Tesla’s stated company goal is "to advance the world’s transition to sustainable energy". Currently, Tesla has already demonstrated electric vehicles, utilizing batteries, can compete and in most cases surpass the functionality of internal combustion vehicles.

Now all Tesla has to do is scale vehicle production and march us towards a clean energy future. That on its own is an incredible achievement however if we are to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from transportation altogether, cars are far from being the only culprit.

However, to fully transition the transportation system, Tesla’s current product roadmap still leaves out air travel and shipping.

Musk has famously said all modes of transportation excluding rockets will eventually transition to electricity. Musk has also on multiple occasions flirted with the possibility of Tesla building electric planes.

According to Elon, the biggest hurdle holding back airplanes from going electric is the energy density of lithium ion batteries. Currently, the most energy-dense commercially viable cells are found in Tesla vehicles. And these have an energy density of around 260Wh/Kg.

However, Musk has previously stated in order for electric planes to be viable, they’ll need batteries with an energy density of 400Wh/Kg. This means around 50% improvement from the current state of the art.

And now, in a new interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Elon Musk has given us some details on how to improve the energy density of current batteries, cost limitations that come with advanced lithium ion cells, and how they are better applicable for long range airplanes.

Musk first starts out by saying "the difficulty of getting to, as you get to high energy density lithium ion, you need to change the anode to silicon. You get a dramatic increase in energy density as you switch the anode to silicon."

Then Musk goes on to detail the challenges of going to a silicon anode "the problem with silicon is that it expands and contracts a lot during charge and discharge so, in the expansion and contraction it wants to kind of crumble, like mud cracks, essentially that is one way to think about it."

Finally talking about how to produce a pure silicon anode Musk says "there are much higher energy density cells you can get where if you have very precise construction of the anode, a little bit like chemical vapor deposition, you sort of print it like a circuit board situation such that the expansion, it can expand and contract without cracking, then you can get 50% higher energy density than we have in our cars."

Source: Re-posted and Summarized from Tinsae Aregay at torquenews.

My Take: There you go, Elon just gave it all away. Now, who can make it happen first? My bet is on Elon.

Re Posted From: Will Tesla Make Electric Airplanes

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Tesla’s stated company goal is "to advance the world’s transition to sustainable energy". Currently, Tesla has already demonstrated electric vehicles, utilizing batteries, can compete and in most cases surpass the functionality of internal combustion vehicles.

Now all Tesla has to do is scale vehicle production and march us towards a clean energy future. That on its own is an incredible achievement however if we are to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from transportation altogether, cars are far from being the only culprit.

However, to fully transition the transportation system, Tesla’s current product roadmap still leaves out air travel and shipping.

Musk has famously said all modes of transportation excluding rockets will eventually transition to electricity. Musk has also on multiple occasions flirted with the possibility of Tesla building electric planes.

According to Elon, the biggest hurdle holding back airplanes from going electric is the energy density of lithium ion batteries. Currently, the most energy-dense commercially viable cells are found in Tesla vehicles. And these have an energy density of around 260Wh/Kg.

However, Musk has previously stated in order for electric planes to be viable, they’ll need batteries with an energy density of 400Wh/Kg. This means around 50% improvement from the current state of the art.

And now, in a new interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, Elon Musk has given us some details on how to improve the energy density of current batteries, cost limitations that come with advanced lithium ion cells, and how they are better applicable for long range airplanes.

Musk first starts out by saying "the difficulty of getting to, as you get to high energy density lithium ion, you need to change the anode to silicon. You get a dramatic increase in energy density as you switch the anode to silicon."

Then Musk goes on to detail the challenges of going to a silicon anode "the problem with silicon is that it expands and contracts a lot during charge and discharge so, in the expansion and contraction it wants to kind of crumble, like mud cracks, essentially that is one way to think about it."

Finally talking about how to produce a pure silicon anode Musk says "there are much higher energy density cells you can get where if you have very precise construction of the anode, a little bit like chemical vapor deposition, you sort of print it like a circuit board situation such that the expansion, it can expand and contract without cracking, then you can get 50% higher energy density than we have in our cars."

Source: Re-posted and Summarized from Tinsae Aregay at torquenews.

My Take: There you go, Elon just gave it all away. Now, who can make it happen first? My bet is on Elon.

Re Posted From: Will Tesla Make Electric Airplanes

Auto Helpers