What is next million-mile’ electric-car battery-TESLA

As Tesla plans next-generation electric vehicle batteries, the focus is turning to lithium iron, not the lithium-ion that has been the fundamental chemical engineering science powering EVs to date.
Elon Musk’s car company and GM, among other auto companies, want much longer-range and more durable battery cells.
New battery technology is possible, allowing cars to go 400 miles or more between charges and lasting as long as 1 million miles. That could spur EV sales the same way the first 100,000-mile warranties on gas cars once did.
Eliminating the rare, expensive, and controversial element cobalt from batteries is among the biggest aims.
The future of the auto industry may boil down to the difference made by a single letter: R. As in, the difference between a lithium-ion battery, like those found in today’s electric vehicles made by Tesla and others, and the lithium-iron-phosphate batteries coming soon to market.

As Elon Musk’s Tesla has been talking up new battery technology development as part of the lead-up to the company’s first-ever Battery Day for investors, Wall Street is buzzing about the difference the next generation of batteries may make. Vehicles with lithium-ion batteries, also used in cellphones, are expected to give way over the next few years to cars and trucks made with lithium-iron-phosphate and other chemistries. This will cut costs, extend vehicle ranges to 400 miles or more between charges and enable batteries to last as long as 1 million miles.

Reducing Tesla’s costs and spurring mass adoption of EVs to remain critical priorities for Tesla, as echoed in a message from Musk to employees on Monday saying it would be a challenge to break even right now.

the new technology will change the experience of owning a car, whether a Tesla or one made by rivals like General Motors, which is also working on new battery technologies, analysts said. In particular, the extremely long life of batteries soon to hit the market are likely to mean the batteries hold their value well enough to be resold when owners trade in their cars, possibly for use storing solar electricity for homes. And the next-gen batteries’ long lives may let them be used in ridesharing businesses that demand cars that can take the pounding of near-continuous use.

“If you’re talking about batteries that can last twice as long for the same price, it completely changes the math for the consumer,” says Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives. “Iron phosphate batteries are safer, and they can have second or third lives as electricity storage.″

Musk recently said its Battery Day is tentatively scheduled for September, the month and day to which Tesla recently pushed back its annual shareholder meeting. Originally, both events had been planned for June.

“We want to leave the exciting news for that day, but there will be a lot of exciting news to tell,” Musk said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call. “I think it would be one of the most exciting days in Tesla’s history.”

The company didn’t return requests for comment. An outside Tesla technical advisor, Jeff Dahn, a professor at Dalhousie University in Canada who is a battery and energy-storage expert with a Tesla research sponsorship, declined comment
If you’re talking about batteries that can last twice as long for the same price, it completely changes the math for the consumer.
Shirley Meng, a materials scientist and professor at the University of California San Diego who directs the school’s Sustainable Power and Energy Center, said efforts to reduce the use of cobalt have been ongoing for a few decades already, and Tesla has made significant strides with Dahn’s help. But Meng said one of the major advantages of building batteries with cobalt is how easily it allows complex chemical structures to be engineered.

“If I have to train a high school student to make a battery, cobalt makes it easy; it always works. Without cobalt the synthesis process gets much more sophisticated,” she said.

Lithium-iron phosphate, meanwhile, has never proved to be efficient in the space constraints of an electric car — it was originally designed for the grid storage market due to its energy density profile. But its chemistry is suited to fast-charging and cost efficiency because it does not rely on cobalt.

Meng, who has worked on battery chemistry and development with major auto companies, including Mercedes-Benz, GM, and Nissan — as well as Maxwell Technologies, the battery start-up acquired by Tesla in 2019 — said battery experts are very curious to learn about the breakthrough Tesla has had, and she does believe the company could raise the profile of the lithium-iron-phosphate approach in the EV market. The battery tech had once tried to make the successful jump from energy storage to cars in the Fisker Karma, an early, ultimately failed, EV contender produced by Fisker Automotive in 2012.

“I truly believe Tesla is planning to bring this back,” Meng said.