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Power Technology

Tesla's Secret Batteries Aim To Rework the Math For Electric Cars and the Grid (reuters.com) 136

Posted by BeauHD from the positively-charged dept.
Electric car maker Tesla plans to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in its Model 3 sedan in China later this year or early next that it expects will bring the cost of electric vehicles in line with gasoline models, and allow EV batteries to have second and third lives in the electric power grid. Reuters reports: For months, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been teasing investors, and rivals, with promises to reveal significant advances in battery technology during a "Battery Day" in late May. New, low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles of use and enable electric Teslas to sell profitably for the same price or less than a gasoline vehicle are just part of Musk's agenda.

With a global fleet of more than 1 million electric vehicles that are capable of connecting to and sharing power with the grid, Tesla's goal is to achieve the status of a power company, competing with such traditional energy providers as Pacific Gas & Electric and Tokyo Electric Power. The new "million mile" battery at the center of Tesla's strategy was jointly developed with China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd and deploys technology developed by Tesla in collaboration with a team of academic battery experts recruited by Musk. Eventually, improved versions of the battery, with greater energy density and storage capacity and even lower cost, will be introduced in additional Tesla vehicles in other markets, including North America. Tesla's plan to launch the new battery first in China and its broader strategy to reposition the company have not previously been reported. "Tesla's new batteries will rely on innovations such as low-cobalt and cobalt-free battery chemistries, and the use of chemical additives, materials and coatings that will reduce internal stress and enable batteries to store more energy for longer periods," the report adds. The company is also employing new high-speed, heavily automated battery manufacturing processes to reduce labor costs and increase production. According to the report, Tesla will produce the new batteries "in massive 'terafactories' about 30 times the size of the company's sprawling Nevada 'gigafactory.'"

Finally, in addition to improving the recycling and recovery of expensive metals, Tesla is working on new "second life" applications of electric vehicle batteries in grid storage systems. "The automaker also has said it wants to supply electricity to consumers and businesses, but has not provided details," Reuters reports.
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Tesla's Secret Batteries Aim To Rework the Math For Electric Cars and the Grid More

Tesla's Secret Batteries Aim To Rework the Math For Electric Cars and the Grid

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  • Fraud! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Thursday May 14, 2020 @07:08PM (#60061538)

    'terafactories' about 30 times the size of the company's sprawling Nevada 'gigafactory.'"

    terafactory should be 1,000 times the size of a gigafactory.

  • Your vehicles' battery being part of the grid: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday May 14, 2020 @07:14PM (#60061550) Journal
    How, exaclty, would that work? Would you have a choice in whether it's also used to supply power to everyone else, or would you be able to opt-out on that, at least on an on-demand basis? There might be instances where you'll need the full range capability of your vehicle the next day and can't afford to have it only partially charged.

    • Re:Your vehicles' battery being part of the grid: (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday May 14, 2020 @07:26PM (#60061586) Journal
      You own the battery and they should make it worthwhile for you to rent it to store the energy. And you would have ultimate control on when to connect and disconnect.

      The heaviest demand is between 4 pm and 6pm. Thats when solar tapers off and A/C load still remains strong. Its known as the duck curve. So my guess would be that you can "sell" so many kWh from your battery to the grid at that window at some price. If you need the energy, or if the price is not right you stay out.

      By law of large numbers, at any given evening there will be enough people with energy to sell. There will be issues on high travel days like long weekends. They will predict that and raise the price to make it worthwhile for others to take the trouble of connecting.

      • Seems to me like it would make more sense to have a stationary battery bank in people's homes that can serve as both part of the overall electric grid and as a backup power source for your house if the grid-supplied power goes down, and the battery bank in your car could be optionally part of that arrangement, or you can just have it in charge-only mode.

