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."

Comments

Electrify America

[Rei]

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).

No - it is unlikely that Tesla will use caps.

[robbak]

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.

You don't need to *stay next to the car*

[DrYak]

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.

Re:You don't need to *stay next to the car*

[apoc.famine]

EV: you take your car. It's already charged 100% overnight.

In talking to a couple of my friends with BEVs, that's the one thing that will make them never go back to an ICE car. Range anxiety isn't a thing in their day-to-day life. When going on a longer trip, it becomes something to plan around, but that's not generally that often. And most still have an ICE car available.

Never going to a gas station doesn't seem life-changing, but they all feel it is. One less valueless waste of time, detour, and distraction in life can sometimes really be a positive change.

Re: Using overvalued stock while they can

[MachineShedFred]

Move the goalposts a little more.

"Tesla isn't profitable"
"Tesla can't make more than 10,000 cars in a month"
"Tesla hasn't been profitable for more than a quarter at a time"
"Tesla hasn't ever made an annual profit"

They've already given guidance of either a narrow loss or narrow profit for Q1, so depending on Q2 they will have shown a profit over four consecutive quarters when the last big loss (2018Q2) falls off. Where will the goalposts move then?