CATL has announced a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg
I just realized how much energy efficiency is being squeezed out of a Tesla. It's incredible.<p>A normal diesel fueled sedan such as the Chevy Cruze diesel runs at about 31mpg, which is 13.2 km/l or 15.3 km/kg. Diesel has a mind-boggling 12700 Wh/kg energy density[1], which translates to an efficiency of ~827 Wh/km for the Chevy.<p>By contrast, the Tesla Model S, has a ~540 kg battery[2]. At 272 Wh/kg (from the posted article), that's ~147 kWh of energy storage, and the Tesla can do a rated 650km on a single charge[3]. So that's an efficiency of ~225 Wh/km, which is ~27% of the energy required to run a normal car!<p>It just wouldn't have been possible to run cars on batteries without this efficiency bump.<p>1. <a href="https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/density.html" rel="nofollow">https://chemistry.beloit.edu/edetc/SlideShow/slides/energy/d...</a><p>2. <a href="https://blog.evbox.com/ev-battery-weight" rel="nofollow">https://blog.evbox.com/ev-battery-weight</a><p>3. <a href="https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s" rel="nofollow">https://www.caranddriver.com/tesla/model-s</a>