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment for this story).

More:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tesla-batteries-electric-vehicles

[BootinUp]

1. Place your bets! nt

[Duppers]

2. Incredible.

And a great advance into abandoning fossil fuels.

I saw this the other day, but thanks for posting, Judi.

[cstanleytech]

11. I would hold off on holding the ticker tape parade just yet as this is not star trek where

they can use replicators to create the batteries.
After all the materials to make the batteries still have to be gathered and then they have to use the materials to create the batteries and there will be at least some waste from that.
Then to top it off the battery will still need to be disposed of and recycled in a safe manner.

[mr_lebowski]

3. Not entirely sure but I think this is being misunderstood ...

I believe it's talking about batteries having a much longer overall lifespan in terms of charging cycles without degrading (much) in terms of how far they can go on any individual charge.

So instead of the battery in your Tesla being good for 500 recharges (or whatever it is) before it starts degrading in performance, maybe with the new tech it can go 5000 recharges before that happens.

Pretty damn sure it's not suggesting that your Tesla is going 1M miles without recharging.

[Recursion]

4. Yeah, this is not "on a single charge"

It's "on a single refurbishment cycle". Still, amazing possibility.

[cstanleytech]

12. To me it was pretty clear they did not mean it was a single charge that could last that long.

If they had though I would be a tad nervous due to the sheer potential for destruction should the battery malfunction and release a significant amount of that energy suddenly.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

5. We live near a Tesla Showroom. I see Teslas and am always excited by them

But today hit the 'I spy with my own eye' jackpot. A truck carrying 8 Teslas to the showroom right by me including the first two tone Tesla I have seen.

[jb5150]

6. Forgive me for being a bit skeptical ...

I'm still waiting for that hyperloop to get off the ground. The problem is that Musk is a visionary, not an engineer.

[diane in sf]

7. I wish they'd hurry up and make an affordable small SUV. They would not be able to keep up

with demand.

[hunter]

8. You could always make your own...

Simone Giertz wanted a truck...

[mitch96]

9. More charging cycles and what is the range per charge???

It would suck if you got half the range with twice the charge cycles...
I want to go 350 miles and a near "gas fill up time" charging.. My goal for a EV..
Better yet... 500 mile charge range and fast charge time.. Like go 500 miles and go to a restaruant and have a meal... LIke 1/2 hour time frame.. Oh yeah it has to have drive up wireless charging...
Drive up, order a meal, wash hands, eat, pee, wash, car charged for another 500 miles
and go... My gold standard
m

[cstanleytech]

13. My goal is drive 350 miles, stop for 5 minutes for a drink and a recharge and then drive 350 more

and stop for lunch and a recharge then drive 350 more and stop for a recharge and a drink for 5 minutes then drive 350 more and stop for the night at a hotel and recharge.
Of course that is also after I hit the powerball to because right now it would take me about 30 years to save up just for the lowest priced model.

[NNadir]

10. Every month, one can read a plethora of "world's greatest battery" papers in the literature.

If one goes on Google Scholar and <types long life battery> one will get in less than one second more than 17,000 hits in 2019 alone.

Elon Musk is a salesman. He's not an engineer. The people who work for him need, if writing in an ethically secure journal, which I believe the Journal of the Electrochemical Society is, make statements of conflicts of interest.

A conflict statement in a reputable journal generally can't be or isn't as explicit as "My boss is an asshole who wants me to say what he wants to hear and what he wants to tell everyone else even though he doesn't know shit," but a statement of for whom he works should be evidence enough as an implication.

Here is the TOC for a recent issue: J Electrochem Soc. Volume 166, Issue 13, 2019 TOC.

There are oodles of battery papers in there. Is it really true that Musk's boy has blown them all away?

Even the journals I read, which focus on chemistry and pure science are filled with oodles of battery papers.

There is a difference between marketing and science of course, but it is not always entirely clear. The struggle for truth, which is about what science should be, is ever more difficult by the hour.

Elon Musk is a destructive ass who is selling snake oil, or snake gas driven electrons. He likes to pretend that if he puts a small solar cell on one of his charging stations, one obviously incapable of producing 85 or 100 watt-hours of electricity in a month, never mind an hour, people will believe he's fighting climate change even though there's bazillion bits of real information out that electricity is overwhelmingly generated on this planet using dangerous fossil fuels and the situation is getting worse, not better.

Musk should paint himself orange and run for President. They're more or less in the same pod, he and the liar in chief, even though Musk likes to publicly blow a joint to pretend he's cool.

He's not cool.

Musk is selling cars. They are not and never will be sustainable in a decent world, although we're quite happy to show on this planet in the world we live in as opposed to a decent world that we are willing to put billions of people through unconscionable grief so we can applaud ourselves for being "green."