2008 Tesla needed investors. Tried to get Merc to consider, they were not interested. Elon/JB found out Merc was coming to Silicon Valley. Tesla sent Employee to Mexico with CASH to find/buy Smart car and drive up to Palo Alto (Smarts were NOT yet imported to US. When Merc showed up they were shocked to see Smart car as they had not started to import to US yet. Merc ended up investing $50 million in Tesla stock and gave Tesla contract to supply drive train. I think two years later Merc couldn't resist the increase in Tesla stock and sold off all Tesla stock. Can't remember timeline when Toyota sold Fremont Plant AND Tesla supplied drivetrain for electric RAV4. Stupid seems to have taken over (actually Wall St. Banksters, money only value that counts, stock price only concern for managers). Toyota also bought $50 million and they also later sold for "big profits" later. Probably lucky for Tesla they both bailed out.
The current Tesla factory was originally a GM plant, but it became NUMMI in the 1980s as a joint operation between Toyota and GM. When GM went bankrupt in 2009, they pulled out of NUMMI leaving Toyota with the plant. It was the only unionized Toyota plant in the world and Toyota wanted to simplify their HR so they decided to close the plant. Right about that time Tesla was looking for a factory for the Model S and Toyota dumped the entire plant (including some equipment) for well below market at only $40 million just to get it off their hands. I believe Tesla ended up hiring back some of the NUMMI workers.
fully agree
IF a dramatically better battery comes along, what car company might well be (already is??) the largest customer for this battery? Tesla, right? History would indicate [especially as we have no working theory of how batteries operate] that trial and error development will continue at 5-8% improvement averages annually. see below video Jeff Dahn
We could have a "put men on the moon" size project to try for battery breakthrough - working theory of how batteries actually function. Who might do it? Auto consortium? Perhaps the Chinese?? perhap a South African immigrant will help direct (Elon/JB have hired Jeff Dahn and Jeff knows/says a working theory is most needed) while doing his other project of putting men on Mars.
Mean while to have insights to where the US puts it's major efforts (~50% of Federal Budget??) I suggest:
I think electro-chemistry in general is pretty well understood. It's li-ion technology that's the really weird thing. It was discovered due to a laboratory accident and li-ion is a class of batteries rather than just a chemistry. Lead acid and nickel cadmium, etc.chemistries don't have too many variations because they are pretty straight forward, put the two materials together and they produce electricity, pump electricity in the other way and the rechargable chemistries recharge.
Li-ion has lots and lots of different chemistry combinations that work and many, many variables. The only thing they have in common is one of the electrodes are particles of lithium in a matrix (usually graphite but sometimes other material) and the other electrode can be one of many different things. There are so many different combinations of ingredients, it's been impossible so far to predict exactly which mix of ingredients does what without some experimentation.
Li-ion batteries are only a stepping stone though. They all have a downside that they require a liquid electrolyte to keep the two electrodes separate and that both adds weight and is a safety problem if the cell gets crushed. If the cell gets crushed enough, the electrolyte squishes out and the electrodes come in contact. This allows all the energy stored in the battery to be released very quickly, which usually means fire or explosion.
There are a number of very credible labs working on solid state lithium electrode batteries as well as some other chemistries that are safer, lighter, and more energy dense than the best li-ion. Solid state means there is no liquid in the battery. A professor named Goodenough who had a major role in pioneering li-ion is one of the people working on solid state lithium batteries.
There was a PBS Nova episode last year which looked into emerging battery tech and the host went to a lab that was working on one of the solid state batteries. The lab examples were so safe you could drive a nail through the battery and it would keep working.
Tesla being quicker to jump on new tech will either be the first car maker to offer solid state batteries, or they will be the first mass producing them.
We really don't need much more investment in battery tech than we have now. There is a lot of venture capital out there and the next big battery chemistry is the next big tech, so there is a lot of money chasing the technology. Some governments are putting money into it too.
If any government really wants to foster the technology, they should start building battery plants that can be converted to new chemistries as they become available. The bottleneck is going to be battery production, not R&D. The R&D isn't going any faster because these things take time no matter how much money or people you have working on the problem. It's like the saying about needing 1 woman 9 months to get a baby, putting 9 women on the job doesn't get you a baby any quicker.
