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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 i

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.

hwillis 6y ago
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.
imtringued 6y ago
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.
- hwillis 6y ago
  A million mile battery does not mean the rest of the car lasts a million miles
  - rstuart4133 6y ago
    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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
woodandsteel 6y ago
>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.

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.

hwillis 6y ago

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.

imtringued 6y ago

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.

hwillis 6y ago
A million mile battery does not mean the rest of the car lasts a million miles
- rstuart4133 6y ago
  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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

woodandsteel 6y ago

>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.