Tesla has a battery research team in Canada. It works side-by-side with world-renowned battery expert Jeff Dahn. We’ve known for a while that Dahn was working on what could be a million-mile battery. He is also constantly working on new chemistry of battery cells to revolutionize the sector.
With that said, we tend to hear about a “battery breakthrough” almost every day. If you dive into the details, it’s usually clear that the potential breakthrough is actually years away, has not been tested in electric cars, and has about as many negatives as positives.
In this recent case, that does not seem to be the case. In addition, we are talking about Tesla, the leader of the world in the EV space, as Dahn, probably one of the extreme authorities on batteries. We know that Tesla will be celebrating its Battery Day in the very near future, and the company indicated a while ago on a battery project and / or “secret” millions of miles.
A recent report shared by Teslarati focuses on an upcoming battery cell with “revolutionary” density. The information about the cell comes from a paper compiled by Dahn and his team rightfully so “Diagnosis and correction of anode-free cell samples by electrolyte and morphological analysis.”
The paper explains that anode-free battery cells are lighter than traditional cells and can store more energy per volume. However, this chemistry can too lose capacity quickly and tends in a shorter life cycle.
Dahn’s team has learned how to take advantage of the positives of anode-free battery cells while ensuring that the typical negatives do not exist. He says that cell chemistry is able to have an extended lifespan with the introduction of a dual-salt carbonate electrolyte solution, which reduces degradation. The paper reads:
“Recently, we demonstrated long-life anode-free cells with an electrolyte with double salt carbonate. Here we characterize the degradation of anode-free cells with this lean (2.6 g Ah – 1) liquid electrolyte. We observe deterioration of pristine lithium morphology with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray tomography, and diagnose the cause as electrolyte degradation and depletion with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and ultrasonic transmission capture. For the safety characterization tests, we measured the cell temperature during nail penetration. ”
Tesla has already patched an electrolyte solution in the past, so it makes sense that it could be used for this breakthrough of battery cells. Maybe it’s what we’re all been waiting to learn about through Tesla’s upcoming Battery Day on September 22nd.
