Increasing battery capacity impacts three major areas - cost, weight (which also has an impact speed and range), and charging time.
Improvements in battery technology should help with cost and weight.
But charging time may be a challenge. If there was a 500 mile battery, assuming there aren't significant increases in charging efficiency, getting a full charge at home could take between 6 hours (80A HPWC) to 24 hours (30A dryer circuit). Even if home charging could take advantage of higher speed charging rates - it would likely require higher amperage circuits - and for most owners a 50A or 100A circuit may be the practical limit.
And unless Tesla significantly increases the charging rates at the superchargers, wouldn't almost doubling the battery capacity potentially create more contention at the superchargers - since individual cars could take almost twice as long to charge (if they try to use 1/2 of the supercharging stations for their trips)?
Rather than trying to reach a 500 mile range, Tesla may be better off focusing on a 300 mile battery - and take advantage of battery technology improvements to lower the cost and weight of the battery packs - and improve charging rates at the superchargers.
Lower cost would make the Tesla cars more cost competitive with ICEs. Lower weight would improve car performance (range and speed). With the small increase in capacity, and with the spacing of the supercharger network, more cars would be able to charge quickly to 80% or lower at the superchargers (improving utilization efficiency of the chargers).
Improvements in battery technology should help with cost and weight.
But charging time may be a challenge. If there was a 500 mile battery, assuming there aren't significant increases in charging efficiency, getting a full charge at home could take between 6 hours (80A HPWC) to 24 hours (30A dryer circuit). Even if home charging could take advantage of higher speed charging rates - it would likely require higher amperage circuits - and for most owners a 50A or 100A circuit may be the practical limit.
And unless Tesla significantly increases the charging rates at the superchargers, wouldn't almost doubling the battery capacity potentially create more contention at the superchargers - since individual cars could take almost twice as long to charge (if they try to use 1/2 of the supercharging stations for their trips)?
Rather than trying to reach a 500 mile range, Tesla may be better off focusing on a 300 mile battery - and take advantage of battery technology improvements to lower the cost and weight of the battery packs - and improve charging rates at the superchargers.
Lower cost would make the Tesla cars more cost competitive with ICEs. Lower weight would improve car performance (range and speed). With the small increase in capacity, and with the spacing of the supercharger network, more cars would be able to charge quickly to 80% or lower at the superchargers (improving utilization efficiency of the chargers).