
Tesla poised to reveal 'million-mile' battery as soon as this year - jonbaer
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-million-mile-battery-performance-charging/
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dwighttk
is this due before or after full autonomy?

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ctdonath
Full autonomy depends, among other things, on regulators. Could be years
before the right people are convinced it should be road legal.

Hints I see re: Cybertruck point to new battery by end of 2021 (CT launch).
Few/no regulators to persuade of exotic tech.

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jsight
But will the Cybertruck actually be produced by the end of 2021 or were the
battery requirements too high for the spec and price point?

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ctdonath
Point of this thread is new battery tech arriving soon, and hints during CT
unveiling were it would be the first Tesla vehicle using the new tech. Notice
the new “Gigafactory” will double as CT manufacturing, and Elon has referenced
new batteries well before any of this.

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jsight
Sure, but there were hints of that during the semi and roadster unveiling too.
200KWh in a car smaller than a 3? Almost 1 MWh in a semi costing less than
200k?

The CT was always going to be built at either NV or a new factory. All new
factories are doing battery production. If there's a hint there, it is a
really weak one.

Having said that, I do think the CT will make it in 2022 and maybe we'll even
see the lower trim versions in volume production by 2023. That would still be
pretty impressive.

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new_realist
For context, a Tesla X or S battery degrades by 5% 50K miles and roughly 10%
at 160K miles.

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harlanji
Good to know. My 2011 Honda has 61k on it, battery life has been a concern in
an EV as I picture my next car sitting around on-and-off for a decade or two
again. This one smelt new until a few years ago. My iPhone SE has around 15%
degradation, for comparison. I like The Volt’s onboard generator approach,
feels robust. Hopefully another while to think about it, as cost of
maintaining a 9 year old/61k mi car is pretty good still.

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JonathonW
If only Chevy had been able to deliver on the Volt’s original concept (with
the electric motor connected only to a generator)— it turned out that that
arrangement was actually pretty inefficient, and the production car ended up
being more of a traditional series hybrid approach similar to the Prius (with
the ICE and electric motors connected through a planetary gearset so both can
drive the wheels).

BMW does something similar to the Volt’s original concept with the Range
Extender in the i3– that actually is a gasoline engine coupled to a generator;
it never directly drives the wheels, and it can’t be used as the car’s only
power source (once the battery’s dead, you’re done, even with a full tank of
gas).

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turtlebits
The i3 range extender kicks automatically once your battery range gets low,
and uses gas to maintain that range (while reducing power). So theoretically,
your battery should never die while you have gas.

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Animats
Duplicate. See

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182097)

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qntmfred
I was hype until the part about it being total miles, not range on a single
charge. And then I was disappointed. And then uninterested as I thought to
myself "yeah that makes more sense." And then suddenly angry, as I thought to
myself "wait why they hell AREN'T they trying to develop a million miles
battery on a single charge!"

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sgrove
I'm curious what the total energy storage would be, and what kind of
destructive damage it could do. A _million_ miles is _a lot_ of miles to move
a full Tesla, passengers, and luggage around.

Anyone want to do a back-of-the-envelope sketch and give some colorful units-
of-measurement given instantaneous discharge (e.g. tons of TNT)?

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ctdonath
Assuming 500 watt hours per mile for Cybertruck (likely the first Tesla
vehicle using it), a million miles is 1.8e19 ergs.

1 kiloton TNT is 4.184e19 ergs.

Million mile battery is 0.43 kilotons TNT, about 1/35th of a Davey Crockett
man-portable nuke.

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m463
Well, a more reasonable value for a tesla is 300 wh/mi, and a tesla could pull
off 1,000,000 miles of range with a mere 12.91 gm of plutonium.

If the the cybertruck really needed 500 wh/mi, it would require a bigger
million-mile battery - say 21.53 gm of plutonium.

But you know the environmental folks would complain bitterly, so maybe tesla
should offer a "green" cybertruck option with a heavier 22.66 gm thorium
battery. It will probably require retuning the suspension for the extra
weight.

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

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ctdonath
Just have to efficiently & compactly convert thorium to electricity at a
suitable rate in a sub-1000 lb package priced under $65,000 (cost of battery +
500,000 kWh).

