Tesla Acquires Ultracapacitor Manufacturer For Over $200 Million, Reaches Deal With Electrify America To Deploy Powerpacks At Over 100 Charging Stations (electrek.co) 124
Thelasko shares a report from Electrek: Tesla hasn't been known for making many acquisitions, but we've now learned that it has reached an agreement to acquire ultracapacitor and battery component manufacturer Maxwell based in California. The all-stock transaction worth over $200 million was announced by Maxwell this morning and we reached out to Tesla to confirm the news. [...] Tesla's acquisition of Maxwell might have little to do with ultracapacitors. The automaker might be more interested with Maxwell's dry electrode technology that they have been hyping recently. Maxwell claims that its electrode enables an energy density of over 300 Wh/kg in current demonstration cells and they see a path to over 500 Wh/kg. This would represent a significant improvement over current battery cells used by Tesla and enable longer range or lighter weight, but that's not even the most attractive benefit of Maxwell's dry electrode. They claim that it should simplify the manufacturing process and result in a "10 to 20% cost reduction versus state-of-the-art wet electrodes" while "extending battery Life up to a factor of 2." Many companies have been making similar claims about batteries. Tesla, specifically Elon and JB, have often complained that they couldn't verify those claims. If Tesla is willing to pay $200 million for Maxwell, I have to assume that they verified the claims and they believe the technology is applicable to their batteries. On a semi-related note, Tesla has also reached a deal with Electrify America to deploy Powerpacks at over 100 charging stations operated by the latter. "Demand charges, a higher rate that an electric utility charges when a user's electricity needs spike, are resulting in incredible costs for charging station operators," reports Electrek. "The use of energy storage at charging stations in order to shave the peak usage is a solution to those demand charges."
"[Electrify America] announced today that they will deploy Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations," the report says. "The system will be designed to be modular in order to increase the capacity if needed."
"[Electrify America] announced today that they will deploy Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations," the report says. "The system will be designed to be modular in order to increase the capacity if needed."
Electrify America (Score:5, Interesting)
The Electrify America deal is actually rather amusing, as it's Volkswagen behind that ;)
Dry electrode manufacturing isn't important because of some theoretical battery property improvements which may or may not be realized at commercial scale. It's important to reduce manufacturing hardware depreciation costs and operating expenses for battery electrode creation - e.g. greater throughput with less hardware and lower energy consumption.
The ongoing task of reducing cell costs is part capex/opex, and part raw materials costs. Tesla isn't working on the latter themselves, but there's a lot of interesting work going on on that front (for example, producing nickel sulfate from laterite, which historically has only been good for ferronickel and the like - that could tank nickel sulfate prices).
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No one cares. Can't you guys stick to Electrek and Teslarati?
What mileage do you get out of your high horse?
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The Electrify America deal is actually rather amusing, as it's Volkswagen behind that ;)
It would be amusing if the company did it on its own accord rather than doing it as part of it's "fine" for dieselgate.
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seriously the dry thing seems not that well demonstrated yet, or else the price would have been higher and definitely not stock swap.
No - it is unlikely that Tesla will use caps. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is some use for ultra-capacitors in performance electric vehicles - dump regenerative braking energy into caps instead of the battery for use in the following acceleration. But unless you are decelerating and accelerating lots - think, racing on a track - you'd be better off using the extra mass for more batteries. The shallow charge cycles used in everyday regen don't stress a big battery back, and the heavy duty circuitry to pull charge into and out of big capacitor banks isn't cheap.
What Tesla is most likely interested in is new battery tech that they are in the process of developing. Really, they are paying most of that 200M for their dry electrode know-how and patents. The main thing we need to make electric cars better is more energy per unit volume (and mass) of battery.
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There is some use for ultra-capacitors in performance electric vehicles - dump regenerative braking energy into caps instead of the battery for use in the following acceleration. But unless you are decelerating and accelerating lots - think, racing on a track - you'd be better off using the extra mass for more batteries.
Tesla Roadster (2020) [wikipedia.org]
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I'm thinking city buses. Frequent stops at fixed point, and lots of accelerating/decelerating.
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You can already successfully reclaim most of that energy just with the battery. It works best when the battery is not fully charged, but that also improves the number of charge cycles so Tesla for one is doing it already. Their low capacity packs have spare capacity they're not even using, which improves recharge time since the charge rate decreases as the charge level increases.
If you wanted to fully charge your battery, maybe you'd benefit from a capacitor for regen. But you don't, especially for a city b
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They could use a hybrid system to enable you to fast charge the car with enough juice to get you home.
