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Tesla Acquires Ultracapacitor Manufacturer For Over $200 Million, Reaches Deal With Electrify America To Deploy Powerpacks At Over 100 Charging Stations (electrek.co)
Thelasko shares a report from Electrek: Tesla hasn't been known for making many acquisitions, but we've now learned that it has reached an agreement to acquire ultracapacitor and battery component manufacturer Maxwell based in California. The all-stock transaction worth over $200 million was announced by Maxwell this morning and we reached out to Tesla to confirm the news. [...] Tesla's acquisition of Maxwell might have little to do with ultracapacitors. The automaker might be more interested with Maxwell's dry electrode technology that they have been hyping recently. Maxwell claims that its electrode enables an energy density of over 300 Wh/kg in current demonstration cells and they see a path to over 500 Wh/kg. This would represent a significant improvement over current battery cells used by Tesla and enable longer range or lighter weight, but that's not even the most attractive benefit of Maxwell's dry electrode. They claim that it should simplify the manufacturing process and result in a "10 to 20% cost reduction versus state-of-the-art wet electrodes" while "extending battery Life up to a factor of 2." Many companies have been making similar claims about batteries. Tesla, specifically Elon and JB, have often complained that they couldn't verify those claims. If Tesla is willing to pay $200 million for Maxwell, I have to assume that they verified the claims and they believe the technology is applicable to their batteries. On a semi-related note, Tesla has also reached a deal with Electrify America to deploy Powerpacks at over 100 charging stations operated by the latter. "Demand charges, a higher rate that an electric utility charges when a user's electricity needs spike, are resulting in incredible costs for charging station operators," reports Electrek. "The use of energy storage at charging stations in order to shave the peak usage is a solution to those demand charges."
"[Electrify America] announced today that they will deploy Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations," the report says. "The system will be designed to be modular in order to increase the capacity if needed."
"[Electrify America] announced today that they will deploy Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations," the report says. "The system will be designed to be modular in order to increase the capacity if needed."
What's more imporant?
https://eestorcorp.com/
The Electrify America deal is actually rather amusing, as it's Volkswagen behind that ;)
Dry electrode manufacturing isn't important because of some theoretical battery property improvements which may or may not be realized at commercial scale. It's important to reduce manufacturing hardware depreciation costs and operating expenses for battery electrode creation - e.g. greater throughput with less hardware and lower energy consumption.
The ongoing task of reducing cell costs is part capex/opex, and part raw materials costs. Tesla isn't working on the latter themselves, but there's a lot of interesting work going on on that front (for example, producing nickel sulfate from laterite, which historically has only been good for ferronickel and the like - that could tank nickel sulfate prices).
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
That pulling an amount of energy over a longer period of time and storing it in a capacitor rather than a battery for the purpose of not forcing the "salt" against the electrodes in the battery to keep the battery lasting longer?
Alright /. specialists, tell us why this is a terrible idea, will never work, Tesla will never amount to anything, and the actual future of transportation is in non-autonomous internal combustion...
Tesla Powerpack systems consisting of 'a 210 kW battery system with roughly 350 kWh of capacity' at over 100 charging stations
So the Powerpack system can be charged/discharged at an average of 0.6 C (Full to empty or vice versa in 1 hour 40 minutes.) Not too shabby.
Also means it's not going to lose much per cycle, either. Losing 10% would have it dissipating 21 kW as waste heat, so expect it to be far better than that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Law of thermo-dynamics applies to all ... Read any? Try it. It's fudruckers like you that shame the great times we live in.
You really don't understand what I was talking about, do you?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Was this translated from Cantonese?? A "fuddrucker" is a restaurant and no, they don't serve canine...
If the claims of battery tech improvement are true, 200M is too much of a bargain... which is why I think they are BS.
There is some use for ultra-capacitors in performance electric vehicles - dump regenerative braking energy into caps instead of the battery for use in the following acceleration. But unless you are decelerating and accelerating lots - think, racing on a track - you'd be better off using the extra mass for more batteries. The shallow charge cycles used in everyday regen don't stress a big battery back, and the heavy duty circuitry to pull charge into and out of big capacitor banks isn't cheap.
