Slashdot Mirror
Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating Tesla's Battery Technology? (bloomberg.com)
"Tesla's newest promises break the laws of batteries," writes Bloomberg. Long-time Slashdot reader rudy_wayne summarizes their report.
"Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles...are monuments of envelope pushing. To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible." The Tesla Semi, which Musk claims can haul 80,000 pounds at highway speeds for 500 miles, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes, would require "a charging system that's 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today -- Tesla's own Superchargers."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
For trucks and buses that can follow the wires. They can be powered and "recharged" as they move, as well as following the wires automatically. Also, electrified freight rail. "Charging" vehicles while on the go is a solved problem and doesn't require production of large, environmentally-costly batteries.
...a standard car charging point isn't powerful enough to charge a semi in a reasonable time?
Instead of immediately accusing them of witchcraft, perhaps... they just figured out a way to bundle multiple 'standard' standard car-chargers in parallel, and use those to charge separate battery packs inside a semi, greatly reducing the total recharge time?
Well, they did have a working prototype doing max acceleration 0-70 mph runs all night long without recharging. The numbers they quoted appeared to be real numbers for that prototype.
Unlike Porsche and others who display a stationary model and claim that it will be able to almost match the performance of current production Teslas, some day, when they actually manage to make it work.
I think Tesla did figure out something new, aren't quite able to mass produce it yet, but already did make it in very small volume and are now testing it. They may not make the 2020 deadline (it's still Tesla, after all) but I doubt it will be much later than that. They are getting a lot better at actually producing things, delays on Model 3 are only a couple of months and that's after accelerating the development by a whole year. I expect them to deliver the first token roadsters in december 2020 and start producing them for real in the second half of 2021.