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Tesla poised to reveal 'million-mile' battery as soon as this year
- dwighttk 6y agois this due before or after full autonomy?
- thefounder 6y agoI guess first you will be able to buy the chassis option that will support this future battery.
- ctdonath 6y agoFull autonomy depends, among other things, on regulators. Could be years before the right people are convinced it should be road legal. Hints I see re: Cybertruck point to new battery by end of 2021 (CT launch). Few/no regulators to persuade of exotic tech.
- cstejerean 6y agoI’ll settle for self driving package that doesn’t plow full speed into stationary objects. What regulatory hurdle is that stuck behind?
- new_realist 6y agoThere are no regulations currently in the US that would prohibit full self driving. They simply do not exist. Regulation is a lie told by Elon to excuse a lack of progress.
- ctdonath 6y agoIf there aren’t regulations, there will be soon. Tesla needs to address the obvious before it becomes a problem.
- jsight 6y agoBut will the Cybertruck actually be produced by the end of 2021 or were the battery requirements too high for the spec and price point?
- ctdonath 6y agoPoint of this thread is new battery tech arriving soon, and hints during CT unveiling were it would be the first Tesla vehicle using the new tech. Notice the new “Gigafactory” will double as CT manufacturing, and Elon has referenced new batteries well before any of this.
- jsight 6y agoSure, but there were hints of that during the semi and roadster unveiling too. 200KWh in a car smaller than a 3? Almost 1 MWh in a semi costing less than 200k? The CT was always going to be built at either NV or a new factory. All new factories are doing battery production. If there's a hint there, it is a really weak one. Having said that, I do think the CT will make it in 2022 and maybe we'll even see the lower trim versions in volume production by 2023. That would still be pretty impressive.
- new_realist 6y agoObviously after. Full autonomy is promised for 2017.
- rasz 6y agoThe hardware to achieve 'million-mile' battery is already shipping in currently selling vehicles, its just a matter of fine tuning the software at this point!!1
- castratikron 6y agoFine tuning being setting max charge 55% and never going below 45%.
- m463 6y agodef accelerator_pedal(): if speed > 1 mph: return 0 else: return accelerator_pedal_analog_value()
- LeChuck 6y agoYou'd think they'd have their hands full with the robotaxi network, building 1000 solar roofs per week, getting the cars to automatically call a tow truck, getting the cars to autonomously find a valid parking spot, powering the Gigafactory 100% with solar power, building a pickup truck that's a better sports car than a standard 911, outfitting all supercharges affected by blackouts in California with a Tesla powerpack, building more than two semis, building the roadster etc. etc.
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- jsight 6y agoIts right after the roadster and semi are in full production. They are scheduled for ~4 years after their announcement if they don't get pushed back again. I see no reason to believe this is less of a hype followed by vaporware.
- lowdose 6y agoAren't we now past the mark to call Tesla vaporware. Musk build a legit revenue stream and for both customers and shareholders this was a very welcome change. I wonder if any of the incumbents would have a similar electric car as Tesla in 2030. They haven't moved an inch since Musk is taking their industry by storm, thats almost already 10 years. Even Audi has mayor problems manufacturing their etron.
- clouddrover 6y ago> Even Audi has mayor problems manufacturing their etron. The Audi e-tron outsells the Model X and the Model S: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/04/global-top-20-march-2020.html https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/04/global-top-20-march-20... And the e-tron is outselling the Model X and Model S combined in Europe: https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/04/europe-march-2020.html https://ev-sales.blogspot.com/2020/04/europe-march-2020.html
- derision 6y agoThere's not much reason to buy a model s right now compared to the 3 imo. The model 3 is #1 on your list and sells 4-8x more than the next 5 on the list, including the e-tron
- clouddrover 6y agoThe e-tron is not in the same price category as the Model 3. The Volkswagen ID.3 is in the same category. The ID.3 will become the best selling EV in Europe, maybe as soon as this year, definitely by next year. Have a look at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03n2H_EY2zA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03n2H_EY2zA
- qntmfred 6y agoI was hype until the part about it being total miles, not range on a single charge. And then I was disappointed. And then uninterested as I thought to myself "yeah that makes more sense." And then suddenly angry, as I thought to myself "wait why they hell AREN'T they trying to develop a million miles battery on a single charge!"
- sgrove 6y agoI'm curious what the total energy storage would be, and what kind of destructive damage it could do. A million miles is a lot of miles to move a full Tesla, passengers, and luggage around. Anyone want to do a back-of-the-envelope sketch and give some colorful units-of-measurement given instantaneous discharge (e.g. tons of TNT)?
- jpgvm 6y agoWell using the most optimistic numbers I could find the Model 3 LR does ~429km on 270 MJ battery pack. Assuming efficiency of system remains the same for 1 million miles that is approximately 1x10^12J of energy, roughly 240T of TNT or around 30,000L of Jet A-1.
- perl4ever 6y agoUsing your figure of 1e12 joules, I thought, what about a hypothetical miniaturized fast breeder nuclear reactor? Googling, I found a document that says regular light water reactors produce power with something like 1.8 tons of fuel per gigawatt per year. And fast breeder reactors potentially could be 100 times more efficient, they say. So if I did the arithmetic right, and if Google unit conversions didn't fail me, you could get 3.2e16 joules from 1632 kg of uranium fuel, which ends up being about 2 ounces per 1e12 joules. So, sure, it seems doable to me. The "battery" would be about the same weight as a regular alkaline 9V. A bit smaller though.
- philipkglass 6y agoDividing 1000000 miles by the up-to 390 mile range of the 100 kWh Model S indicates 256.4 megawatt hours for a million miles. That's about 221 tons of TNT equivalent.
- new_realist 6y agoFor context, a Tesla X or S battery degrades by 5% 50K miles and roughly 10% at 160K miles.
- harlanji 6y agoGood to know. My 2011 Honda has 61k on it, battery life has been a concern in an EV as I picture my next car sitting around on-and-off for a decade or two again. This one smelt new until a few years ago. My iPhone SE has around 15% degradation, for comparison. I like The Volt’s onboard generator approach, feels robust. Hopefully another while to think about it, as cost of maintaining a 9 year old/61k mi car is pretty good still.
- JonathonW 6y agoIf only Chevy had been able to deliver on the Volt’s original concept (with the electric motor connected only to a generator)— it turned out that that arrangement was actually pretty inefficient, and the production car ended up being more of a traditional series hybrid approach similar to the Prius (with the ICE and electric motors connected through a planetary gearset so both can drive the wheels). BMW does something similar to the Volt’s original concept with the Range Extender in the i3– that actually is a gasoline engine coupled to a generator; it never directly drives the wheels, and it can’t be used as the car’s only power source (once the battery’s dead, you’re done, even with a full tank of gas).
- turtlebits 6y agoThe i3 range extender kicks automatically once your battery range gets low, and uses gas to maintain that range (while reducing power). So theoretically, your battery should never die while you have gas.
- Animats 6y agoDuplicate. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182097