9 ms·

Tesla battery researcher unveils new cell that could last 1M miles

252 points by Osiris30 7y ago

fake-name 7y ago
"Miles per battery" is possibly the stupidest metric to use to describe a battery capacity. Any battery can last one million miles if it's just sitting on a seat in a vehicle.
- 19ylram49 7y ago
  Come on, I’m sure that the tests are more extensive than that!
- throwaway9281 7y ago
  Okay there you're becoming too Aspergers and literal about language.
  - yazr 7y ago
    The GP is correct and not just being pedantic. This is just click bait. A battery (life)range is degraded (mostly) by (dis)charging speed, average discharge level and ambient heat. The bigger the battery, the less strain on each cell, and hence longer life time. I hope tesla is improving its battery, but this title is really bad.
    - spockz 7y ago
      A more positive read would be that this new battery lasts as many charges are necessary for a model 3 equipped with a battery pack of this type to drive 1 million miles. (Which is how I interpreted it.)
    - epistasis 7y ago
      This just needs some context to make sense, and when you add in the "in robot taxis" that is on the original article, that makes a very sensical context: a vehicle that can carry people. All language requires these sorts of assumptions; its implicit in pretty much every sentence. For most people, they will understand what is meant very quickly. Could it be better? Sure. But the question is better for whom, and with what implicit assumptions about the world?
      - yazr 7y ago
        The robo-taxi connotation is even worse. Any robo-taxi can be programmed to drive like a grand-ma to improve battery life. The cost of a x2 battery size is easier to amortize. Its life time can be managed and optimized with ML. And yes - it can get the greatest and latest battery chemistry. At this stage - we just dont need a "battery miracle" or a Musk-moonshot (trade-mark?) for passenger EVs.
        zaroth 7y ago
        The point of the Robotaxi use case is it presents a very high duty cycle (multiple full charges per day) but with lower maximum range constraints. So it’s particularly well suited for a chemistry which provides slightly lower density trade-off for double the total lifetime cycles. Similarly for EV buses and trucks. Better chemistry at lower cost benefits passenger cars but also public transit and grid storage. It’s a multi-hundred-billion if not trillion dollar market overall. It has nothing particularly to do with “Musk-moonshot” other than Tesla hyping and accelerating the pace of EV mass adoption, which drives a virtuous cycle for battery chemistry investment.
      - woodandsteel 7y ago
        >All language requires these sorts of assumptions; its implicit in pretty much every sentence. For most people, they will understand what is meant very quickly. I have a snarky saying that no matter how clear you make yourself, someone can always misunderstand you if they really want to.
    - klyrs 7y ago
      > The GP is correct and not just being pedantic. >> Any battery can last one million miles if it's just sitting on a seat in a vehicle. Snark or pedantry? I say both.
  - _nhynes 7y ago
    > becoming too Aspergers Why did you think it necessary to gauge GP's comment on a scale measuring how likely it could have come from someone with what is considered a mental disorder? You could have easily omitted that phrase and the post would have conveyed the same meaning. Here, you’ve either a) derided the non-malicious, involuntary behavior of a group of people, or b) tactlessly called out GP for being a member of this group. There’s nothing good that could have come from that. Please try to have more empathy in the future.
    - dang 7y ago
      "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  I think it's the best metrics I've seen in a while. "For usage where our previous battery gets 300,000 - 500,000 miles, this gets a million miles". It's a real world number.
sandworm101 7y ago
>> The new battery tested is a Li-Ion battery cell with a next-generation “single crystal” NMC cathode and a new advanced electrolyte. If this is anything like growing single-crystal parts for aircraft, it won't be cheap. The real question should be whether these new battery modules will last twice as long while remaining less than twice as expensive. >> Controlling the charge to less than 100% state-of-charge also helps push the longevity. Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that.
- zaroth 7y ago
  They tested it to 100% DOD (Depth of Discharge) over 5000 cycles; https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-07-at-3.27.41-PM.jpg https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/Scree...
- jbm 7y ago
  > Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that. Don't phones already do this? (IE: 100% is not really 100%, 0% is not really 0%.) I don't see it as cheating, it's akin to the practical limit vs. the actual limit
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    They do, but they don't claim this as any sort of advancement of battery technology. It's batteries 101.
