Features - Benefits Element! And Novonix has plenty of both in all 3 battery materials that are needed for the million mile battery!
Topics of Discussion in this article below:
1. "Million mile battery..."
2. "Tesla making its own batteries in addition to expansion of the Sanyo/Panasonic battery plant at Giga Nevada"
3. "Terafactory...."
4. "Pr Jeff Dahn"
5."the biscuit tin"
6. "Panasonic CEO "Panasonic will run out of batteries if Tesla keeps expanding.."
7. "Patents, patents, patents
8. "CATL working with Pr Dahn on their own version of the million mile battery..."
9. "elimination of Cobolt"
9. "Pr Dahn released a research paper on a battery that was developed 3 years ago that will last for 1.6million kms (1million miles) or 20 years on the Grid!
1million miles lifespan from a Battery developed 3 years ago! What are they going to announcement tomorrow morning?https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/21/21443806/tesla-battery-day-rumors-specs-what-to-expect-elon-musk
‘Millionmile’ batteries and ‘Terafactories’ are just some of the things that could beon deck for Elon Musk’s big event
By Andrew
J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk Sep 21, 2020, 10:04am EDT
Day is upon us. TheSeptember 22nd event in Palo Alto, California, “will blow your mind,” CEO ElonMusk promised in a recent earnings call. “It blows my mind, and I know it!”Musk also hinted that we should expect “many exciting things” at the event.
What sort of things? Musk has left a trail of breadcrumbs overthe years in the form of tweets, public comments, patents, and research paperspublished by his team of battery scientists, hinting at what kinds of battery breakthroughs Tesla may unveil.
Tesla is already the industry leader when it comes to squeezingrange out of lithium-ion batteries in electric cars, so it will be interestingto see what other advances get showcased on Battery Day. The company originally planned to hold the event in April, butit has had to reschedule it until later in the year because of the COVID-19pandemic. The company held a similar event focused on self-driving technology in April 2019.
Say what you will about Musk’s ability to meet deadlines andlive up the expectations he sets, but he certainly knows how to put on a goodshow. But what does the billionaire CEO have up his sleeve that will blow our minds? Here’s our roundup of recent rumorsas well as predictions from some experts we interviewed.
‘THE BISCUIT TIN’
Like most car companies, Tesla sources its batteries from majorproducers so it can focus on its core mission: building electric cars. Thecompany’s so-called 2170 cells, which
are currently used in Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, are produced by Panasonic atTesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada.
But those supplies can become strained. In 2018, a shortage ofcells at Panasonic added to Tesla’s “production hell” woes just as it beganramping up its big push to make the Model
3. Musk has criticized Panasonic’s pace of battery production as constrainingthe production of the Model 3 and the Model Y. And Panasonic CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga has predicted that its batteries will “run out” if Tesla continues to expand its business.
This suggests Musk might announce that Tesla will beginmanufacturing its own batteries. Recent acquisitions, leaked photos, patentapplications, and research published by Jeff
Dahn, one of the pioneering developers of the lithium-ion battery andTesla’s head of batteryresearch,
all point to Tesla making this big shift to in-house battery production.
Several photos of Tesla’s supposed in-house batteriesrecently surfaced
on Electrek. The batteries, which are rumored to be from Tesla’s secretive “Roadrunner” project, appear to be twice the size of Panasonic’s 2170 cells. They also may be higher capacity
while being lower cost for the company to produce by removing the tab, a part of the battery that forms a connection between the cell and what it is powering.
MORE ENERGY PER CELL MEANS FEWER CELLSPER PACK, WHICH CAN HELP DRIVE DOWN THE OVERALL COST
Caspar Rawles, an analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence whofocuses on the raw materials that go into lithium-ion batteries, said his grouphas dubbed the new cells “the Tesla
biscuit tin” because that’s what it looks like. More energy per cell meansfewer cells per pack, which can help drive down the overall cost of productionfor Tesla. And that could mean a future where electric cars are comparablypriced with gas-burning vehicles.
It’s not just leaked photos of unknown origin that point toTesla making its own batteries. The company posted job listings earlier thisyear seeking workers for “line cell manufacturing”
engineers at its factory in Fremont, California. Tesla also struck a deal withSouth Korean company Hanwha Corporation to purchase battery formationequipment, with the equipment headed to Fremont first and then to Gigafactoriesin Nevada, Shanghai, and Berlin.
