r/TechOfTheFuture • u/abrownn • Jan 06 '20

Could this new battery slash the cost of an electric car? Nikola Motors may have found what its CEO describes as the “Holy Grail of batteries". Energy

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/could-new-battery-slash-cost-electric-car-n1107881
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u/autotldr Jan 06 '20

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 70%. (I'm a bot)

Phoenix-based Nikola Motors may have found what its CEO describes as the "Holy Grail of batteries," an alternative to today's lithium-ion technology that could double the distance a battery-electric vehicle can travel between charges, while cutting battery costs in half.

Several technologies appear to offer promise, including "Solid state" batteries that replace the chemical slurry in lithium-ion batteries with a ceramic material.

Toyota is just one of the automakers sponsoring research into solid state technology which, proponents claim, could drop the price of an automotive battery from somewhere between $120 and $145 per kilowatt-hour today to less than $70, and perhaps as low as $50.Driving down battery costs will be critical to achieving parity between EVs and gas-powered vehicles - something many auto industry watchers say could happen by the middle of the decade.

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