By Irina Slav

October 06, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -   When earlier this year Tesla’s Elon Musk said the company could soon have batteries lasting for over one million miles, many probably took it as yet another grand promise with less substance than realism requires. Now it seems Musk may have not been exaggerating.

Last month, Wired reported on a paper by researchers from Dalhousie University in Canada, which detailed a battery that “should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1 million miles.”

The researchers from Dalhousie University have an exclusive agreement with Tesla, and two months ago they reported that they had designed battery cells with higher energy density without using the solid-state electrolyte that many believe is a necessary condition for enhanced density. What’s more, the battery cell that the team designed demonstrated a longer life than some comparable alternatives.

This second paper builds on that, it seems. It details a “moderate-energy-density lithium-ion pouch cell chemistry” that, according to the authors, should serve as a benchmark for other researchers. Those other researchers will probably appreciate it because “cells of this type should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) and last at least two decades in grid energy storage.”

Two decades of grid energy storage sounds almost better than the 1 million miles in an EV as demand for energy storage—the Holy Grail of renewables—garners growing attention. But back to EVs.