Million-mile battery next year?

A new battery pack reported to be capable of lasting a million miles (1,609,344km) and providing 20 years of grid energy storage may be ready as early as 2020.

If so it’s expected to revolutionise EVs – particularly trucks and buses, the new cells said to last two or three times longer than Tesla’s current battery cells.

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk earlier this year announced work was proceeding on a new battery pack to last a million miles, available next year.

That’s backed by Tesla battery research partner Jeff Dahn and his team releasing a paper describing the million-mile battery cell following extensive testing.

It concludes “single crystal NMC532/graphite cells with exceptional lifetime have been developed”, the new lithium-ion battery cell also having a new type of electrolyte.

After testing, Dahn’s team believes the cells could enable a battery pack to last more than 1.6 million kilometres in an EV or provide 20 years of energy storage.

Their paper, A Wide Range of Testing Results on an Excellent Lithium-Ion Cell Chemistry to be used as Benchmarks for New Battery Technologies, was published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

Long-lasting batteries are important for EVs like long-haul trucks, transit buses and autonomous vehicles (AVs) such as robotaxis.

The paper also says the “million-mile battery” could be used in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications which could allow EV owners to power their homes and supply power back to the grid.

Meanwhile, Electrek reports job listings on Tesla’s website appear to confirm suggestions Tesla intends making its own battery cells.

Teslarati notes that with longer-lasting batteries, the Tesla Semi could foot it with diesel-powered counterparts, which often need an engine overhaul at about 1.6 million km.

“It should be noted that Tesla’s current battery tech is likely far ahead of the cells described by Dahn and his team in their paper,”Teslarati reports.

“Sharing such data, after all, suggests that Tesla has already developed, or at least, is working on an improved version that would allow them to have an even more considerable advantage in the battery segment.”