  - zeta0134 7y ago
    Many laptops do it too. Lenovo even markets it as a visible (and annoying) power management feature. Most however simply handle the charge cycles behind the scenes, and adjust their definition of "100%" over time, so the user can remain blissfully unaware (and less likely to change the setting). I don't mind this really. Batteries degrade over time; that's kinda just how they work, and I'd much rather have 100% mean "my device is done charging" and 0% mean "my device can no longer run." The specifics of what voltage or charge level or whatever actually translates to those numbers is not important, and honestly the battery / laptop manufacturer probably knows the right settings for those better than I ever will, so it's fine.
zaroth 7y ago
Post of the actual paper; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726 For those commenting that the discharge rate is too slow in the test, or the depth of discharge was fudged... the tests were run with a high discharge rate combined with 100% charge at storage. > Figure 23 shows the projected fractional capacity of these NMC532/graphite cells as a function of time in years in a scenario where the cells are cycled once per day (100% DOD to 4.3 V) in a cycling event that takes 6 hours. It is also assumed that during the remaining time, cells are stored at full state of charge. It is clear from Figure 23 that these cells would provide an exceptionally long total driving range in an EV if the cells were maintained at an average tem- perature of 20°C. Even if the cells were continually at 40°C, 10 years of lifetime to 70% capacity and a total driven distance of 1,200,000 km is projected. It is worth noting that only 3650 cycles would be required for this total driven distance and 3700 cycles have been demonstrated in Figure 16. > Most important to realize is that Figure 23 assumes 100% DOD cycling on every cycle and storage at full state of charge. If the reader reviews the literature data in Figures 1 and 2, the reader will realize that the lifetime will be much better in situations where the DOD is limited and in situations where cells are stored at lower states of charge. Admittedly, the projections in Figure 23 use the incredibly simple model described by equation 1. It is our opinion that more sophisticated models will lead to even longer lifetime projections.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Nothing here indicates a discharge rate. I'm having trouble finding the actual wattage produced by these cells over the 6 hour discharge time. Also, 6 hours is a longer than the current Tesla will run full charge at highway speeds (350 mile range, 75 mph ~= 4.5 hours). Plus, the current tesla can be re-charged and continue to operate, conditions I don't see mentioned. If it is similar to existing batteries though... great!
  - Reason077 7y ago
    "Nothing here indicates a discharge rate." In battery terminology, and this paper, charge/discharge rate is referred to as "C". Charging or discharging at 1C means a battery would be fully charged/discharged in 1 hour. A 100 Wh cell discharging at 1C would produce 100 W. Likewise, at 3C it would take 20 minutes and produce 300 W. At C/3, it would take 3 hours.
Osiris30 7y ago
Short thread commentary on the paper by Ric Fulop (co-founder of A123 battery co. and current CEO/founder of Desktop Metal): https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104 https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104
manmal 7y ago
This is very exciting. BEVs that were made before 2016 (I think that was when the last breakthrough trickled down to BEVs in the market) typically had a battery lifetime of about 70k miles or maybe a bit more before reaching 70% capacity. Fast-charging regularly might reduce capacity by several percent points within a few hot summer months. Basically, you bought a car for €30k and it might become useless 5-7 years later. Within a couple of years, we have gone from "I don't know, it's a bit risky to buy" to "My grandkids might be able to use this battery in their static storage system in a few decades".
- MrRadar 7y ago
  I think that was mainly due to early EVs having low battery capacities in general (because batteries cost a lot more then) so daily commuting would cycle them much more deeply than current high-capacity models. This 2017 article[1] shows battery life data for hundreds of Tesla Model S's (which have always come with large-capacity batteries). One of the highest-mileage cars in their data pool had just over 220k km (137k mi) on its battery with 90% of the original capacity remaining. There are also a few outliers with under 100k km that are below 90% capacity, I suspect those are cars that have been subject to a lot of long drives and supercharging. [1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-battery-life-what-the-data-show-so-far https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-b...
  - manmal 7y ago
