A $100 Dollar per kWh battery for Tesla Semi? Could be.

Elon Musk is 'optimistic' about beating Tesla Semi specs that competitors already don't believe possible

As we reported last week and discussed on the Electrek podcast yesterday, many people still have a difficult time wrapping their head around the Tesla Semi specs that the company announced last year. But now CEO Elon Musk says that he is 'optimistic' they can beat those specs with the production version of the electric truck.

From article, (Elon Musk

✔@elonmusk

Am feeling optimistic about beating the Semi specs announced at the unveiling for the same price. The Tesla Semi will be something really special.

10:23 PM - Feb 23, 2018

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Musk didn’t specify which specs in particular, but the article mainly involves the economics of operating a Tesla Semi, which is the most important thing for fleet operators.

Here are the main specs that Tesla revealed at the unveiling event:

• Acceleration from 0 to 60 mph with 80,000 lb: 20 seconds
• Speed up a 5% Grade:60 mph
• Mile Range: 300 or 500 miles
• Powertrain: 4 Independent Motors on Rear Axles
• Energy Consumption: Less than 2 kWh per mile
• Fuel Savings: $200,000+
• Expected Base Price (300 mile range): $150,000
• Expected Base Price(500 mile range): $180,000

Tesla estimates a payback period of about 2 years thanks to gas and maintenance savings.

Musk is talking about beating those specs, which would be even more impressive.

My greatest concern is cost. Tesla doesn’t confirm its current battery cost, but it is estimated to be somewhere around $150 at the pack level.

The same cost for a 1 MWh battery pack, which would be required for Tesla to achieve a 500-mile range, would be $150,000.

There are likely going to be some cost improvements at the pack level due to the greater size, but it looks like a cost breakthrough (something closer to the mythical $100 per kWh battery holy grail) is almost needed for Tesla to make it work.)

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The Moon has LOTS of water. It makes the prospects for a Moonbase better (Since you can supply Water and Oxygen to Astronauts) and The Moon can be used as a fuel depot (Water Broken up into Hydrogen and Oxygen) for spacecrafts and probes.

New Research Suggests the Moon Has Widespread Water

Now that there's talk of going back to the Moon at some point, perhaps to even set up a more longterm colony, this raises the question of how to make a lunar colony sustainable.

From article, (new research used data from both NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiterand their Moon Mineralogy Mapper spectrometer, which helped them create a means of measuring reflected sunlight that could see through the Moon's glowing. And they suddenly found there was more water than they'd anticipated.

According to Joshua Bandfield, lead author on the study and senior research scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who said the following in a press release from NASA:

"We find that it doesn’t matter what time of day or which latitude we look at, the signal indicating water always seems to be present. The presence of water doesn’t appear to depend on the composition of the surface, and the water sticks around."

 There are still a lot of questions that need to be solved before we just send off a new team of astronauts and tell them to drink whatever they find on the lunar surface. The nature of the water is still unclear (knowing whether we're picking up signs of water or hydroxyl is an important distinction) and how easily accessible it is. Just because it's everywhere doesn't mean it isn't tough to extract, and the research suggests that water wouldn't be loosely attached to the surface.

But it's a start. Eventually we might be able to send off astronauts and tell them to drink whatever they find on the lunar surface. Just not yet.)

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