Tesla Patents New Chemistry For Better, Longer-Lasting and Cheaper Batteries (electrek.co) 26
Tesla is closing the year by filing a patent on a new chemistry for better, longer-lasting and cheaper batteries. The new patent is related to the new battery cell that Tesla's battery research partner, Jeff Dahn, and his team at Dalhousie University unveiled earlier this year. The new cell "should be able to power an electric vehicle for over [1 million miles] and last at least two decades in grid energy storage," Dahn said in a paper released at the time. Electrek reports: The automaker, through its "Tesla Motors Canada" subsidiary, filed a new international patent called "Dioxazolones and nitrile sulfites as electrolyte additives for lithium-ion batteries." They wrote in the patent application: "This disclosure covers novel battery systems with fewer operative, electrolyte additives that may be used in different energy storage applications, for example, in vehicle and grid-storage. More specifically, this disclosure includes additive electrolyte systems that enhance performance and lifetime of lithium-ion batteries, while reducing costs from other systems that rely on more or other additives."
The patent application says that the new two-additive mixtures in an electrolyte solvent can be used with lithium nickel manganese cobalt compounds, also known as an NMC battery chemistry. It is commonly used in electric vehicles by many automakers, but not by Tesla. The company used the technology in its stationary energy storage systems, but it uses NCA for its vehicle battery cells. The patent filed by Tesla's battery research group mentions that the technology would be useful for both electric vehicles and grid-storage.
The patent application says that the new two-additive mixtures in an electrolyte solvent can be used with lithium nickel manganese cobalt compounds, also known as an NMC battery chemistry. It is commonly used in electric vehicles by many automakers, but not by Tesla. The company used the technology in its stationary energy storage systems, but it uses NCA for its vehicle battery cells. The patent filed by Tesla's battery research group mentions that the technology would be useful for both electric vehicles and grid-storage.
Interesting that they leave out details on Cobalt (Score:2)
With Tesla prioritizing the removal of Cobalt from the battery chemistry due to it's cost it's interesting that these doping additives target Cobalt chemistries and pouch batteries that aren't used in their vehicle products. The patent seems to be more targeted at their storage market where long life is prioritized over almost everything but cost.
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One of those is misspelled. Wonder if more than 50% of /.'ers know which one....
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Is it user error, or a bad language design?
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Is it user error, or a bad language design?
It's a pretty basic user error but it could have been caused by software following the IBM/Apple/Microsith attitude of "we know what you want better than you do".
"it's" is a contraction of "it is". I have heard advice suggesting that if you don't fully understand apostrophe use in possessives and plurals, don't put one in at all.
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"it's" is a contraction of "it is". I have heard advice suggesting that if you don't fully understand apostrophe use in possessives and plurals, don't put one in at all.
And if you know so little that you don't even know that you don't understand?
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I've always wondered about that. Perhaps the profoundly or agressively ignorant go into politics?
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IBM vs Tesla (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM tries to boost their year-end stock price by vague hand-wavy announcements about battery tech without any specifics, no peer review, no patents.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ener... [ieee.org]
Tesla comes out with a patent and press release specifying what they're doing and how.
One company was an innovator a long time ago, and one is an innovator now.
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Tesla comes out with a patent and press release specifying what they're doing and how.
Patent application should include enough details for a practitioner well versed in the arts to implement the invention. So it is not correct to say there are no details. Regarding peer review, usually patent applications never have peer reviews.
Looks like something is cooking, but I don't know what. S3 Parnters' Ihor is reporting that there is no short coverage. So it is not a short squeeze that is responsible. There is no real big news that cold explain the recent run up.
Yes, the Chinese factory came s
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That's because in China they don't have two political parties that are actively busy trying to destroy what the other one is trying to accomplish.
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AS in "clean tech" either actually will be, or someone will be explaining the quarterly loss in front of the board.
USPTO (Score:2)
This is moat building. Simple...
When will we see these on the market? (Score:3)
Unfortunately, people often misunderstand the purpose of a patent. They think that a product will be forthcoming.
There are two problems with this idea: 1- The patent concept may be far from any practical production possibility. 2- Having a patent is largely unrelated to any intention to make a product.
A primary purpose of a patent is to PREVENT others from using it. If my Widgets are selling well on the market and I discover a major improvement to the design, I will patent it and sit on the new design. Only when my existing Widget sales are threatened will I consider implementing the new design. Meanwhile I my profits are protected by the government because others can't use the improved design.
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These are often called "blocking patents". It is not so much sitting
on a patent in order to use it later (although pharma companies do
this a lot for future combo drugs), but to prevent another who builds
widgets other ways. For example a Tesla battery patent may circumscribe
to pouch cells (vs. cylindrical, which Tesla uses), or NMC vs. NCA chemistry
(which Tesla uses currently for cars, while others do NMC) with
no plans to manufacture in this manner.
Hopefully the claims are general enough to be blocking.
Te
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The rest of the world, as well as a lot of people in your little corner, hope so as well. The worrying thing now is that, although he likes to be different, Tesla and Musk are part of the US automotive industry.
US car maker have long used patents to stifle inovation. Tesla has actually been good about it so far. Let's hope that this continues...
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A primary purpose of a patent is to PREVENT others from using it.
In Tesla's case, the primary purpose of a patent is to preclude somebody else from patenting it first. The last thing a growing manufacturer needs is to rely on the new chemistry as a trade-secret, then get sued in the future for violating somebody else's patent. They don't have enough revenue and profits yet to survive that kind of attack. There are lots of well-moneyed industries researching new battery chemistries today. It's only a matter of time before somebody else stumbles across this same mix of
Re:When will we see these on the market? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Tesla has no history of filing blocking patents, and in fact has made their existing patents available to competition [electrek.co] under an "open source" philosophy - anything you improve, you give back.
2. This particular invention will keep Tesla's products as market leaders, right as the competition is getting close to Tesla's products of 5 years ago. They don't have any incentive to "just sit on it" - it would be far more lucrative to move this tech into mass production and have a competitive advantage that would be very hard to overcome by the "big guys" without using Tesla's patent, or at least use it under their terms of an open source philosophy - a battery pack with a lifetime close to the expected life of the vehicle itself.
Ask first-gen Leaf owners what a joy it is to have a battery pack that doesn't last.
At the very least, claiming that Tesla is going to use this to sit on it doesn't track with the last 5 years of their behavior.
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Or you can charge your competitors for use of your patient and make money off a larger market share.
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> A primary purpose of a patent is to PREVENT others from using it
No, that's the contrary. The primary purpose of a patent is to make a secret method public so that others can use it. In exchange, the patent holder receives a retribution when others use that method to build a product that they sell. If the goal is to prevent others to use your method, it's often more simple and less costly to keep it as a secret.
Battery upgrades (Score:2)
Hopefully Tesla will make old-style battery packs with the new chemistry and offer battery upgrades to their existing customers.
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