500 mile range Tesla - why not?

[bob_p]

Increasing battery capacity impacts three major areas - cost, weight (which also has an impact speed and range), and charging time.

Improvements in battery technology should help with cost and weight.

But charging time may be a challenge. If there was a 500 mile battery, assuming there aren't significant increases in charging efficiency, getting a full charge at home could take between 6 hours (80A HPWC) to 24 hours (30A dryer circuit). Even if home charging could take advantage of higher speed charging rates - it would likely require higher amperage circuits - and for most owners a 50A or 100A circuit may be the practical limit.

And unless Tesla significantly increases the charging rates at the superchargers, wouldn't almost doubling the battery capacity potentially create more contention at the superchargers - since individual cars could take almost twice as long to charge (if they try to use 1/2 of the supercharging stations for their trips)?

Rather than trying to reach a 500 mile range, Tesla may be better off focusing on a 300 mile battery - and take advantage of battery technology improvements to lower the cost and weight of the battery packs - and improve charging rates at the superchargers.

Lower cost would make the Tesla cars more cost competitive with ICEs. Lower weight would improve car performance (range and speed). With the small increase in capacity, and with the spacing of the supercharger network, more cars would be able to charge quickly to 80% or lower at the superchargers (improving utilization efficiency of the chargers).

 

[WarpedOne]

But charging time may be a challenge.

Reasoning with "full charge times" is flawed and borders meaningles and wrong.
What counts is range you get from charging for some set time, say an hour. Every battery will charge faster at lower SOC than at higher SOC. A bigger battery will thus charge faster than a smaller one when looked from mph perspective.
A different chemistry may allow for charging at higher power for longer time.
A full charge is only relevant to the question "Can a charge fully over night?" And even here "full" can mean different things, 70, 80, 90, 95 SOC etc.

 

[RadicalIgnorant]

Using some logic. Noone need super car acceleration, people like it, Tesla is providing it. Noone need more than 500miles range... It's just too expensive at the moment but it will be done. Not for model3 but for sure for premium car.
But... Tesla is quite small company. They have lot to do. So there are other priorities. As someone mentioned supply of batteriess is limited. Batteries are expensive but slowly getting cheaper. And one final thing: Tesla would shoot itself in the foot if they were to anounce: there will be car with bigger battery in half year. Do not buy anything from us till then.
However I'm wondering. Gigafactory could be connectet to new tooling, upgrades in technology, newer battery system. Model3 would benefit greatly from uptadet battery system. So if that will be then why not to put it into ModelS?

 

[Danal]

Many posts in this and other threads seem to imply there is a MUCH better battery "out there" and that Tesla could use it today, except "it" is too expensive, or too something. There really is not anything out there that improves by more than ?5? or ?10? percent expressed in cost/kWh or weight/kWh or your-choice/kWh. Not that can be produced in quantity. Even granted a very large (hundreds of millions) development investment, nothing that can be produced in quantity.

How can I say that? I am the power systems development director for an electric aircraft company. If I had a battery in my "line of sight" for planning purposes that was even 20% better than what I can get today... even at double the expense of Li technologies, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops and modifying my airframe/motors/electronics to be ready when it comes. Our industry is just about to cross the magic "one hour of flight" (with reserves)*, and everyone we poll expresses massive interest when we propose crossing that hurdle.

Will "batteries" in general get "better" over time? Absolutely. Could there be a "breakthrough"? Absolutely. But the raw fact when investing big dollars: The last "Step Change" in battery tech was Lithium technology, and that's been nearly 10 years as a "shipping in volume" tech (lab results are a dime a dozen. Show me a million cells or go home). Everything since then is a refinement. And those refinements will continue... but they will be single digit percentages, not doubles.





* That is, cross the magic "one hour" in a $80,000 airplane that can be flown by a Private Pilot with no special ratings and no medical. Plenty of aircraft have already crossed this threshold in multi-million dollar specialty electric airplanes, gliders, and the like.

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Noone need super car acceleration, people like it

Tesla has repeatedly stated it is a side effect of the other capabilities of the car. They do not design for it (at least supposedly).