‘MILLION MILE’ BATTERY
Tesla is also expected to reveal new details about its quest tobuild a “million mile” battery, which is a reference to how long a battery can last in a car before needing to be replaced. This is where Dahn and his research team in Nova Scotia come into play.
In May, Reuters reported that the new “million mile” battery will be jointly developed with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) and will utilize technology developed by Dahn’s team of academic battery experts. It was also reported that Tesla was in advanced
talks to use CATL’s lithium-ion phosphate batteries, which use no cobalt, the most expensive metal in EV batteries.
The battery is expected to lower Tesla’s cost per kilowatt-hour— the unit of energy most commonly used to measure the capacity of the batterypacks in modern electric vehicles — to under $100. Many experts believe that reaching that mark would allow Teslato sell electric vehicles for the same prices as gasoline-powered ones, therebymaking them far more accessible.
One of Musk’s main objectives has always been “making combustionseem obsolete to a consumer [and] making them feel that they have to goelectric,” said Steve LeVine, editor-at-large at Medium andauthor of the 2015 book The Powerhouse:Inside the Invention of a Battery to Save the World.
“One of the ways to do that is making the car seem like it’s alifetime car,” LeVine said. “If a battery is going a million miles, if youcount that out — that’s 76 years.”
Photo
by SeanO’Kane / The Verge
PATENTS, PATENTS, PATENTS
Tesla has filed a flurry of patent applications in recent monthsbased on Dahn’s research. In
December 2019, the company submitted an application for a patent for “dioxazolones and nitrile sulfites as electrolyte additives for lithium-ion batteries.” The substance could enable a better, longer-lasting, and cheaper battery for electric cars
and home storage products, the company said in its application. In April, another patent application was submitted, this time for something called a “single crystal” nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA) electrode. The most successful lithium-ion battery systems involve using nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) electrodes. In a
paper published by Dahn and his team in the Journal of TheElectrochemical Society regarding the significance
of the single crystal cathode, he says: “We conclude that cells of this typeshould be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometres (1million miles) and last at least two decades in grid energy storage.” In otherwords, these new single crystal electrodes could enable Tesla to achieve similar or better energydensity as NMC electrodes.
“WE CONCLUDE THAT CELLS OF THIS TYPESHOULD BE ABLE TO POWER AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE FOR OVER 1.6 MILLION KILOMETRES.”
Tesla has also submitted an application for a new“tabless” battery cell design that it says improves on existing designs. Musk tweeted that “it’s a lot more important than it sounds.” Indeed, the photos that leaked to Electrek (whichRawles said looked like a biscuit tin)show a tabless cell. Tesla’s patent outlines a battery design where features like bumps and small spikes act to connect different layers rather than relying on a welded, unifying conductive tab.
Tabs are what make a clean connection to whatever the battery ispowering. They also require a fair amount of finesse to manufacture.Streamlining that process by removing the tab could save Tesla a lot of time, materials, and money.
COBALT ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK?
Musk has been vocal about wanting to eliminate cobalt fromTesla’s batteries. In 2018, he tweeted that Tesla uses less than 3 percent ofcobalt in its batteries and that the next-generation
versions would have “none.” Battery Day could be an opportunity for thecompany’s CEO to outline exactly how he could achieve that.
Cobalt is a key componentof batteries. It’s also the
most expensive material in the battery and mined underconditions that often violate human rights,
leading it to be called the “blood diamond of batteries.” As a result, scientists and
startups are rushing to create a cobalt-free battery.
Dahn is one of those scientists. He co-authored a paper in 2019that concluded that cobalt brings little or no value to NCA-type batterieswhere nickel is at least 90 percent of
the transition metal layer. The paper hoped that it would spur more interest incobalt-free materials and specifically named aluminum, manganese, and magnesiumas three elements with more use than cobalt.
But Benchmark’s Rawles is skeptical, calling Tesla “very lowcobalt exposed anyway.” Also, Tesla recently published a sustainability reportin which the company declared it would
work with the mining industry to find more sustainable sources of cobalt —which Rawles says is an indication that Tesla will be working with cobalt forsome time.
