The Electric: The Challenge for a Cheaper Battery—Dry Electrodes

Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased investors with an artist’s rendering of a planned $3.6 billion expansion of the company’s flagship Nevada battery gigafactory. Using a fraction of the floor space devoted to the plant’s existing equipment, Musk said, Tesla would triple production, making enough batteries to equip 1.5 million electric vehicles a year while also slashing costs.

What Musk didn’t say was that in order to achieve that vast efficiency gain, Tesla would have to overcome a stumbling block that has confounded the company for more than two years: developing a faster, cheaper and cleaner approach to making EV electrodes. If Tesla could work out kinks in the new approach and combine it with other cost-saving measures, the company could introduce a mass-market $25,000 EV. 

Now there are tantalizing signs that some companies are making real progress on that approach. Battery researchers say Tesla is already using the new technology—called dry battery electrode, or DBE—for the anodes of some of its newest batteries. And two companies say they’re starting to tackle the tougher problem of making cathodes with the cleaner, cheaper process.