
Elon Musk aims to revolutionise battery technology - slashdotdash
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53067009
======
DanCarvajal
> The first of these was announced just last week when the Chinese battery-
> maker that supplies most of the major car makers, including Tesla, revealed
> it had produced the first "million mile battery".

> Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) says its new battery is capable of
> powering a vehicle for more than a million miles (1.2 million, to be precise
> - or 1.9 million km) over a 16-year lifespan.

I keep being told Tesla has some big tech advantage, but here they are buying
the same batteries as everyone else.

~~~
ksec
They did, Tesla was the first to invest into Gigantic battery production and
winning with economy of scale and vertical integration.

That was until China has more electric vehicles sold than rest of the world
combined. They made 95% of all electric buses in the world. So the economy of
scale somewhat shifted. And the rest comes with continual investment.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_industry_in_China)

~~~
duncanawoods
You seem to have missed the bit about Panasonic building all the cells.

~~~
aeternum
Note that although Panasonic is technically building them, they are doing so
inside the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada. Panasonic wasn't able to deliver the
gains that Tesla wanted which strained the relationship and led to Tesla's
decision to manufacture cells independently.

------
ksec
I was hoping to read an announcement for Battery Day. I hope that promise wont
be like his Robo Taxi and L5 AV.

------
nickik
This is mostly assumptions, we don't know if any of this is true. Tesla has
some news about batteries and they are working on something, if it just that
the buy the same batteries as everybody else it would be pretty weak. I don't
think that's it.

------
rvz
If there's an article about Elon Musk's achievements and contributions I'd
like to read about, it certainly won't be from the BBC, who's technical
content still glosses over details and is stuck in the 1990s.

------
ectospheno
While I also hope for a revolutionary leap in battery technology one should
remember that Elon says a log of things and sincerely means all of them until
he is sued at which point he was just exercising his First Amendment right to
say whatever he wants.

------
antisthenes
So far the biggest revolution to batteries seems to have been economies of
scale.

Sure, there are minor improvements to chemistry as well, but AFAIK, nothing on
the order of price reduction that happened in the last decade.

------
jeffhiggins
“He claims his Hyperloop concept could revolutionise public transport.”
Hyperloop is private transport.

~~~
asdfman123
Random question: is Hyperloop all just a ruse so Elon can develop expertise in
boring through martial soil and creating vacuum sealed tubes?

------
cma
First they need to build that promised rollercoaster in Freemont