    The difference in lifespan that I mentioned occurred in packs of similar sizes, for all manufacturers but Tesla. Tesla is in its league when it comes to battery lifespan.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  My 2012 tesla model s didn't seem to follow this. At 5 years old it had barely less capacity than original capacity. Est range went from 275 to 265. If you follow teslas, there are many (100s) of people with great than 100k of miles. The battery heating and cooling system was crucial. The leafs do suffer from serious problems. I wasn't aware they weren't charging up the battery. When speaking of evs, you really have to discuss two worlds, tesla and everyone else.
ianai 7y ago
Can anyone tell whether this is a solid state electrolyte? I’m still hooked on what I saw in that Netflix documentary where the guy was able to cut and puncture the battery without combustion. Also seemed capable of being much more dense.
- hwillis 7y ago
  It is not. This is a fairly conventional cell, with a different crystal structure for one of the ingredients, and a tweaked mix of liquid electrolytes. The most important part of this paper is that they actually prove that optimizing for cycle and calendar life can have such incredible effects.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Will we end up with seasonal battery's? Many already accustomed to switching tiers in winter. Whilst temperature management of batteries would cover many aspects, some locations a better tuned battery would make it more efficient overall perhaps. EDIT [s/riers/tires/;sleep]
    - hwillis 7y ago
      Very unlikely. Winter batteries aren't a huge problem as long as you are gentle until the pack is warm. Hot batteries are more of an issue, as they don't really like temperatures above 90-100 F. Keeping the battery at half charge helps reduce that damage a lot. Ultimately if you live in a hot climate the best thing to do is have a cool garage. The higher heat while out and about is not an issue, just the constant level of high heat. The only people who would get a real benefit from high temperature batteries are those without. Batteries are much more expensive than tires and the market is smaller.
      - ianai 7y ago
        It’s probably worth it for locations that see extreme heat throughout the year though. Phoenix, LV, etc would probably be cheaper markets at scale with specially engineered batteries.
guerby 7y ago
Two things missed by the electrek piece: - The article is CC-BY and downloable without scribd horrible UI: http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031 http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031 PDF direct http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf HTML direct http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html - In the conclusion the authors mention: Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or “beyond Li-ion cells”. So it's science as it should be!
- nwallin 7y ago
  > Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or “beyond Li-ion cells”. That's incredible. Normally I walk into these wunderbattery threads expecting to heap reproducibility scorn (we're still waiting for solid state glass batteries, and will in all likelihood be waiting forever) but pathways to reproducibility aren't something I'm used to in battery vaporware. I'm actually excited for battery tech, which seems weird given all the disappointment over the previous decade or two. Feels like being excited for another cancer cure in mice.
Animats 7y ago
OK, so if this is so great, when does it appear in the iPhone, which always seems to have battery life problems?
- std_throwaway 7y ago
  It would make the phone thicker which is not going to happen.
  - thekyle 7y ago
    How much thicker?
    - scrungus 7y ago
      https://www.solidsmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Energizer-Smartphone-Battery.jpg https://www.solidsmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Energi... bonus: https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png
    - hwillis 7y ago
      This cell has ~20-30% lower capacity per volume.
jokoon 7y ago
I'm sure batteries would be immensely better if the military would spend money into research towards better batteries.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Militaries don't have magic, they just tend to have lots of money. Foreigners' deaths are profitable for capitalist sociopaths, and good for election prospects of political sociopaths. Now, divert government money from death industries to battery research, and we'd be talking.
- hwillis 7y ago
  As someone who works in gov contracting, please no. Spend money literally any other way. Give it to the DOE. Fuck, just signing Musk a check would probably be better. The DoD is singularly ineffective.
elihu 7y ago
Having a cell that tolerates 100% discharge seems like a big deal, if it has similar energy density to other modern cells. A lot of lithium-ion cells shouldn't be discharge to less than 20% capacity or so, as it damages the cell.
coin 7y ago
> last 1M miles It sort of depends what type of vehicle is attached to it