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The limit for charging at the moment is getting power into the car, not the batteries ability to store it. There's just a limit to the amount of voltage and amperage you can use with a plug that ordinary people have to connect and disconnect, and that is well within the 'C' rating of those large packs.
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The limit for charging at the moment is getting power into the car, not the batteries ability to store it. There's just a limit to the amount of voltage and amperage you can use with a plug that ordinary people have to connect and disconnect, and that is well within the 'C' rating of those large packs.
Really? I would have thought that the limiting factor was the battery's ability to take the power at the higher current flow. If that is not the case, shouldn't that mean that if we wanted a car with half the charging time, we just need to build one with two standard charging plugs, and use them both at the same time? That would seem to be within the abilities of "ordinary" people. Put one on each side of the vehicle and it would keep the design summitry.
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The same ultracaps used for regenerative braking could be used as a buffer during charging. It would absorb as much as possible of the charge to cut the charging time. A matching ultracap in the "gas pump" would lessen the charging station's own power usage spike.
'
As ultracaps grow in capacity, they might eventually replace the whole Li-ion battery array.
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Re:Cue the experts (Score:2)
Re:Queue the experts (Score:4, Insightful)
A better question is if Maxwell's tech is real and as revolutionary as claimed then why sell the entire company and all IP for a measly $200 million?
Because they have good researchers, but nobody with the skills to turn their IP into commercial products and manufacture at scale.
According to their financial statements they are all but bankrupt. Doesn't add up.
There is no magic machine that turns great ideas into piles of money. Plenty of brilliant people go broke. Having a PhD is negatively correlated with business success.
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You know there are hundreds of thousands of people with working solar panels on their roof from SolarCity / Tesla Energy right?
How is that "a scam" ?
You are an idiot.
0.6C charge/discharge rate? Nice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations
So the Powerpack system can be charged/discharged at an average of 0.6 C (Full to empty or vice versa in 1 hour 40 minutes.) Not too shabby.
Also means it's not going to lose much per cycle, either. Losing 10% would have it dissipating 21 kW as waste heat, so expect it to be far better than that.
You don't need to *stay next to the car* (Score:5, Informative)
Anything over 15 minutes to recharge is terrible.
Are you aware that you don't need to stay next to an EV while it's charging ?
Get that recharge rate to where it can compete with internal combustion engines
Typical use on long trips :
ICE: pull out to the gaz station, quickly fill the tank, then *after the refill* move the car a few meters further (to free the gaz pump) next to the restaurant/dinner, then have your break there (coffee or lunch depending on the time of the day).
EV: plug in the car to the charging station, and go to the restaurant dinner to have your break (coffee / lunch) *while* the car is charging.
There's NO difference in practical use.
(Ah yeah, I forgot: there's the "I pee in a plastic bottle" that will insist on driving 8 hours straight without a single pause. Just please try not to crash your sleep deprived face into me, thank you.)
Typical use on short trips:
ICE: you take your car, but every now and then you'll need to add an extra detour to the gaz station in your daily plan.
EV: you take your car. It's already charged 100% overnight.
EV are actually better.
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So "the guy you work with" is an idiot. Did he also forget to put fuel in whatever car he had before? Did he ride the fuel gauge until it was below the E mark and the engine was sputtering as he pulled into the pump? Did he complain about having to replace fuel filters constantly?
It literally takes 10 seconds to plug the car in when you get home. Take charger cable off wall, walk to rear quarter of car. Push button on charger cable and charger port cover opens for you. Plug in and walk away.
Oh, and som
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Oh, and some of us don't like getting food all over the interiors of our cars.
And some of us don't want to be babysitting an EV capacity level.
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What babysitting? I pull into the garage, plug it in, and then I go inside the house.
When I want to drive somewhere, I unplug it and drive it. And I always have a full battery.
You do more babysitting with your cellphone battery than I do with an EV. And definitely more with an IC-powered car with the oil changes, the vastly more frequent brake jobs, the transmission service, the filter changes, etc.
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Re:You don't need to *stay next to the car* (Score:4, Interesting)
350kW chargers are being tested in Europe now. In a decently efficient car that's 1200-1600 MPH. Take the lower end for high speed motorway driving.
If you work it out that means you need to stop for about 12 minutes every 3 hours if cruising at 75 MPH. Maybe I'm just getting old but I don't think I could plug the car in, go take a piss, grab another bottle and get back to unplug in much less time than that.
In fact I doubt you could do it faster in an ICE, given than you need to wait by the car while it is being fuelled.
An the breaks are necessary. (Score:3)
350kW chargers are being tested in Europe now {...} If you work it out that means you need to stop for about 12 minutes every 3 hours if cruising at 75 MPH.