What Tesla is most likely interested in is new battery tech that they are in the process of developing. Really, they are paying most of that 200M for their dry electrode know-how and patents. The main thing we need to make electric cars better is more energy per unit volume (and mass) of battery.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
I suspect it was an inside joke. Thousands of brand new unwanted/broken Model 3s were abandoned around the country by Tesla when demand went to zero. They were getting stockpiled in shopping mall parking lots and dirt fields and some have been photographed in front of Fuddruckers...which turned somewhat meme-ish. HTH.
If you look at the Electrify America charging map you can see they have a pretty good spread of stations across the U.S. - just zoom out.
The map may take a little while to get you a correct total, just wait a few seconds or zoom in and out a little at the top level, it'll eventually settle into the right numbers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I guess that 2.5B for Solar City was petty change.
C-rate is a measure of the rate at which a battery is charged or discharged relative to its maximum capacity.
So a 1C rate means that the battery will be fully charged or discharged in 1 hour.
You will never have any correct numbers, you're a loser propagandist. You will die irrelevant.
... here are cancerous. Including this one.
Tesla Buys Maxwell !
Student surpasses the teacher, eh ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
aaaaaaa
I don't see why Tesla really needs ultracaps, at least, not to the point of buying the company. OTOH, Tesla stock is massively overvalued due to speculation based on the Musk reality distortion field. So it makes sense to use an all-stock transition: leverage that overvalued stock to buy things. What would actually make far more sense, would be to issue more stock, to suck in actual money, to build out their manufacturing capacity. That empty plot of dirt in China isn't going to build itself.
Just to be clear: I'm not down on Tesla. They have done an amazing job of making EVs into a mainstream product. They deserve a lot of kudos for that. But their ability to execute the boring, day-to-day stuff like running a manufacturing plant? Pretty awful.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Save you the googling.
Anything over 15 minutes to recharge is terrible.
Are you aware that you don't need to stay next to an EV while it's charging ?
Get that recharge rate to where it can compete with internal combustion engines
Typical use on long trips :
ICE: pull out to the gaz station, quickly fill the tank, then *after the refill* move the car a few meters further (to free the gaz pump) next to the restaurant/dinner, then have your break there (coffee or lunch depending on the time of the day).
EV: plug in the car to the charging station, and go to the restaurant dinner to have your break (coffee / lunch) *while* the car is charging.
There's NO difference in practical use.
(Ah yeah, I forgot: there's the "I pee in a plastic bottle" that will insist on driving 8 hours straight without a single pause. Just please try not to crash your sleep deprived face into me, thank you.)
Typical use on short trips:
ICE: you take your car, but every now and then you'll need to add an extra detour to the gaz station in your daily plan.
EV: you take your car. It's already charged 100% overnight.
EV are actually better.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Interesting to see that the short-sellers are now enough of a subculture that they've developed their own memes, isolated from the rest of society. Thanks for explaining, that's fascinating.
Tesla is real and has been producing interesting products for years. Most of the products have not been cheap enough for consumer use. I'm figuring Musk plans to change that.
Assuming you slashdot idiots actually use C according to the context to mean coulombs
Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen a post fail as much as this one. I commend you for your superiority complex while being so utterly wrong.
Karma indeed.
False.
Cars are shipped by train. Trains are big, and hold lots of cars. Cars need to be unloaded from trains, and then picked up by trucks that hold far less than a train.
Therefore you have storage needs in a hub-and-spoke logistics pattern, which is what shipping by train is.
Why would Tesla pile up cars and keep manufacturing them if they had no buyers? Why wouldn't those cars be at the stores where someone could test drive and buy in the same day, rather than still being told it will be weeks until they can take delivery?
Your basic premise doesn't match anything even close to reality. Stop spreading 'fake news' because you haven't hit your short price yet.
You know that a Powerpack is a fixed asset bolted to a concrete pad, not the battery in a car?
