With first contract and its to the Moon Alice Cutting Cathode Costs
Regardless of the form factor, a significant problem with lithium-ion cells is the cathode: it’s expensive, it relies on materials that come from questionable sources, and it’s often a source of battery degradation. To reduce costs and assure that responsible mining and labor practices are used in their production, Tesla will manufacture its own cathodes from domestic supplies. The company recently secured the rights to 10,000 acres of lithium mines in Nevada, and plans to use only domestically produced nickel, a common cathode additive. Musk says that the company’s lithium mining process is as environmentally friendly as possible—taking a slice of dirt, extracting the lithium from it, and then “replacing the divot,” so to speak. Tesla developed a sulphate-free lithium conversion process, reducing the cost of lithium production by 33 percent.
Independent studies have shown that cathodes coated with a protective nanomaterial can survive four times as many charge cycles as their uncoated counterparts. But the coating adds an extra step to the cathode production process, increasing its cost. Nano One, an upstart technology company from Vancouver, Canada, thinks that cathode production could be a $40-billion industry by the end of this decade. The company’s “one pot” process reduces the cost and complexity of cathode material production by coating the nanocrystals as they’re produced, rather than coating a cluster of crystals, which is how current processes work. According to Nano One’s CTO, Stephen Campbell, this not only eliminates a costly step, but also improves the cathode’s durability. A cathode expands and contracts through charge-discharge cycles, which eventually cracks the coating in the same way that freeze-thaw cycles create potholes in a road. Coating individual nanocrystals allows the coating to stay intact, even as the crystals expand and contract.