New manufacturing approach slices lithium-ion battery cost in half

For all the negative people out there this is proof that if you build up the demand technology will innovate and bring costs down. Right now the real barrier for electric cars is the battery and charging and in a very short period of time both the cost of the battery has come down and the charging times have come way down. In 10 more years ICE vehicles will be like seeing someone using a flip phone.

Looks like this is a new TYPE of battery... not just a new manufacturing method; Time will tell... as Elon is fond of saying... there is SO MUCH B.S. in battery tech;

I still find it amazing that it's actually cheaper to PRODUCE electricity than it is to STORE it. There are MULTIPLE critical factors that determine wether a battery is viable economically...

1- Cycle Life (Nickel Iron tops but VERY low coulombic efficiency & expensive)
2- Cost (Lead Acid top but low efficiency and cycle life)
3- Efficiency (Lithium Ion top but still expensive)
4- Calendar life (Nickel Iron tops)
5- Energy Density (Al-Ion tops but low cycle life & Power density)
6- Power Density (Lithium Ion top but still expensive)
7- Durability (Flow Batteries)
8- Safety

A new battery tech might be 10/10 in 7/8 categories but not be viable due to poor performance in the 8th. Flow Batteries are AWESOME for 1,2,4 & 7 ok in 3 but REALLY suck in 5 & 6.... so they kinda work for stationary applications. Vehicle batteries are the trickiest since they gotta hit all 8 categories to work.

More amazing is the fact that Lead Acid is the oldest and STILL scores fairly high overall compared to other battery tech... I've done A LOT of reading about Nickel Iron batteries... their amazing trait is that they're nearly indestructible but their 'round-trip' efficiency is <60% with a self-discharge rate of ~1%/day. They're also extremely expensive.

MichFin said:

...In 10 more years ICE vehicles will be like seeing someone using a flip phone.

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And have EVs be like the release of the iPhone Generation 1 in comparison to flip phones? Can we move that schedule up to the end of this year? :biggrin:

I wonder what Elon will say if he finds out that his Giga factory isn't the most efficient way to produce battery, but this or another technology. The giga factory is a blessing but could turn into a curse. It brings down production cost and enables mass production. But it also could become a huge money pit if a competing technology beats it in price and capacity.

David99 said:

I wonder what Elon will say if he finds out that his Giga factory isn't the most efficient way to produce battery, but this or another technology. The giga factory is a blessing but could turn into a curse. It brings down production cost and enables mass production. But it also could become a huge money pit if a competing technology beats it in price and capacity.

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Factories can be retooled to change production techniques and adapt new technologies, car factories completely change their production tooling every few years.

I wonder what Elon will say if he finds out that his Giga factory isn't the most efficient way to produce battery

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GigaFactory is a building with XXX square feet of room with nominal dedication to produce batteries.
What other more efficient way can one dream up? Growing batteries on trees? Filtering them out of rivers? Mining them on asteroids?
Whatever the exact technological procedure is, it could and will be implemented if it brings some real bottom-line improvement.
The exact technological procedure is not set in stone, the lines (mind the plural) will be set up and then constantly improved when improvements are possible.

huge money pit if a competing technology beats it in price and capacity.

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Because production tools cannot be replaced or what do yo have in mind?

Edit: Oh, and what other big factory out there will be using this competing technology?
Competing technology in a lab is same as nonexistent technology. It must be implemented in some big factory spitting out huge amounts of batteries to be called a competing technology.
A car produced in a manual shop in single digits is no competition to mainstream automakers. Not even a blip on the radar.

David99 said:

I wonder what Elon will say if he finds out that his Giga factory isn't the most efficient way to produce battery, but this or another technology. The giga factory is a blessing but could turn into a curse. It brings down production cost and enables mass production. But it also could become a huge money pit if a competing technology beats it in price and capacity.

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That's kinda right in line with saying the 18650 is obsolete..... it's a shape. Put whatever you want in it. The Gigafactory is a building.... a BIG building with its own energy source. Put whatever you want in it. Whatever that turns out to be it's going to need two things... space and energy.

I'm surprised this isn't getting more attention, but I guess all these BS new battery tech articles have made us too skeptical/pessimistic.

The good news is that this looks like the real deal, and not just a single prototype/concept.

It will be interesting if Tesla will try to buy the company, or if they have something just as good, if not better, in the pipeline.

Yet Chang did not send a bunch of these to Elon rather off to the ends of the earth. Mmm.
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The electric vehicle market is going to explode, so I guess he might try to grow the company before selling it.

There is already a long thread on this very same topic. Mods - can you please merge?

David99 said:

I wonder what Elon will say if he finds out that his Giga factory isn't the most efficient way to produce battery, but this or another technology. The giga factory is a blessing but could turn into a curse. It brings down production cost and enables mass production. But it also could become a huge money pit if a competing technology beats it in price and capacity.

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What is a factory but a big indoor space in which to do things, equipped with a lot of more or less specialized equipment. Just a few years ago the NUMMI factory that now builds Model S was building Toyota Corollas and Matrixes, and Chevy Novas, cars that are based on a completely different technology than the Model S.

No matter what kind they are, building a lot of batteries takes a lot of space and facilities and the equipment purchased will probably come in handy or be resalable even if they never use it.

nwdiver said:

That's kinda right in line with saying the 18650 is obsolete..... it's a shape. Put whatever you want in it. The Gigafactory is a building.... a BIG building with its own energy source. Put whatever you want in it. Whatever that turns out to be it's going to need two things... space and energy.

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Plus a third thing: raw materials. The "Gigafactory" location near I-80 and a major rail line wasn't an accident.

The Gigafactory will still be useful as battery technology changes. If Tesla always waited for the latest technology improvements, they would never build anything!

wycolo said:

Yet Chang did not send a bunch of these to Elon rather off to the ends of the earth. Mmm.
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Yes, to a heavy equipment maker and an oil company, both of whom you KNOW are deeply interested in battery technology. Not to Apple or Samsung or Tesla, but to an oil company.

With Big Oil and Large Fossil Fuel vehicles on your side, you know this will be the next big thing in battery technology.