tesla battery

Tesla is making a lot of moves in the battery space lately and now it has added a patent for a new longer-lasting battery cell with better performance and cheaper cost.
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Tesla’s battery research partner has released a new paper on a battery cell that could last over 1 million miles, which they say is going to be particularly useful in ‘robot taxis’ — something that Tesla wants to bring to market.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that the automaker is working on a new battery pack to come out next year which will last 1 million miles.
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Tesla’s battery research group led by Jeff Dahn in Halifax has applied for a patent that describes a new battery cell chemistry that would result in faster charging and discharging, better longevity, and even lower cost.
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Almost a year into his new research partnership with Tesla, battery researcher Jeff Dahn has been hitting the talk circuit presenting some of his team’s recent progress. We reported last week on his talk at the International Battery Seminar from March and now we have a talk from him at MIT this week.

He went into details about why Tesla decided to work with his team and hire one of his graduate students, but he also announced that they have developed cells that can double the lifetime of the batteries in Tesla’s products – 4 years ahead of schedule.

Update: Dahn reached out to clarify that the cells in question were tested in the lab and they are not in Tesla’s products yet.
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Historical data from Tesla’s current battery packs show about 5% capacity degradation after 50,000 miles (80,000 km) and the capacity levels off for about 150,000 more miles before hitting 90% capacity.

Those are already pretty good results, but Tesla aims to do better with Jeff Dahn, a renowned battery researcher and the leader of Tesla’s research partnership through his battery-research group at Dalhousie University.

The scientist and his team recently unveiled their latest research on a new chemistry that could enable even more cycles without significant degradation.
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Since Tesla’s acquisition of SolarCity, the company’s mission slightly changed from “accelerating the advent of electric transport” to “accelerating the advent of sustainable energy”. The company wants to offer solutions throughout the entire energy production and consumption process.

At a conference last week, a Tesla executive explained the company’s vision for managing all that energy across all their products.
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Tesla is putting continuous efforts into making its battery packs safer. We saw a great example earlier this year when we reported on Tesla setting fire to a Powerpack to test its safety features with impressive results.

In its latest effort, the company filed a new application for a patent for an apparatus and method for ‘charging batteries safely’.
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A few years back, there was a lot of talk about Tesla potentially using a metal-air/li-ion hybrid powertrain to enable a longer range and faster charging in future vehicles. There’s no doubt that the company worked on such a system since they applied for several patents related to the tech, but that was mainly back in 2010 when they were still very much in the heavy development work for the Model S.

At this point, it looks like Tesla is very committed to li-ion batteries and metal-air doesn’t seem to be on the map anymore, but the company was recently granted another patent related to emerging battery technology.
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Jeff Dahn, renowned battery researcher and the leader of Tesla’s research partnership through his battery-research group at Dalhousie University, won the prestigious Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering this week and made some interesting comments about his partnership with Tesla.
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Despite an announcement earlier this month and some information leaking from a subsequent investor event, not many details are currently known about Tesla’s new battery cell production at the Gigafactory.

We now learn that an upcoming event should reveal more information. Tesla’s Senior Director of Cell Supply Chain & Business Development, Kurt Kelty, and its battery cell research partner, Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University, will both present at the upcoming International Battery Seminar & Exhibit in March.
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For the past year, Tesla has been guiding “by the end of the year” for the start of battery cell production at the Gigafactory. The end of the year has come and gone, but Tesla didn’t confirm the start of production.

