Tesla started spearheading the range of electric vehicles. This has been a concern for a while now as many customers are interested in an increase in the range of their vehicles, and Tesla will be the first to do so. The researchers previously said that the new batteries would last just 1 million miles, but now they doubled it to 2 million miles which is approximately 3.5 million kilometres. In terms of longevity, its going to last decades.
The million mile battery explained
Jeff Dahn a battery researcher was under a contract for researching new batteries for Tesla. He said that the new battery which uses a brand new standard based on a paper last year stating that he could increase the range from 300 to 500 thousand miles, to over a million miles. Today he said that it was possible to increase the range to 2 million miles from the previous 1 million.
He showed the results were depending on the depth of discharge which means, the percentage of charge the battery is attained before being discharged. If the cells were treated more carefully, i.e. if the complete charge stroke from 0 to 100 percent were not used, the cells should even last 15,000 cycles, according to Dahn. graphs published by Electrek from the lecture show a much more constant cell capacity over 10,000 cycles with a charge stroke from 0 to 80 per cent than with a charge stroke of 0-90 per cent or 0-100 per cent.
On average, American drivers use their vehicles for less than 30 miles per day. So, for example, with this battery in a Tesla vehicle with over 300 miles of range, you could use it to commute 30 miles a day and by charging, on average, from 70 to 80% every day, it would result in very little to no battery degradation.
New batteries will be used in Elon Musk’s Robotaxis, semi-electric trucks, etc and could even be in your next Tesla car!
Elon Musk is planning new Robotaxis which will have a much higher utilization rate than normal Tesla cars. Hence designing a battery that has a longer lifespan is the need of the hour, and Jeff Dahn created it.
Dahn brought up several other interesting potential uses of batteries with extreme longevity and briefly commented on Tesla’s “Battery Day” in the presentation:
Tesla is moving forward at the speed of light. They are upscaling their factory. They know they are going to need terawatt-hours of batteries for both energy storage and vehicles. It’s an incredibly exciting time.
Here’s Jeff Dahn’s new presentation:
Meanwhile, there is a report from China that Tesla is planning an innovation center in Hainan province. There, research and development on technologies for batteries for electric cars and stationary energy storage systems is to be promoted.
