Netease technology news on May 15, according to foreign media reports, according to people familiar with the matter, Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer, plans to launch a new low-cost, long-life battery in the domestic model 3 car later this year or early next year, which is expected to significantly reduce the cost of electric vehicles.

People familiar with the matter said that the new low-cost battery will have a total range of 1.6 million kilometers and will enable Tesla electric vehicles to be sold at the same or even lower price as fuel vehicles and make profits. With more than 1 million electric vehicles in the world that can access and share power with the grid, Tesla aims to become a power company and compete with traditional energy suppliers.

Three people familiar with the situation said that the new battery, as the core of Tesla's strategy, was jointly developed by the company and China Ningde times Technology Co., Ltd. (catl), and adopted the technology developed by a team of academic battery experts recruited by Tesla and musk. Eventually, the battery will be available in other markets, including North America, with higher energy density and storage capacity at a lower cost.

Tesla plans to start with a new battery on the domestic model 3. Tesla's new battery will rely on innovations in the chemistry of low and cobalt free batteries, as well as the use of chemical additives, new materials and coatings, which will reduce internal stress and allow batteries to store more energy for longer periods, people familiar with the matter said. Tesla also plans to deploy a new high-speed, highly automated battery manufacturing process aimed at reducing labor costs and increasing production in a large facility about 30 times the size of the company's Nevada battery plant.

Tesla, through its subsidiary Redwood materials, is committed to the recycling of expensive metals such as nickel, cobalt and lithium, as well as the "second adoption" of electric vehicle batteries in grid storage systems, such as the grid Tesla built in South Australia in 2017. The carmaker also said it wanted to power consumers and businesses, but did not provide more details.

It was previously reported that Tesla is in-depth negotiations on the use of Ningde era lithium iron phosphate batteries, which do not use the most expensive metal cobalt in electric vehicle batteries. Ningde times has also developed a simpler, lower cost battery packaging method that eliminates the intermediate steps of bundling batteries, and Tesla is expected to use this technology to help reduce battery weight and cost.

Ningde times also plans to supply an improved long-life nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) battery to Tesla next year, with a cathode of 50% nickel and only 20% cobalt, people familiar with the matter said. Tesla now works with Panasonic at its Nevada plant to produce nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA) batteries and purchase NMC batteries from LG Chem. Panasonic declined to comment.

All in all, the progress of battery technology, the strategy to expand the use of battery in electric vehicles, and the large-scale manufacturing automation all aim at the same goal, which is to significantly reduce the cost of electric vehicles. "We have to make sure that battery production is growing rapidly and we continue to reduce battery costs," Musk told investors in January

Technological advances in battery chemistry and design during the Tesla and Ningde era have come from the innovation of a small research laboratory at Dalhousie University. The laboratory has been operated by Jeff Dahn since 1996, a pioneer in the development of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and grid storage. Dane and his team began to establish an exclusive research partnership with Tesla for five years in 2016.

One of the key contributions of Dane's laboratory is that chemical additives and nano engineering materials make lithium-ion batteries stronger and more resistant to damage caused by pressure such as rapid charging, thus prolonging their life span. According to people familiar with the matter, the cost of lithium iron phosphate battery without cobalt in Ningde era has been reduced to less than $80 per kilowatt hour, and the cost of low cobalt NMC battery is close to $100 per kilowatt hour. Auto executives have said that when the price of battery pack is $100 per kilowatt hour, the cost of electric vehicles is expected to be roughly the same as that of fuel vehicles.

Shirley Meng, a battery expert at the University of California, San Diego, said that once the recovery of key materials such as cobalt and nickel is included, the cost of NMC batteries could be only $80 / kWh. Safer than NMC, iron phosphate batteries can gain a second life in a fixed grid storage system, reducing the upfront cost of these batteries for electric vehicle buyers. (small)

Source: Netease technology report, translated by Baidu