Photo
by SeanO’Kane / The Verge
FROM GIGAFACTORY TO ‘TERAFACTORY’
During the earnings call in which Musk promised to blow ourminds, he also hinted at a possible future direction for his company’smanufacturing footprint. Tesla’s next factories
won’t be called Gigafactories, he said — they may be called “Terafactories.”
If giga implies a billion of something, then tera equals atrillion. Tesla decided to call its facilities Gigafactories because it wasgoing to produce “gigawatt-hours” (GWh) of
battery capacity. A Terafactory could imply a “terawatt-hour” of batterycapacity, or 1,000 GWh. That’s 20 times the current capacity of Panasonic’sproduction at Gigafactory Nevada.
A TERAFACTORY COULD IMPLY A“TERAWATT-HOUR” OF BATTERY CAPACITY
One of Tesla’s recent acquisitions provides a clue as to howTesla could achieve this exponential increase in battery capacity. Back in2018, Tesla acquired a company called Maxwell Technologies in an all-stock deal worth $218 million.
Maxwell’s big innovation is dry electrode technology, which ismore environmentally friendly than the more commonly used wet electrodetechnology. Maxwell’s technology eliminates
the solvents in a battery cell through which electric current flows. Thecompany says this dry electrode technology, which can be applied to batteriesof varying chemistries, also boosts performance and is more cost-effective thanwet electrode technology.
Transitioning to dry electrode technology could allow Tesla toeliminate a lot of the manufacturing space currently dedicated to wet electrodeproduction, which, in turn, would
enable it to pack more cell production into its facilities. Thus, a Gigafactorybecomes a Terafactory.
Photo
by KellyBarnes for The Verge
TESLA ASAN ELECTRIC UTILITY?
Earlier this year, Tesla unveiled a new product called Autobidder,
which allows customers involved in Tesla’s home storage projects, like its Australian battery farm, to sell energy back to the grid when they don’t need it. Think of it as a virtual power plant network. It’s not just aspirational: Tesla has also applied to become an electricity supplier in the UK.
There have also been leaked screenshots from one of Dahn’spresentations that imply that Tesla’s new in-house produced battery cells wouldbe “suitable for grid-tied vehicles.”
The presentation, which was later made private, said (emphasis ours):
Withthe smart grid, the driver should be able to make their vehicle available to becharged or discharged when parked at home or at work up to set maximum andminimum charge points so that the
next needed drive is possible. Vehicle owners should be paid for this byutilities. The future is very exciting.
This would have huge implications for the ownership of Tesla’selectric cars and how customers could monetize their vehicles as batteries onwheels. But don’t expect Musk to announce
Tesla as the second coming of PG&E. While there is value in staking out aposition in energy platforms, Tesla is still far off from becoming its ownutility.
‘ONE MORE THING’
A trademark of Musk’s public presentations has been revealing“one more thing,” whether it’s an updated Roadster or an electric-poweredAll-Terrain Vehicle. Battery Day isn’t a
product event, but Musk is nothing if not a showman.
“Musk knows how to feed the techno beast by giving red meat tothe folks who like these tech details,” LeVine said.
Musk is also acutely aware of the competition, whether it’sQuantumScape, the 10-year-old San Jose, California, startup backed by BillGates (another Musk antagonist), or Lucid Motors, the EV startup founded by the former lead engineer on the Model S. QuantumScape claims its lithium-ion batteries can extend the range of electric vehicles by 50 percent. And Lucid says it recently unveiled sedan, the Air, can achieve a range that is 20 percent better than the best Tesla.
EV batteries are no longer the sole province of Tesla. Legacyautomakers like Volkswagen, General Motors, and Ford are funneling billions ofdollars into EV development, and batteries will play a major role. Musk needs to seize the moment if he’s to remain in thepole position, LeVine said.
“The headlines say that these are Tesla killers,” he said ofcompanies like QuantumScape and Lucid Motors. “This Battery Day is about Teslasaying, ‘Not so fast.’”
‘Million mile’ batteries and ‘Terafactories’ are just some of the things that could be on deck for Elon Musk’s big event
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