The New Tesla Battery
Tesla’s “Battery Day” is a highly anticipated event that has investors and consumers on the edges of their seats. The former are hoping that these new, improved batteries will give Tesla an edge over traditional automakers; the latter want longer-lasting batteries that can push their cars on for bigger distances and have less energy spent.
Elon Musk, co-founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, cautioned that serious high-volume production will not be put into place until 2022. This is mostly because Tesla is moving onto using a single component made by using the world’s largest aluminum casing machine, rather than continuing to utilize individual parts fastened together on an assembly line.
“The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood. It’s 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes,” Musk said on the social media app Twitter. “The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself.”
Some are skeptical as to whether Musk will be able to keep his word on the production year. Both he and Tesla have a history of missed deadlines; Musk has previously stated that he expected a Tesla to drive itself coast to coast by the time 2017 ends, that space tourists would be visiting the moon in 2018, and that the Tesla autonomous Robotaxis would be working in 2020. With 2020 coming to a close with only three months left, Tesla hasn’t sold any fully autonomous cars, nor one efficient robotaxi operation.
Battery researchers and professionals, such as Richard Laine, a professor at University of Michigan, speculate that Musk’s major breakthrough is a shift to solid-state technology. This means that the part of a battery that’s usually liquid will be replaced with solid materials. A solid-state battery would be advantageous, because lithium-ion batteries, which are currently used in everything electronic, are highly flammable. Solid-state technology would reduce the risk of fires. These new batteries should also have a higher energy density, which would be useful to customers, as the prices of electric vehicles would go down.
Though everyone is divided over the timeline of these solid-state batteries, everyone is hopeful that Tesla’s new battery will exceed expectations.
For further reading:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/other/elon-musk-tempers-expectations-ahead-of-tesla-battery-day/ar-BB19iUro?ocid=msedgntp
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/cars/tesla-battery-day-preview/index.html