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Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by kiba on Sunday July 19, 2020 @09:30PM (#23893892)
Maybe? Tesla's working on a million mile battery suggests to me that battery lifespan will start to dramatically improves.
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by kerkeslager on Sunday July 19, 2020 @11:18PM (#23894374)
If they or their competitors can deliver, sure.

One could equally argue that the fact we don't have a million mile battery already suggests that there may be intractible problems to solve.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by hwillis on Monday July 20, 2020 @12:45AM (#23894717)
The issue with a million mile battery is one of testing. If your car has 500 miles of range, a million miles means 2000 charges and discharges. At a standard C/5 rate, that's 2.3 years to finish testing. Even at a fairly brisk 1 C that's 83 days. It makes iterating on a design -which can mean changing component amounts by fractions of a percent- incredibly time consuming.

Dahn's research is so well respected because he was incredibly good and thorough in measuring tiny amounts of heat and voltage changes in batteries so that you could trace their degradation over a much smaller number of cycles, then try them out at longer scales. Tesla has been funding much of his lab. There are very few people who can do this kind of research outside his lab, and IMO he's a wizard who will end up with a Nobel if he makes a few more big contributions.

The bottom line is that the only way to really tell if a battery will last a year or a decade is to watch it for a year or a decade. No amount of technology lets you forecast the future with perfect accuracy, and battery longevity testing takes time. That's the only reason we don't have a million mile battery.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by woodandsteel on Monday July 20, 2020 @09:43PM (#23903637)
>One could equally argue that the fact we don't have a million mile battery already suggests that there may be intractible problems to solve.

That would be a good argument if batteries had been stuck for decades at a much lower limit. But the fact is their lifetime has been steadily increasing, and will reach a million miles within a few years at most.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by imtringued on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:13AM (#23895760)
I'm confused by this. A million mile battery would make ICEs obsolete today. It would be more cost effective to spend $50k on a Tesla Model 3 than to buy 5 Hyundai i10 and driving those to dust.

A 1 million mile battery is kinda like fusion. Once it happens there is no going back so I don't think that failing to solve this problem is a blow to EVs.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by hwillis on Monday July 20, 2020 @07:39AM (#23896806)
A million mile battery does not mean the rest of the car lasts a million miles
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by rstuart4133 on Tuesday July 28, 2020 @04:30AM (#23973626)
Musk says modern Tesla's are designed to last a million miles because he wants them all to become taxi's. Full self driving taxi's that return more then they cost to the owner after Tesla takes it's take from the taxi earnings.

I don't know whether to believe this, but he has the motive, opportunity, and is definitely present at the crime scene.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by coronadisaster on Sunday July 19, 2020 @09:59PM (#23894038)
Will Teslas become cost effective at that point?
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by ctdonath on Sunday July 19, 2020 @10:08PM (#23894083)
I just ran numbers for Tesla Cybertruck. Depending on gas vs electricity prices, a "Tri FSD" CT, built to million-mile specifications, will pay for itself on gas savings by 0.5-1.5M miles.

I think "free truck" operated to design specifications constitutes cost effective.

Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by mrep on Monday July 20, 2020 @08:39AM (#23897143)
You have to factor in the time value of money though. Car purchase price is an immediate cost while gas and electricity are costs over the life of the vehicle. Your average personal cars only gets driven about 15,000 miles a year and thus those gas and electric costs would be spread out over decades to reach a million miles. Probably still cost effective considering the average truck isn't that much cheaper though.
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by coronadisaster on Sunday July 19, 2020 @10:27PM (#23894160)
Too bad you can't buy one...
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by SEJeff on Sunday July 19, 2020 @11:24PM (#23894406)
*yet
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by coronadisaster on Tuesday July 21, 2020 @08:54PM (#23912753)
You can buy nuclear cars yet either...
Re:New Cobalt-free Li-ion battery reduces costs with similar... by SEJeff on Wednesday July 22, 2020 @11:33AM (#23918102)
No one is actively trying to build nuclear cars however. Additionally, no one has a prototype nuclear car, because that is a stupid and very dangerous idea.

There is a prototype cybertruck, and Tesla is about to announce the location for the factory to build them. It will be either Tulsa, OK or just outside of Austin, TX.