Development of better batteries that are energy dense and capable of taking electric cars farther for the same volume of material they contain is the quest at Tesla, said J.B. Straubel, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the California-based e-car company.
The limits of development possible under the laws of physics have not been reached for batteries and the challenge is to manufacture them on an industrial scale, Mr. Straubel said, addressing a ministerial meeting at the International Transport Forum 2016 Summit here.
Work on improving lithium ion batteries was being undertaken not with the needs of an energy-intense activity like driving a car in focus but for consumer electronics manufacturing. Both manufacturing scale and research were adopted only for the electronics industry.
Tesla has been overwhelmed by 4 lakh pre-orders for its Model 3 car which sells for $ 35,000. The company is discussing ways to meet this massive demand and working to double its production capacity, according to the CTO.
High-efficiency car batteries will also trigger innovation in recycling and lead to a reprocessing industry that will renew these power storage devices. What happened with the lead acid batteries should follow for electric vehicles.
Electric motors, which promise to power the Model 3 from zero to 60 miles per hour in under 6 seconds, “are close to the limits of physics,” Mr. Straubel told the ministers and delegates from several countries including Norway which had 17 per cent e-cars among the overall car fleet and 25 per cent zero emission cars in all in 2015. E-cars get tax exemption in the country.
The Tesla CTO said rather than wait for governments to help with setting up of car charging infrastructure, the company was putting up its own charging stations. The barrier to widening electric car use currently is initial pricing and this would decline with improvements to technology. However, urban impacts such as congestion could be addressed through rapidly evolving car sharing services.
Predicting the future of autonomous or self-driving cars, Mr. Straubel said it was an irreversible trend in which software and sensors were in the frontlines of innovation. “Software defines the vehicle more than even the sensors, which are crucial for image recognition,” he said.
On its Powerwall storage system for houses and commercial deployment, Tesla was encouraged by a “great reception” in Germany where solar energy has enjoyed strong governmental support. It would “take off all around the world,” he said.