(Note: 75MPH =~ 120 km/h)
Speaking of Europe, depending on where you're looking :
- You are extremely strongly encouraged to make breaks much more frequently than that (as examples : see the campaigns on highway electronic signage in France during each touristic season - strongly encouraging to take a break every 2 hours maximum. Or as another example, the "turbo nap" information campaigns in Switzerland)
- It might be illegal to go on long stretch without a break (there are laws for profession
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I completely agree, a stop every 2 hours should be mandatory in fact.
Even with the current crop of 100/150kW chargers they can get you another two hours driving by the time you have been to the bathroom and grabbed a bit to eat or drink. You might have to spend another 10 minutes relaxing if the charger is only 50kW.
It's basically a solved problem, all that is really needed is more chargers.
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It's basically a solved problem, all that is really needed is more chargers.
And the supporting infrastructure such as power lines, often in the middle of nowhere. Lots of stretches for hours with almost no population, sometimes after hours of driving, there's a small community using diesel for power.
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Shame there's no way to generate electricity with diesel fuel. Or out of thin air, for that matter. If only someone could convert sunshine into power... We can dream I guess.
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diesel generator
that exists. You make MORE miles to the gallon that way, because the internal combustion engine is horribly inefficient.
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12 minutes to do an 80% charge is ~3C, which no automotive EV batteries are capable of right now. The ideal charge rate for LiPO batteries is 1C. Higher charge rates reduce battery lifespan for most chemistries. In fact, Tesla, which has remarkably reliable battery packs, has seen premature failures in some cars due to high use of supercharging [1]. Tesla superchargers max out at 120kW and typically are around 70-90kW. 350kW chargers are 3-5x that rate.
Tesla Semi's will charge at 1MW+ (Score:2)
Re:You don't need to *stay next to the car* (Score:5, Insightful)
EV: you take your car. It's already charged 100% overnight.
In talking to a couple of my friends with BEVs, that's the one thing that will make them never go back to an ICE car. Range anxiety isn't a thing in their day-to-day life. When going on a longer trip, it becomes something to plan around, but that's not generally that often. And most still have an ICE car available.
Never going to a gas station doesn't seem life-changing, but they all feel it is. One less valueless waste of time, detour, and distraction in life can sometimes really be a positive change.
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Your car being plugged into your house while you're sleeping is dystopic? Just wait until you find out that the alternate is that you're required to frequently visit the dispensaries of vast oil industry megacorps, and pay them twice as much as it takes to drive an electric, all while destroying the environment.
And you are wrong about electric cars being priced above what most people pay for their primary car. Doubly so if you include TCO and not just sticker price. Electrics are coming in at the same price
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You said,
and are priced above what most people pay for their primary car.
Well done moving those goalposts.
It's weird that you arbitrarily decide that an EV has to be a second car. I'm not sure why you think that - the people I know that own them definitely don't think that way.
Regardless, there is not as much correlation between wealth and what someone is willing to spend on their car as you seem to think there is. I see plenty of people making not much money driving cars worth more than their annual salary, and I'm making good money and still bombing around in a 14 yea
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ICE: pull out to the gaz station, quickly fill the tank, then *after the refill* move the car a few meters further (to free the gaz pump) next to the restaurant/dinner,
"gaz"? Is that some hipster term of abuse with which I am happily unfamiliar?
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Typical use on long trips:
EV (Non-Tesla): Pick from a limited set of restaurants that have Level 2 chargers nearby. Eat for an hour, then wait 5 more hours for the car to fully charge. Drive half the range
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I guess it'll be great for crappy gas station restaurants business. Personally I like taking a break out of town in some piece of nature to unwind. In and out of the gas station independent of actually taking a break.
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You know that a Powerpack is a fixed asset bolted to a concrete pad, not the battery in a car?
Why would you care if a refrigerator-cabinet sized battery takes longer than 15 minutes to charge?
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It's actually becoming common for home fueling around here. All the gas stations are pretty well gone due to the high price of land and it's a lot more convenient and about the same price as driving half a dozen miles plus out of the way to fuel up. For the tankers delivering the fuel, doing it in the middle of the night/early morning works best as there is little traffic.
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There's decreased maintenance because there are less parts, which makes my local driving much cheaper. The car is far more fun to drive because it's super quiet and has instant acceleration. There's no transmission or shifting, which is a huge plus for ride qual
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I agree that ICE is significantly better than EV for long range travel, and that opinion is stated in my other posts on this topic. However, that was not the point the OP was making.