        • Re:Your vehicles' battery being part of the grid: (Score:5, Informative)

          by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Thursday May 14, 2020 @08:47PM (#60061758) Journal
          That is the second and third life of the batteries. Once they are not good enough for automotive use they will be retired to serve as stationary storage for the grid.
          • ..okay, but that's not what I said. I think it would be better, if you're going to have a power-grid scheme like this one, for everyone to have a stationary battery bank in their house to start with, and the vehicle battery is secondary and supplementary to that. They can still have the refurbished batteries in centralized locations to supplement the grid, but my way makes everyones' house self-sufficient for electric power, especially if they have solar panels as well to charge their own batteries.
            • the second life could also become the house battery but they'd be expensive because of their size. Every new home should be built with solar and home storage as standard and the EV becomes a backup for home and grid

              • Every new home should be built with solar ...

                Not every new home should be built with solar. Some are in locations where the insolation would be insufficient to make that econmic.

                If you're in certain sections of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, you can have a fine view of the sky but the weather is so cloudy, and the clouds are so thick, for nearly all of the year, that solar panels might as well still be in their shipping crates.

                Too far north. In a deep woods. On the north slope of a steep hill. (I

            • First life batteries are expensive. Might prove to be too expensive for home energy storage just for selling excess power to the grid at peak rates. But, with local solar production or with wind, there is enough primary use to justify first life automotive quality batteries for stationary use.

            • Everyone is free to "do your way".
              Just buy the battery ...

            • You don't need batteries in your home if you use a grid-tied inverter. A 1 kilowatt wind genny plus four or six solar panels will reduce your leave bill to practically zero, without batteries.

              • You don't need batteries in your home if you use a grid-tied inverter.

                Tell that to all those people in California who had grid-tied solar installed on their houses by split-the-swag power companies, then discovered, in the "fire-safety" blackouts, that grid-tied solar with no local storage leaves you in the dark when the grid goes down.

                IMHO a big part of the cost/benefit computation with a renewable energy system is that it can be configured to double as a house-sized UPS.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Nissan has been doing this for years so it's already well established and understood.

        There are options. You can feed energy back in to the grid on demand, with a set limit so you don't go below a certain level of charge. You get paid for that energy just like any other provider, and because it's only used at peak times the current pay out is quite generous. Unfortunately the cost of the equipment is rather high so it's not worth it just for the feed in tariff.

        The other option is to use your car as a whole-h

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      They are looking at refurbishing car batteries to use on the grid, they can have a much lower charge capacity than in a car, so even at 50% charge only they work grid but in a car they struggle. It is a stop gap measure until they redesign their vehicles for readily swappable batteries. A fixed battery design for a car was not the smartest move but it made the batteries some what cheaper, readily replace able batteries would be more durable and have more expensive external casings but there is really good l

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        It is a stop gap measure until they redesign their vehicles for readily swappable batteries.

        Tesla Model S has hot-swappable batteries. It hasn't taken off.

      • NIO (a chinese manufacturer) are doing just that in China, they seem to have it down to about 10 minutes.

      • Re:Your vehicles' battery being part of the grid: (Score:4, Informative)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday May 15, 2020 @03:19AM (#60062408) Homepage Journal

        Swappable batteries have been tried, nobody wants them.

        People have all these strange ideas about the practicality of EVs but once they start actually driving one they realize that most of them are myths. I've owned an original 24kWh Leaf, never had issues with it, and now cars costing less have 64kWh which translates to a 300 mile range.

        For most people a 30 minute stop after 4-5 hours on the road is no problem. Most people rarely drive that far anyway so it's not really worth spending large sums of money to save an hour or two a year.

    • You can currently set the time parameters for when to charge so that will be expanded to when they can take power from your battery and you'll also be able to tell them how much they can take and only if your battery is at a decent state of charge. It'll probably only be used during peak and with millions of EVs online, it'll only take a small amount within your defined parameters.
      But I would suspect each house involved will have a Vehicle to House configuration so you take your own power from your own E
    • A "second or third life" implies to me they are mainly referring to batteries removed from cars being put used in an energy storage facility.

    • Would you have a choice in whether it's also used to supply power to everyone else, or would you be able to opt-out on that

      No choice; if you even think* about unplugging it, Elon himself will show up in 2,500hp Cybertruck with a flamethrower, and reveal you for the pedo that you are.

      *Neuralink

      **Smoking a joint.

  • To the fresh graduate of 2020 ...

