Zzzz...
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Do you plan to utilize your metal-air patents in the model S or any future car?
I was very interested in this particular question and did mine research on it (plus I'm trying to follow battery advances regardless).
For now only one rechargeable metal-air chemistry has been commercialized: zinc-air. This year. And if you look at all Tesla's metal air patents, zinc-air is the chemistry Tesla mentioning on first place, while listing potential metal air chemistries applicable.
There are seems to be two big problems with metal air:
1) While those have excellent specific energy (gravimetric energy density), power density is extremely low. This could be partly circumvented by having a hybrid battery design. And in fact at least one Tesla patent talking about such design with regards to metal air. Basically EV would have big main battery, big metal-air and smaller one that have high power density for short burst(acceleration, regenerative braking). Still looks like for Model S class EV it would have to be equipped with north of 300kWh metal air battery to be able to sustain highway speeds.
2) Very low coulombic efficiency. One startup proudly claimed that they have archived 75%. And looks like it is an achievement, they were/are trying to differentiate themselves from competitors in the field. Even making that number public speaks for itself - I guess competing metal air designs get worse then that. Still - from each 4kWh that spent charging EV only 3kWh would be extracted.
While zinc-air is clearly a leader in metal air rechargeable battery field (in terms of how soon we will actually see real cells on the market), mine impression is that both problems do apply to other air chemistries, like aluminum-air, lithium-air.
So mine educated guess would be that at least first generation of metal air cells would probably be not very suitable for EV applications. At least for cells that actually have a chance to be mass produced in next two to four years.