In addition to Space X’s breakthroughs in the space industry, Elon Musk is making his other company, Tesla Motors, more and more successful. Another news that excited the automotive world was the news of the intention of the famous billionaire to start his own production of revolutionary batteries. At the moment, Musk has already ordered production lines for the future plant from the Hanwha Group holding from South Korea.
The fundamental difference between Ilon’s new batteries and any others is the combination of Li-ion and Li-metal technology, which no one has been able to do before. Musk appears to have found a way to eliminate the technical complexity of making these hybrids, allowing electric cars to run 25% longer while reducing costs.
The idea of cars with extended mileage on a single charge
In all discussions about electric vehicles with extended range (eng. – “extender range”), they mean a battery-powered car with a low-power compact ICE engine. Moreover, the latter in such cases is used not so much as a motor, but as a source of energy generation for charging batteries when the need arises.
Note: An example is the BMW i3 Rex. Its battery is designed for 205 km of run, and the internal combustion engine adds another 325 km to them.
A similar option is implemented in Tesla – but, unlike classic hybrids, that the mileage is extended solely due to the generation of electricity. The development belongs to Professor Jeff Dun (Dalhousie University, Canada). His team has been working with Musk for four years, is part of a specialized research institute and is funded by Tesla Motors.
Innovative batteries and energy density
A new type of hybrid battery technology, consisting of both long-lasting Li-ion and higher energy density Li-metal cells, has been featured in the prestigious technical magazine Joule.
Its essence is this. The increase in battery energy density automatically reduces the cost of electric vehicles and allows you to increase their one-time mileage. This is achieved by replacing the graphite anode in classical Li-On cells with graphite coated with metallized lithium, which almost doubles the energy density.
Pure Li-metal anodes cannot retain their primary capacitance for a long time and lose their physical and technical characteristics. In order to combine high energy density and long service life, the Canadians created hybrids whose stability was further enhanced by the use of a special salt electrolyte. As a result, the mileage lengthened by 35%, and the batteries themselves fell in price.
Battery cost per 1 kW and why it matters
The only indicator by which modern electric vehicles lose compared to internal combustion engines in terms of power is the cost of propulsion in kilowatts. For gasoline and diesel cars, it is approximately $100/kWh. For previous Tesla models, this parameter fluctuated within $158. Other manufacturers of electric cars – from 160 to 220 dollars.
But now, if Musk succeeds in manufacturing and equipping his cars with new batteries, the “enchanted” border of a hundred dollars will be overcome and even reduced. Moreover, the life of the new battery will reach approximately one million miles, or 1,650,000 km.
This will allow Tesla Motors not only to get ahead of competitors in the field of electric propulsion technology, but also to make their cars cheaper than comparable internal combustion engines.
Sources close to the development circles of new batteries mention the following advantages:
- a sharp decrease in the composition of batteries of the most expensive chemical element – cobalt (almost $ 30,000 per ton);
- the use of batteries with the complete exclusion of this metal;
- the inclusion in the composition of special additives that allow you to save a larger amount of energy for a long time.
According to the same sources, Tesla’s new cobalt-free CATL batteries based solely on lithium/iron/phosphate technologies will drop below $80/kWh, and individual batteries to $60/kWh.