    One word, young man! "Batteries"

  • Excellent. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday May 14, 2020 @08:18PM (#60061688)

    For those who are unaware, cobalt is a "conflict mineral" and people are being exploited and killed for it in third world nations. Radically reducing their reliance on it is good not just from a humanitarian standpoint but a fiscal one too because it's relatively expensive.

    I hope they share this advancement in battery technology because frankly, we can't make these things fast enough.

    • We also need to get rid of fossil for the same reason, cobalt is used heavily to refine diesel.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      LG have been leading the way on low cobalt batteries for a few years now. This year they expect 60% of their sales to be low cobalt cells.

      LG are some way ahead in terms of low cobalt and low cost because they use pouch cells instead of cylindrical ones. Metal can cells have some advantages for high performance vehicles but are less energy dense and more expensive to make (much more metal required).

      The other thing to note when comparing LG to Tesla is that LG state the usable capacity of their batteries. If

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Rated range isn't useful for comparing batteries. It's not even that useful for comparing cars because there are other important factors (comfort, size etc.) and charge speed affects overall speed on long journeys.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      It's not Tesla's advancement to share and it's well known already.

    • So is oil

  • We always hear about these amazing improvements in batteries, yet it seems like we never see them...

    It makes a lot of sense to see this happen in a car first - there's a lot more cost per battery already, so dropping new technologies on an improved version is easier to deliver than small consumer batteries.

    Not to mention it's more directly replacableby Tesla if some longer term problems comes to light, where you have to have years of testing before you can replace something like a AA battery with totally ne

    • Less than 10 years ago Nissan launched the Leaf with 73 miles of range for $33k. It could charge at a peak of 48kw. And a 0-60 of 9.9 seconds

      Today you can buy a Model 3 for $40k with 250 miles of range (more than 3x as much range), 5.3s 0-60 and can charge at 170kw.

      Or for $37k you could buy a Chevy Bolt with 260 miles of range, 0-60 of 6.3 seconds although its peak charging speed is still just 50kw.

      Still both deliver 300-400% the range of a 2011 vehicle in just 8 years. That's a pretty impressive improvem

    • We always hear about these amazing improvements in batteries, yet it seems like we never see them...

      It just SEEMS that way. Commercially available batteries and photovoltaic panels have both made ENORMOUS gains in the last couple decades, as various of the hotly announced breakthroughs were later quietly incorporated into new product models and deployed without fanfare.

      Before they got good enough to power muscle cars, rechargable battery tech was driven largely by laptop computer applications (where much o

  • This is NOT vehicle to grid! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blindseer ( 891256 ) <blindseer@noSPAm.earthlink.net> on Thursday May 14, 2020 @10:07PM (#60061956)

    Reading through the comments I'm seeing a lot of people missing the point. Telsa is not looking to use these batteries on the grid while they are still in the car. They want to make the batteries durable enough that they outlive the car, then these used batteries (with the degraded capacity that comes with age) could still be valuable in a grid storage system. Only after being repurposed in a grid storage system for many years would the batteries have degraded to the point in which they are no longer useful and would then be recycled.

    Vehicle to grid just sounds like a drug fueled fantasy to me. The reason is because of the cost.

    People with electric cars tend to like them because they can be charged at home, and often times while at work. Just getting the wiring for this can be expensive. One means is with the use of an on-board charger. These are typically low power because the electronics to manage rectification, voltage regulation, and so forth, could get quite heavy and large. This can lead to other issues like managing the heat produced while inside a vehicle that is supposed to be nice looking with low air resistance while moving while still able to shed heat while stationary. The way to manage this is to have this bulky charger outside the car, and the car gets a regulated DC into the battery pack.

    So then, how do we get this energy back out of the car for vehicle to grid?

    We do this in much the same way. We put this large heat producing inverter outside of the car. For a home owner that is concerned about a power outage the additional electronics to get power out of the large battery in the car to power things like lights and a refrigerator in the home could be worth a lot of money. This feature could be worth even more if there's incentives from the utility for load shifting. Or perhaps the family has young children, special needs family members, or some other situation where loss of power could be inconvenient to life threatening. But this is not necessarily vehicle to grid. This is vehicle to the home.

