Tesla Could Reveal ‘Million-Mile’ Battery As Soon As This Year
One of the reasons why the cost of electric vehicles is so high is because of the expensive batteries that they come with. However, Tesla, the pioneers of electric cars, is coming out with a cost-effective battery, which they call the million-mile battery. This million-mile battery might even be capable of dropping the price of electric cars to that of gas-run vehicles. It will also increase the battery’s longevity.
This million-mile battery is to be integrated with the luxury sedan, Model 3 of Tesla. It will be manufactured and sold in China, late 2020, or early 2021. The battery has been developed in collaboration with Tesla and an academic team of battery experts who were recruited by Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla.
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The million-mile battery will rely on colt-free or low-cobalt battery technology. There will also be the use of a few additional chemicals, materials, and coating. This will help to reduce the stress building up within the batteries, and thus, increase their longevity. Cobalt is an expensive metal, and since it is still used in battery manufacturing, it has increased the price of electric cars. As per the name, the million-mile battery will go for millions of miles, as per estimation. Once the first model of this million-mile battery becomes a success, Tesla will make an effort to improve the model further. Eventually, with more storage capacity and better energy density, the cost of such batteries will fall further.
Along with the cobalt-free or low-cobalt technology, Tesla is trying to go for an automated manufacturing process, which will also drop the production cost immensely. Tesla wants to open “Terafactories” that will make their massive gigafactories look like little children. It is said to be 30 times the size of gigafactories.
Tesla has been working on recycling and recovering certain expensive metals like cobalt, nickel, and lithium. They are using their affiliate Redwood Materials. They are also working on new “second life” applications for their electric vehicle batteries in grid storage systems. Tesla had built one of them back in 2017 in South Australia.
Tesla also wishes to supply electricity to businesses and consumers, but they have not provided many details on this venture.
Read: Tesla Becomes World’s First EV Company to Assemble 1 Million Cars
As per Musk, his company, Tesla, will hold a Battery Day this month. It might be held on the day when Tesla finally announces more details about this new million-mile battery. Musk himself is quite hopeful about this new development. According to him, the battery production has to be upscaled a lot more than the current rate. As of now, he plans to upscale it to a point that is beyond the imagination of human beings.
Hopefully, Tesla will start looking into a bright future and be successful in bringing electric cars to the masses as well.
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