I, for one, definitely want more range until my personal bio limitation kicks in when driving. right now, I can drive at least 5 hours straight without any stopping. Given highway speed of 75mph, I probably need real world range of at least 400 miles, with some adverse conditions like HVAC or headwind, add another 20% on top of it.
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I, for one, definitely want more range until my personal bio limitation kicks in when driving. right now, I can drive at least 5 hours straight without any stopping. Given highway speed of 75mph, I probably need real world range of at least 400 miles, with some adverse conditions like HVAC or headwind, add another 20% on top of it.
And the people for whom that cost/benefit analysis makes sense are for the foreseeable future only the very very wealthy. Meaning, for now, only a tiny fraction of the automobile market, such as those who can afford a $200,000+ Roadster with 600+ miles of range.
It will be a long time before Tesla can offer a 600 mile range car that the masses can afford. The Model 3 LR with 300+ miles of range is a good start. With the expanding Supercharger network in the US, Western Europe, and other areas, that range enables travel to the vast majority of places most people want to go. Sure Tesla could have designed the Model 3 to accommodate that 200kWh pack but the market for that is small because of the greatly increased cost of the car.
Elon decided on that huge pack for the Roadster to enable it to be world record quick and go incredibly fast all to make the point that an EV can be better than any ICE even if the ICE costs a million bucks.
I'm not quite sure why such a thing should have to be an offering for the masses. There's nothing wrong with making a sedan that's extremely expensive for the few that can afford it. Those are the people who paid for the R&D for all the other vehicles that are put on the road.
I am now 95% convinced that Tesla does have a fairly major battery chemistry Improvement in the works. They would be able to implement it across all their lines. The new reported potential sale price for the semis is almost a certain give away for that. Also we've heard nothing from Jeffrey Dahn in quite a while. That often precedes a big announcement (the calm before the storm). Of course this is probably just wishful thinking!
Tesla will have a whole bunch of things in the lab, that are undergoing different testing protocols. I agree... it seems almost as though they have something in their hands that they're not announcing, but that they're starting to include in the design of future products. It seems like they're teasing us.
There have been a lot of demonstrations around solid state lithium batteries - which have higher energy density and are much safer than Li Ion. There was a fascinating demo on Nova showing one of the developers of such a battery cutting it in half with a pair of scissors, while it continued to provide power to an electronic device.
I don't know what technical/commercial barriers, but at the moment they seem to be the logical successor to the current tech.
Tesla will have a whole bunch of things in the lab, that are undergoing different testing protocols. I agree... it seems almost as though they have something in their hands that they're not announcing, but that they're starting to include in the design of future products. It seems like they're teasing us.
There have been a lot of demonstrations around solid state lithium batteries - which have higher energy density and are much safer than Li Ion. There was a fascinating demo on Nova showing one of the developers of such a battery cutting it in half with a pair of scissors, while it continued to provide power to an electronic device.
I don't know what technical/commercial barriers, but at the moment they seem to be the logical successor to the current tech.
Although too am a fan of solid state batteries, you could call them supercapacitors, I think it's more likely a Lithium-Ion solution. It would be fun to be proved wrong though!
Umm... solid state batteries aren't the same supercapacitors. Batteries rely on a chemical reaction. SCs do not.
That almost HAS to be the case, as the figures for the Semi and next-gen Roadster are literally not possible without Tesla banking on some new battery chemistry. Like there is no way that prototype Roadster had an actual 200 kWh battery in there...likely it was a modified P100DL powertrain. Shaving off 0.4 seconds from a much heavier SP100DL would not be that hard.
GM almost got burned with the Bolt when the battery tech they thought would be available ended up being a bunch of smoke, which left them scrambling for alternatives. Seems to have worked out for GM though.
Agreed, on the in common use the terms have been interchangeable lately. Unfortunately it's one of those descriptions it's not going to be actually accurate, I think. People are going to mix the two. But, yes, you are perfectly correct. Thank you
Not sure it will ever be cost effective on a mass market car. A few would pay it, but to double the battery cost would be a hard sell. Yes, it would be nice to have limitless range, but it's really not necessary. Superchargers already take care of that. In a few years, there will be high speed chargers at most gas stations. We currently don't have any ICE cars that I'm aware of that go 1,000 miles before needing a fill up.
With the Roadster, despite it being in "super car" territory, it probably will cost Tesla less to build than a Model S. Much smaller car, so at $200,000, the margin will be there to put the bigger battery in it. Plus as others have said, the bigger battery will be needed for performance. The side effect will be the added range.
I think if they can get the Model S & X to 400 miles in realistic range, after typical 2-3 year degradation, they'll have reached the realistic limit for a mass market car. How many people drive more than 400 miles in one shot without stopping?
Now, when they come up with the flux capacitor and can generate 1.21 jigawatts of power, then we'll have something to talk about!
I believe a 200 kilowatt hour battery would in fact give us about 400 miles realistic range at normal highway speeds. Especially in the winter. I think that's about the perfect range. But, you may be right. I don't need it but four or five times a year at the most. Well, need. I don't have an excuse for it more than four or five times a year.
The Veryron's W16 engine was 530 kg heavy and the rest of the car is pretty huge and luxuriously equipped, so I'm not surprised that the Roadster could be lighter.
On the other hand with today's Model 3 cells this pack would be a metric ton, 2200 lbs, so getting to 4300 lbs will be hard. But I don't think it takes much of an improvement for it to work.
Back in 2008 they managed to get 53 kWh into a 2,877 lbs car, that was even smaller. So this should be doable.
I really don't know how heavy these packs will be, but in terms of price you can buy 800 kWh of Bolt battery on GM outlet parts for 140k. So if the rest of the truck is 60k, which sounds reasonable, w/o the big diesel engine, transmission and exhaust treatment, they only need to get a 15% discount from GM outlet parts! And maybe Panasonic can beat even that...
The rumors of massive jumps in battery capacity have been around since the beginning. And there always were smaller but continuous increases in battery capacity that came unannounced.
So IMO there will be a higher range Model S and X, but it won't be a lot more range and it is definitely not worth waiting for.
Whisky
Member
You're right, I think he did once say that there were no plans for a >100 kWh pack and that there is no need for greater than 400-450 mile range.
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