As it turns out, Tesla, and its battery partner Panasonic, started production of cells for qualification at the plant in December, but today, it confirmed the start of “mass production” of the new battery cell, which will enable several of Tesla’s new products, including the Model 3.
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Considering most specs about Tesla’s batteries are kept secret, it can sometimes be difficult to understand the company’s competitive advantage in this space. Experience and data are certainly important factors. Tesla was the first company to treat battery cells as a commodity and build large battery packs using thousands of common cylindrical li-ion battery cells. That was over a decade ago.
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Despite being one of the main concerns with potential new electric vehicle buyers, battery degradation is starting to look less like an actual issue. Earlier this year, we reported on new data showing very little capacity loss over high mileage and now we have significantly more data backing this claim through a new survey.
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We don’t hear a lot about Tesla’s battery swap program anymore. We are told that it is still alive, but on the back-burner as Tesla’s EV infrastructure team is focusing on accelerating the rollout of Supercharger stations ahead of the Model 3 coming to market next year.

The use case for regular Tesla owners is not really attractive versus the Supercharger, but battery swap could make a comeback with special stations for ‘Tesla Semi’ or private stations to accommodate large commercial fleets of Tesla vehicles. Tesla recently hired Audi’s NA commercial account manager to lead a new B2B push for Tesla in “fleet management, rental, government/public sectors & corporate enterprises.”

Tesla could be looking to have a more important presence in commercial fleets and battery swap makes more sense when it’s important that your vehicles stay on the road. Same goes for freight with the upcoming ‘Tesla Semi‘.

In the meantime, we now get a new look at Tesla’s battery swapping magic through newly released technical drawings from a patent application.
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Last year, Tesla and Jeff Dahn’s battery-research group at Dalhousie University announced a new partnership that transitioned the group from their 20-year research agreement with 3M to a new association with Tesla under the newly formed ‘NSERC/Tesla Canada Industrial Research’.

While announced last year, the partnership only went into effect in June 2016. The group just released its first research paper since and it could lead to a potential increase in energy density and durability.
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What is Tesla’s core technology advantage over competitors? Does it even have one? Those are questions that often come up when discussing Tesla’s lead in the electric vehicle sector. Since Tesla open-sourced its patents, some suggested that its technology advantage is virtually nonexistent since competitors could simply use it, but it’s not as simple.

While Tesla’s patents are indeed opened for use in electric vehicles as per its ‘patent pledge’, Tesla is still keeping some trade secrets and the company is fairly secretive about some of its development and manufacturing processes, especially when it comes to batteries, which could very well be Tesla’s core technology advantage led by its co-founder and CTO, JB Straubel.
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The Economic Times released an interesting article with a reaching title ‘How Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors maybe killing flamingos with its electric cars‘ yesterday. The claim is so absurd that it prompted Musk to mock it on Twitter:

Because of course I hate flamingos…(maybe try eating fewer flamingo eggs in your salad)https://t.co/tUKsWqCobo

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2016

While the endangerment of the Flamigos’ environment is not a laughing matter, the publication’s link back to Musk and Tesla certainly looks like one.
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While Tesla has been manufacturing battery packs at the Gigafactory for its energy storage division since last year, new battery cell production is expected to be the real hallmark of the giant battery factory and it has yet to happen.

Panasonic, Tesla’s strategic partner at the plant, is in charge of the cell production inside the facility and it is expected to begin the process by the end of the year. Now we learn that Panasonic is “gearing up for significant growth” at the Gigafactory and it will host a special invitation-only hiring event on location next week to for “positions in advanced manufacturing”.
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As expected, Tesla announced a new Model S 60 today with a starting price point of $66,000 before Federal Tax in the US, under $60K after the $7500 tax credit.  But Tesla really didn’t release a new car today – the company released a new software configuration and pricing model. That small change will let the automaker sell a lot more cars…
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Last week, we reported on Tesla starting to take delivery of important quantities of battery cells from a new supplier: Samsung SDI. At the time, we contacted Tesla to know what the cells will be used for, the company declined to comment, but we speculated that it could be used for ‘Tesla Energy’ products.

Now prompted by a Reuters report yesterday citing Samsung SDI sources claiming that they are in negotiation with Tesla to supply batteries for its cars, Elon Musk has confirmed that Panasonic will be exclusively supplying cells for the Model 3, S and X.
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