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Wired reports that Tesla may soon have batteries with a one million mile lifespan.
From his hideout in a hollowed out volcano last April, Elon Musk promised us (3:10:00)
that Tesla would soon be able to power its electric cars for more than 1 million miles over the course of their lifespan. At the time, the claim seemed a bit much. That's more than double the mileage Tesla owners can expect to get out of their car's current battery packs, which are already well beyond the operational range of most other EV batteries. It just didn't seem real—except now it appears that it is.
Tesla affiliated battery researchers this month described in The Journal of the Electrochemical Society a moderate-energy-density Lithium-Ion Cell chemistry that "should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) and last at least two decades in grid energy storage."
Led by physicist Jeff Dahn, one of the world's foremost lithium-ion researchers, the Dalhousie group showed that its battery significantly outperforms any similar lithium-ion battery previously reported. They noted their battery could be especially useful for self-driving robotaxis and long-haul electric trucks, two products Tesla is developing.
In a significant break from the usual, complete details on the cells, including "electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc." were provided by the researchers "so that others can recreate these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts."
The team's results show that their batteries could be charged and depleted more than 4,000 times and lose only about 10 percent of their energy capacity. For the sake of comparison, a paper from 2014 showed that similar lithium-ion batteries lost half their capacity after only 1,000 cycles.
Side Note - Tesla, Musk, and the researchers have neither confirmed nor denied that the upcoming one million mile battery packs touted by Musk last year are the same as the paper describes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 24 2019, @03:12PM (4 children)
Don't forget the horizontal line of biofuels. I'm pretty sure that's below the horizontal line of how much you can afford to spend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24 2019, @04:53PM (3 children)
Biofuels are only available because cheap oil and mechanized farming leads to huge agricultural surpluses. It remains to be seen if we can run farms on alternative sources and still produce such huge surpluses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 24 2019, @10:35PM
Ah, but excess CO2 increases the growth of plants which makes biofuels cheaper.
(Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday September 24 2019, @10:38PM
So you're saying tesla batteries will not run a tractor for 1,000,000 miles?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 25 2019, @02:11AM
Biofuels are another cheap oil. They're just not quite as cheap as pumping it out of the ground at present.