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[alko]

Great News! GM announces new electric car battery that tops Tesla and is cheaper.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/04/business/gm-electric-car-battery-400-miles-of-range/index.html

[NEW2elec]

Thanks Alko, I was just about to post this but your up earlier than me. 

It all sounds good and (kind of what I predicted in another thread) gets people closer to what they deal with in their gas vehicles.
Which is what it takes to get them to switch over.

[Starpower]

Are these really much different from Zero's Cobalt based pouch batteries? I suspect if a 390 mi. range Tesla had the same weight of Zero batteries it would do better then 400 miles.

[Crissa]

Tesla batteries weigh about 50% more than ours...

...But they also include many more cells and active cooling and more balancing and at that weight/size you need more structure so...

The formulation the current Bolt batteries use is very similar to ours.

-Crissa

[DonTom]

Great News! GM announces new electric car battery that tops Tesla and is cheaper.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/03/04/business/gm-electric-car-battery-400-miles-of-range/index.html

The article is wrong. More range than "ANY Tesla" ?

Compare GM or ANY EV  to the specs here.

Tesla will most likely always be ahead of the rest simply because they only do EVs and nothing else.

And BTW, even my Tesla Model Three (LR) will do better than 400 miles (at 38 MPH).

IMO, ranges claims  are rather useless without  charts like for Tesla.

-Don-  Auburn, CA

[Crissa]

Yes, Don, but they're talking potential cars, not actual cars like you're talking.

GM probably will come out with a super-range car.  It'll be silly expensive and not very efficient since it's hauling around that heavy battery pack.  And it probably won't sell well and they'll discontinue it.  Or they'll keep it stuck in potential concept car limbo.

-Crissa

[Doug S]

By "tops" Tesla, they just mean the battery pack has more capacity. That's not necessarily indicative of good engineering, though, just lots and lots of cells strung together. Not much challenge in that.

And they're taking liberties saying it's cheaper, as well. My digging around says Tesla was under the $100/kWh threshold for cell cost alone two years ago, and they were projecting they'd be able to make complete packs for that by this year. Dunno if they're there yet, but IIRC GM was talking about the cell cost alone, in which case they're at best even with Tesla, perhaps trailing, with a battery pack they have yet to hit the production line with.

It's just silly and at best marginally untrue sales hype.

[shayan]

GM might be dreaming, because the new Tesla roadster is supposed to have more range than any other car (not just electric).

[princec]

Tesla will be imminently revealing new battery tech in the next few weeks that'll likely just blow everyone else into the weeds again. I wait with interest.
Notice that Tesla keep their cards firmly to their chests to avoid the Osborne effect. I suspect when they do the big reveal, they'll already have the factories producing them.

Cas

[DonTom]

Yes, Don, but they're talking potential cars, not actual cars like you're talking.

The part I was referring to was where it says:

"General Motors announced it has created a new electric vehicle battery that offers up to 400 miles of range "

Even my Tesla M3 can do better than 400 miles on a charge (at 38 MPH).  GM has a ways to go to catch up with Tesla. By the time GM makes something better than Tesla has now, Tesla will probably have three times the range of GM as well as much faster charging. IMO, it will be a big mistake for GM to try to catch up with Tesla's specs on anything.  GM would be better off trying to make EVs more  affordable, IMO, instead of trying to beat Telsa's specs.


-Don- Auburn, CA

[alko]

Lots of speculation on here. The important thing is that within 2 years, chevy, BMW and others are finally taking it seriously and many other ev's will be available. The compitition with battery tech range will only make things better.

[Sklith]

While it's great that GM's making some really high-density batteries, I feel a little bit concerned about how good the cooling is in those prismatic cells. GM said that individual cells are easily able to be swapped in case of failure but that means cooling integration must have been sacrificed in some manner.

[Crissa]

I don't know how they're connecting, but the units are supposed to have integrated battery management so kinda like Zero's monoliths, I guess.  Maybe some of the connections are for coolant, but they don't say.  I'd assume they'd do that since their current batteries do and they want to charge using the high voltage DC.

-Crissa

[Sklith]

I don't know how they're connecting, but the units are supposed to have integrated battery management so kinda like Zero's monoliths, I guess.  Maybe some of the connections are for coolant, but they don't say.  I'd assume they'd do that since their current batteries do and they want to charge using the high voltage DC.

-Crissa

GM's gotta be doing something right with the cooling if they're going to charge at 350kW as promised.

I wonder what Tesla has in store for their battery day announcement. I hope they also plan on switching to prismatic cells, and 800V for 350+ kW charging.

[togo]

Double the battery capacity and only slightly more range than Tesla?  Yawn.