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Law of thermo-dynamics applies to all ... Read any? Try it. It's fudruckers like you that shame the great times we live in.
You really don't understand what I was talking about, do you?
Re: Law of thermo-dynamics applies to all (Score:2)
Re: Law of thermo-dynamics applies to all (Score:2)
Interesting to see that the short-sellers are now enough of a subculture that they've developed their own memes, isolated from the rest of society. Thanks for explaining, that's fascinating.
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C-rate is a measure of the rate at which a battery is charged or discharged relative to its maximum capacity.
So a 1C rate means that the battery will be fully charged or discharged in 1 hour.
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Assuming you slashdot idiots actually use C according to the context to mean coulombs
Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen a post fail as much as this one. I commend you for your superiority complex while being so utterly wrong.
Karma indeed.
Pretty good distribution of U.S. stations (Score:3)
If you look at the Electrify America charging map [electrifyamerica.com] you can see they have a pretty good spread of stations across the U.S. - just zoom out.
The map may take a little while to get you a correct total, just wait a few seconds or zoom in and out a little at the top level, it'll eventually settle into the right numbers.
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You're not thinking about this right. Electricity is available absolutely *everywhere* -- literally every building, every street light, has electricity running to it. All that's needed is a retrofit to this existing infrastructure to add outlets for EVs. Some of these outlets will be fast charging, most can be trickle-charging, and all can make money for their owners and the owners of the existing infrastructure. Ubiquity is a non-issue, in time.
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You must live in a highly populated part of the world. Lots of places where you might not see a power line in hundreds of miles here.
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But not where people live. An absolutely tiny fraction of the US is living without power.
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I'm talking about the longer term. Many hotels already routinely have run cables from their existing power to wallboxes for EV users. I don't mean only the big chains either. I mean even small hotels in holiday spots whose main appeal is retro chic, such as this one: http://www.seaviewhotel.co.uk/ [seaviewhotel.co.uk]
And the whole point about ubiquity and reasonable range is that most people won't need to charge, most of the time. Do the calculations for streetlamp charging: average US commute is 30 miles, assume a range of sa
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The EV mafia?! My, what a vivid imagination you have.
|n the world I live in, it is in fact the case that power lines run everywhere that humans live. Or did you plug your device into your butt for power last night, rather than an electricity outlet?
It's in combination with existing Superchargers (Score:2)
You will need what, four times as many charging stations as gas pumps?
I actually totally agree with this point and I've made it before myself in the past, in terms of the practicality of all cars being electric.
However here we are just looking at rapid charging stations to make interstate travel feasible without huge delays to charge, and the map of charging networks I listed would be added on top of Tesla's Supercharging locations, which is already pretty extensive. The only place I would be hesitant to g
Not known for acquisitions? (Score:2)
I guess that 2.5B for Solar City was petty change.
Tesla Buys Maxwell, Student surpasses the teacher! (Score:4, Funny)
Tesla Buys Maxwell !
Student surpasses the teacher, eh ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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hehe the only comment worth reading
Using overvalued stock while they can (Score:2)
I don't see why Tesla really needs ultracaps, at least, not to the point of buying the company. OTOH, Tesla stock is massively overvalued due to speculation based on the Musk reality distortion field. So it makes sense to use an all-stock transition: leverage that overvalued stock to buy things. What would actually make far more sense, would be to issue more stock, to suck in actual money, to build out their manufacturing capacity. That empty plot of dirt in China isn't going to build itself.
Just to be clea
Re: Using overvalued stock while they can (Score:2)
But their ability to execute the boring, day-to-day stuff like running a manufacturing plant? Pretty awful.
That might have been an accurate statement 2 years ago, although even then it may have been a stretch. I'm guessing you haven't looked at their production/sales figures recently.
Re: Using overvalued stock while they can (Score:5, Insightful)
Move the goalposts a little more.
"Tesla isn't profitable"
"Tesla can't make more than 10,000 cars in a month"
"Tesla hasn't been profitable for more than a quarter at a time"
"Tesla hasn't ever made an annual profit"
They've already given guidance of either a narrow loss or narrow profit for Q1, so depending on Q2 they will have shown a profit over four consecutive quarters when the last big loss (2018Q2) falls off. Where will the goalposts move then?
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Bit of a weird descriptor you're using there. Running an auto manufacturing plant might be boring and day-to-day -- to you, if not to many others -- but it's also notoriously difficult, and has been a major barrier to entry for the auto industry for decades, particularly in Western markets. Tesla's current capability to manufacture autos is like the proverbial bear that dances -- the wonder isn't how well it does so, but that it does so at all. The rate they've gone up the learning curve has been impressive
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