252 points by Osiris30 7y ago

"Miles per battery" is possibly the stupidest metric to use to describe a battery capacity. Any battery can last one million miles if it's just sitting on a seat in a vehicle.

19ylram49 7y ago
Come on, I’m sure that the tests are more extensive than that!
throwaway9281 7y ago
Okay there you're becoming too Aspergers and literal about language.
- yazr 7y ago
  The GP is correct and not just being pedantic. This is just click bait. A battery (life)range is degraded (mostly) by (dis)charging speed, average discharge level and ambient heat. The bigger the battery, the less strain on each cell, and hence longer life time. I hope tesla is improving its battery, but this title is really bad.
  - spockz 7y ago
    A more positive read would be that this new battery lasts as many charges are necessary for a model 3 equipped with a battery pack of this type to drive 1 million miles. (Which is how I interpreted it.)
  - epistasis 7y ago
    This just needs some context to make sense, and when you add in the "in robot taxis" that is on the original article, that makes a very sensical context: a vehicle that can carry people. All language requires these sorts of assumptions; its implicit in pretty much every sentence. For most people, they will understand what is meant very quickly. Could it be better? Sure. But the question is better for whom, and with what implicit assumptions about the world?
    - yazr 7y ago
      The robo-taxi connotation is even worse. Any robo-taxi can be programmed to drive like a grand-ma to improve battery life. The cost of a x2 battery size is easier to amortize. Its life time can be managed and optimized with ML. And yes - it can get the greatest and latest battery chemistry. At this stage - we just dont need a "battery miracle" or a Musk-moonshot (trade-mark?) for passenger EVs.
      - zaroth 7y ago
        The point of the Robotaxi use case is it presents a very high duty cycle (multiple full charges per day) but with lower maximum range constraints. So it’s particularly well suited for a chemistry which provides slightly lower density trade-off for double the total lifetime cycles. Similarly for EV buses and trucks. Better chemistry at lower cost benefits passenger cars but also public transit and grid storage. It’s a multi-hundred-billion if not trillion dollar market overall. It has nothing particularly to do with “Musk-moonshot” other than Tesla hyping and accelerating the pace of EV mass adoption, which drives a virtuous cycle for battery chemistry investment.
    - woodandsteel 7y ago
      >All language requires these sorts of assumptions; its implicit in pretty much every sentence. For most people, they will understand what is meant very quickly. I have a snarky saying that no matter how clear you make yourself, someone can always misunderstand you if they really want to.
  - klyrs 7y ago
    > The GP is correct and not just being pedantic. >> Any battery can last one million miles if it's just sitting on a seat in a vehicle. Snark or pedantry? I say both.
- _nhynes 7y ago
  > becoming too Aspergers Why did you think it necessary to gauge GP's comment on a scale measuring how likely it could have come from someone with what is considered a mental disorder? You could have easily omitted that phrase and the post would have conveyed the same meaning. Here, you’ve either a) derided the non-malicious, involuntary behavior of a group of people, or b) tactlessly called out GP for being a member of this group. There’s nothing good that could have come from that. Please try to have more empathy in the future.
  - dang 7y ago
    "Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
bryanlarsen 7y ago
I think it's the best metrics I've seen in a while. "For usage where our previous battery gets 300,000 - 500,000 miles, this gets a million miles". It's a real world number.

sandworm101 7y ago

>> The new battery tested is a Li-Ion battery cell with a next-generation “single crystal” NMC cathode and a new advanced electrolyte. If this is anything like growing single-crystal parts for aircraft, it won't be cheap. The real question should be whether these new battery modules will last twice as long while remaining less than twice as expensive. >> Controlling the charge to less than 100% state-of-charge also helps push the longevity. Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that.