    Many people spend many hours per day with their car parked away from home. If vehicle to grid is to have value then businesses will have to agree to put vehicle to grid points in their parking spots. Each spot will require equipment worth a few kilobucks to buy. Then there are other costs like insurance, installation, inspections, maintenance, and perhaps more.

    Why would any business bother with spending the money on vehicle to grid? How would they get a return on their investment?

    Another point made several times in comments made here so far, why would a car owner agree to the wear and tear on their battery that vehicle to grid would cause? Especially if an improperly configured vehicle to grid system could leave them stranded for hours at the end of the day to charge a dead battery. Far less likely but still possible could be damage to the car, a badly timed power outage, or some other situation that could leave them unable to go anywhere for a long time.

    The best we could expect is vehicle to the home. Vehicle to the grid is simply not worth the expense.

    Is there perhaps a means to avoid much of the cost to the business? Maybe find a way to put the inverter needed for vehicle to grid in the car so the business doesn't need kilobucks at each parking spot? Not really. Even if the car had the inverter there would still have to be something at each parking spot smart enough to tell the car when to output power, and how much. Just running a wire and having a standard AC outlet for charging only would be quite expensive when multiplied over many parking spots.

    Not only is vehicle to grid unlikely but so is anything other than a token number of EV chargers outside of any business.

    • Nissan already allows Vehicle to Grid/House and we have a few power suppliers here in the UK that take advantage of that and offer deal that you either get free power for your EV or you make a bit (depends how much they need)

      The Uk grid can take power in most places but there are a few substations that need upgrading as they are quite old and cannot return power to the grid.

      Also, look up microgrids, these join up houses with batteries to create a virtual power grid and power only needs to be transferred

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      People have been making their own systems to do this for years. Get some used EV batteries, connect up a BMS and inverter, and you have a DIY "powerwall" for a fraction of the cost of a new one.

      Nissan offers V2G but the equipment cost is too high. It's good if you want a UPS for your house but you will never make the money back selling energy to the grid.

    • "Vehicle to grid just sounds like a drug fueled fantasy to me. The reason is because of the cost.
      [...]
      We put this large heat producing inverter outside of the car."

      Only if we're stupid.

      The car is, among other things, an inverter.

      It has to produce AC just to drive the motor.

      We don't put the fast charger inside the car because it doesn't make sense. But if people are actually going to use V2G then it will make sense to add the relatively minimal additional equipment to the vehicle to let it export AC.

    • You say this is an infeasible problem but Tesla puts a 12kw inverter in every car. That's plenty for most Peaker shaving purposes.

      Speaking of peak shaving, the peak is around 6pm once most people are home from work.
      https://www.thesandreckoner.co... [thesandreckoner.co.uk]

      Combined with solar which can reduce demands during the day we really just need to bridge from sunset around 6pm coinciding with peak demand and sleep a few hours later when baseline generators like nukes, hydro, natural gas etc you can handle the load.

      The Tesla b

  • Electricity sometimes goes as low as -2 cents a kWh in North America (don't ask it's dumb voters and the politicians that pander to them). The max that many utilities have to pay before starting rolling blackouts is just shy of $8 but there are a couple places where it is $10. So your local utility would love to buy your electricity on a hot muggy early evening when solar stops and there is no wind. There is a tipping point where if batteries are cheap enough and have a large number of cycles that wind a

  • A 1st... no incremental improvement this is a cradle to grave re-invention resource to market!

    Missing is WallSt. right? It would disrupt Utilities, Autos, mining, manufacturing and the whole PETRO based economy. At this level HYDROGEN would delay market penetration another 20 years. No clue how it could impact SpaceX. There's synergy somewhere, NO?

    Truly a 20 year plan which Elon probably expects to BHAG in 10.

  • I actually would like to know if anyone does.
    Why is he introducing in china first? Are there fewer regulatory hurtles?
    I'm sure it isn't the state of there Intellectual property laws.
    So why China? No doubt the answer has something to do with money, but I don't know what.

    • In short, yes. Many power companies pay consumers basically nothing when they sell power back to the grid. This is especially true in the USA...

    • China is the largest market for electric vehicles and has the biggest environmental impact. It sort of makes sense, if you ignore the coming fall of Soviet China.

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