Lithium-ion test results to be used as benchmarks for new battery technologies

m.jes.ecsdl.org

68 points·dweekly··5 comments

In summary, a new medium-density chemistry of pouch cells can retain 90% capacity after 5,000 cycles at 100% depth of discharge.

In other words, trading off a bit of range (e.g. a Model S goes from 360 to 300 miles) to get batteries that can last for 1 million miles, or alternatively, grid storage applications that could run for 20 years.

The speculation is that they make a different battery just for fleet (Robotaxi) deployments, or possibly the Maxwell tech could offset the range loss, since releasing a lower range battery to the consumer segment is somewhat of a hard sell.

This work is from Jeff Dahn’s team which does research for Tesla, which has claimed they will deliver a million mile battery next year. Presumably this could be an option for high duty cycle vehicles that could be charging multiple times a day.

It seems that the research was just just supported by Tesla Canada.

Tesla don't even own the IP for their lithium cell technology, that's all Panasonic. Tesla develops battery packs and other things.

It’s been rumoured recently that Tesla has been developing their own cell manufacturing capability:

https://electrek.co/2019/09/04/tesla-battery-cell-manufactur...

Is this still true since the Maxwell acquisition? My understanding was that this lead to some new IP for the batteries and processes?

As far as I know Tesla is not making cells with the Maxwell technology. Maybe in the future. Panasonic cells are very cost efficient compared to competition. I don't think Maxwell acquisition changes that. My reading is that Tesla is hedging it's bets for the future. Maxwell has some dry cell technology for example.

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