zaroth 7y ago
They tested it to 100% DOD (Depth of Discharge) over 5000 cycles; https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/Screen-Shot-2019-09-07-at-3.27.41-PM.jpg https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/09/Scree...
jbm 7y ago
> Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that. Don't phones already do this? (IE: 100% is not really 100%, 0% is not really 0%.) I don't see it as cheating, it's akin to the practical limit vs. the actual limit
- sandworm101 7y ago
  They do, but they don't claim this as any sort of advancement of battery technology. It's batteries 101.
- zeta0134 7y ago
  Many laptops do it too. Lenovo even markets it as a visible (and annoying) power management feature. Most however simply handle the charge cycles behind the scenes, and adjust their definition of "100%" over time, so the user can remain blissfully unaware (and less likely to change the setting). I don't mind this really. Batteries degrade over time; that's kinda just how they work, and I'd much rather have 100% mean "my device is done charging" and 0% mean "my device can no longer run." The specifics of what voltage or charge level or whatever actually translates to those numbers is not important, and honestly the battery / laptop manufacturer probably knows the right settings for those better than I ever will, so it's fine.

zaroth 7y ago

Post of the actual paper; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726 For those commenting that the discharge rate is too slow in the test, or the depth of discharge was fudged... the tests were run with a high discharge rate combined with 100% charge at storage. > Figure 23 shows the projected fractional capacity of these NMC532/graphite cells as a function of time in years in a scenario where the cells are cycled once per day (100% DOD to 4.3 V) in a cycling event that takes 6 hours. It is also assumed that during the remaining time, cells are stored at full state of charge. It is clear from Figure 23 that these cells would provide an exceptionally long total driving range in an EV if the cells were maintained at an average tem- perature of 20°C. Even if the cells were continually at 40°C, 10 years of lifetime to 70% capacity and a total driven distance of 1,200,000 km is projected. It is worth noting that only 3650 cycles would be required for this total driven distance and 3700 cycles have been demonstrated in Figure 16. > Most important to realize is that Figure 23 assumes 100% DOD cycling on every cycle and storage at full state of charge. If the reader reviews the literature data in Figures 1 and 2, the reader will realize that the lifetime will be much better in situations where the DOD is limited and in situations where cells are stored at lower states of charge. Admittedly, the projections in Figure 23 use the incredibly simple model described by equation 1. It is our opinion that more sophisticated models will lead to even longer lifetime projections.

falcolas 7y ago
Nothing here indicates a discharge rate. I'm having trouble finding the actual wattage produced by these cells over the 6 hour discharge time. Also, 6 hours is a longer than the current Tesla will run full charge at highway speeds (350 mile range, 75 mph ~= 4.5 hours). Plus, the current tesla can be re-charged and continue to operate, conditions I don't see mentioned. If it is similar to existing batteries though... great!
- Reason077 7y ago
  "Nothing here indicates a discharge rate." In battery terminology, and this paper, charge/discharge rate is referred to as "C". Charging or discharging at 1C means a battery would be fully charged/discharged in 1 hour. A 100 Wh cell discharging at 1C would produce 100 W. Likewise, at 3C it would take 20 minutes and produce 300 W. At C/3, it would take 3 hours.

Osiris30 7y ago

Short thread commentary on the paper by Ric Fulop (co-founder of A123 battery co. and current CEO/founder of Desktop Metal): https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104 https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104

manmal 7y ago

This is very exciting. BEVs that were made before 2016 (I think that was when the last breakthrough trickled down to BEVs in the market) typically had a battery lifetime of about 70k miles or maybe a bit more before reaching 70% capacity. Fast-charging regularly might reduce capacity by several percent points within a few hot summer months. Basically, you bought a car for €30k and it might become useless 5-7 years later. Within a couple of years, we have gone from "I don't know, it's a bit risky to buy" to "My grandkids might be able to use this battery in their static storage system in a few decades".

