JB Straubel, CTO of Tesla Motors talk
JB Straubel, the CTO of Tesla Motors, gave a talk to a packed Stanford CarLab forum a few days ago. Some of the interesting tidbits from his presentation:
- the battery pack in a Tesla roadster costs around $25,000
- battery technology is improving at 8% per year in terms of gravimetric or volumetric energy density
- there are approximately 12,000 fuses in the battery pack
- in terms of well-to-wheel efficiency, electric cars can currency reach 85% efficiency.
- hydrogen systems eke out 32% efficiency, through combined losses from electrolysis (70% efficient), hydrogen compression during storage (90% efficient), and fuel cells (50% efficient)
- an acre of solar cells can take a car 36x the distance than an acre of ethanol
- quoted Sheikh Yamani, a former Saudi oil minster stating “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
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