Why would you care if a refrigerator-cabinet sized battery takes longer than 15 minutes to charge?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
350kW chargers are being tested in Europe now {...} If you work it out that means you need to stop for about 12 minutes every 3 hours if cruising at 75 MPH.
(Note: 75MPH =~ 120 km/h)
Speaking of Europe, depending on where you're looking :
- You are extremely strongly encouraged to make breaks much more frequently than that (as examples : see the campaigns on highway electronic signage in France during each touristic season - strongly encouraging to take a break every 2 hours maximum. Or as another example, the "turbo nap" information campaigns in Switzerland)
- It might be illegal to go on long stretch without a break (there are laws for professional drivers in lots of European countries)
So yeah, as you point out, EV tech already today on the streets covers the needs of most people (except the US "I pee in a plastic bottle" crowd I mentionned above).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
YAWN. Wake me up when I can refuel my gasoline car at home, overnight.
As a short-range EV owner, this is not true. I no longer have to go to a gas station to fill up, which saves me significant time and smell. I don't even use 240V to charge--it takes 8-12 hours to charge, which is plenty for each day's driving.
There's decreased maintenance because there are less parts, which makes my local driving much cheaper. The car is far more fun to drive because it's super quiet and has instant acceleration. There's no transmission or shifting, which is a huge plus for ride quality and responsiveness. The fuel to power the car costs less, even including battery replacement costs. I paid < $6k for my car, which doesn't exactly quality for "conspicuous consumption".
As a two car family with a lot of short-range travel, the EV was a slam dunk. We still have an ICE for long distance trips.
-=Lothsahn=-
It's actually becoming common for home fueling around here. All the gas stations are pretty well gone due to the high price of land and it's a lot more convenient and about the same price as driving half a dozen miles plus out of the way to fuel up. For the tankers delivering the fuel, doing it in the middle of the night/early morning works best as there is little traffic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Tesla Megacharger
hehe the only comment worth reading
Keep denying reality.
Because Tesla has no "stores" you idiot. Also, they didn't keep producing them, they scaled back dramatically because targets weren't hit. Thus we have people still sitting on a waiting list because they decided to NOT by the 60k version. Suckers.
Because I have to sit there and fucking wait for it to charge, Jesus Christ asshole, we all don't own garages.
Another elitist attitude of I got mines now fuck you.
1) we all don't own houses.
2) we all don't have garages.
3) not all of us can afford a 65k car to "save the planet"
You EV assholes are the worse. So smug and condescending. South Park had it right. EV owners are leading cause of smug.
You proved his point.
EV is good foe short range travel
Right now. It can't compare to an ICE in terms of gas station visits.
My EV cost me £5K to buy outright (US$6500).I don't have a garage.
"Asshole" yourself. Double "asshole" for missing the point.
No, his point was that "anything over 15 minutes to recharge is terrible" and until that's improved, people will only buy electric cars for "conspicuous consumption", That is incorrect for short and medium range travel, where EV's are more convenient, easier and more fun to drive, and cheaper.
I agree that ICE is significantly better than EV for long range travel, and that opinion is stated in my other posts on this topic. However, that was not the point the OP was making.
-=Lothsahn=-
You will need what, four times as many charging stations as gas pumps?
I actually totally agree with this point and I've made it before myself in the past, in terms of the practicality of all cars being electric.
However here we are just looking at rapid charging stations to make interstate travel feasible without huge delays to charge, and the map of charging networks I listed would be added on top of Tesla's Supercharging locations, which is already pretty extensive. The only place I would be hesitant to go with an all electric car on a road trip would be deep into Utah or the Southwest (maybe the Southwest has gotten better).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
> Wake me up when I can refuel my gasoline car at home, overnight.
Wake up then. 40 years ago, my grandparents had a fuel tank on their farm for their car, right next to the diesel one they used to refuel their farm machinery.
Most of the products have not been cheap enough for consumer use
They're selling 300,000 cars a year. I'm pretty sure that means they've got plenty of general consumers.