MrRadar 7y ago
I think that was mainly due to early EVs having low battery capacities in general (because batteries cost a lot more then) so daily commuting would cycle them much more deeply than current high-capacity models. This 2017 article[1] shows battery life data for hundreds of Tesla Model S's (which have always come with large-capacity batteries). One of the highest-mileage cars in their data pool had just over 220k km (137k mi) on its battery with 90% of the original capacity remaining. There are also a few outliers with under 100k km that are below 90% capacity, I suspect those are cars that have been subject to a lot of long drives and supercharging. [1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-battery-life-what-the-data-show-so-far https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-b...
- manmal 7y ago
  The difference in lifespan that I mentioned occurred in packs of similar sizes, for all manufacturers but Tesla. Tesla is in its league when it comes to battery lifespan.
NotSammyHagar 7y ago
My 2012 tesla model s didn't seem to follow this. At 5 years old it had barely less capacity than original capacity. Est range went from 275 to 265. If you follow teslas, there are many (100s) of people with great than 100k of miles. The battery heating and cooling system was crucial. The leafs do suffer from serious problems. I wasn't aware they weren't charging up the battery. When speaking of evs, you really have to discuss two worlds, tesla and everyone else.

ianai 7y ago

Can anyone tell whether this is a solid state electrolyte? I’m still hooked on what I saw in that Netflix documentary where the guy was able to cut and puncture the battery without combustion. Also seemed capable of being much more dense.

hwillis 7y ago
It is not. This is a fairly conventional cell, with a different crystal structure for one of the ingredients, and a tweaked mix of liquid electrolytes. The most important part of this paper is that they actually prove that optimizing for cycle and calendar life can have such incredible effects.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Will we end up with seasonal battery's? Many already accustomed to switching tiers in winter. Whilst temperature management of batteries would cover many aspects, some locations a better tuned battery would make it more efficient overall perhaps. EDIT [s/riers/tires/;sleep]
  - hwillis 7y ago
    Very unlikely. Winter batteries aren't a huge problem as long as you are gentle until the pack is warm. Hot batteries are more of an issue, as they don't really like temperatures above 90-100 F. Keeping the battery at half charge helps reduce that damage a lot. Ultimately if you live in a hot climate the best thing to do is have a cool garage. The higher heat while out and about is not an issue, just the constant level of high heat. The only people who would get a real benefit from high temperature batteries are those without. Batteries are much more expensive than tires and the market is smaller.
    - ianai 7y ago
      It’s probably worth it for locations that see extreme heat throughout the year though. Phoenix, LV, etc would probably be cheaper markets at scale with specially engineered batteries.

guerby 7y ago

Two things missed by the electrek piece: - The article is CC-BY and downloable without scribd horrible UI: http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031 http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031 PDF direct http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf HTML direct http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html - In the conclusion the authors mention: Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or “beyond Li-ion cells”. So it's science as it should be!

nwallin 7y ago
> Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or “beyond Li-ion cells”. That's incredible. Normally I walk into these wunderbattery threads expecting to heap reproducibility scorn (we're still waiting for solid state glass batteries, and will in all likelihood be waiting forever) but pathways to reproducibility aren't something I'm used to in battery vaporware. I'm actually excited for battery tech, which seems weird given all the disappointment over the previous decade or two. Feels like being excited for another cancer cure in mice.

Animats 7y ago

OK, so if this is so great, when does it appear in the iPhone, which always seems to have battery life problems?

std_throwaway 7y ago
It would make the phone thicker which is not going to happen.
- thekyle 7y ago
  How much thicker?
  - scrungus 7y ago
    https://www.solidsmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Energizer-Smartphone-Battery.jpg https://www.solidsmack.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Energi... bonus: https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png
  - hwillis 7y ago
    This cell has ~20-30% lower capacity per volume.

jokoon 7y ago

I'm sure batteries would be immensely better if the military would spend money into research towards better batteries.

crispinb 7y ago
Militaries don't have magic, they just tend to have lots of money. Foreigners' deaths are profitable for capitalist sociopaths, and good for election prospects of political sociopaths. Now, divert government money from death industries to battery research, and we'd be talking.
hwillis 7y ago
As someone who works in gov contracting, please no. Spend money literally any other way. Give it to the DOE. Fuck, just signing Musk a check would probably be better. The DoD is singularly ineffective.

elihu 7y ago

Having a cell that tolerates 100% discharge seems like a big deal, if it has similar energy density to other modern cells. A lot of lithium-ion cells shouldn't be discharge to less than 20% capacity or so, as it damages the cell.

coin 7y ago

> last 1M miles It sort of depends what type of vehicle is attached to it