United States electric carmaker Tesla plans to build a Megafactory in Shanghai to make its energy storage product Megapack, according to an agreement reached between the Lingang Special Area Administration and Tesla (Shanghai). The plant is designed to produce an initial output of 10,000 Megapacks a year, or about 40 GWh of energy storage. Scheduled to break ground in the third quarter of this year, the Megafactory will start production in the second quarter of 2024, and its products will be sold worldwide, the carmaker said. “Five years ago, the Tesla Giga-factory helped Shanghai become a hub for the new energy vehicle (NEV) industry. Today, we witness the signing of Tesla’s energy storage Megafactory, which will definitely become an important driving force in promoting the development of energy storage in Shanghai and its low carbon transition,” Zhuang Mudi, Deputy Secretary General of the Shanghai government said.
The Tesla plant will be located in the Lingang Special Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, where a comparatively complete industrial chain has been created for new energy storage and use. The area has ambitions to become a new energy and new energy storage industrial cluster for Shanghai and China. “Tesla will continue to invest in China through a wider range of products and services to encourage more partners to join forces in accelerating the world’s transition toward more sustainable energy,” Tesla said. The existing Tesla Shanghai factory, which is Tesla’s first Gigafactory outside the U.S., began producing Tesla Model 3 cars in 2019 and now is capable of producing about 20,000 cars a week.
Chinese researchers recently achieved the superionic conduction of negatively charged hydrogen atoms at ambient temperatures, which they say promises to pave the way to advanced clean energy storage and electrochemical conversion. “Materials that exhibit superionic conduction in ambient conditions would provide huge opportunities for new batteries, fuel cells and electrochemical cells”, said Chen Ping, Professor at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The study, conducted by a research team led by Chen and Associate Professor Cao Hujun, was published in the journal Nature on April 5. They were able to create a pure hydride ion conductor with record-high conductivity at temperatures between -40 to 80 degrees Celsius.
As current commercial NEV batteries do not perform well at extreme temperatures, the breakthrough may help expand the range of temperatures at which batteries can operate, although there’s still a long way to go before other high-performance electrode materials can be found, and a new all-solid-state hydride ion battery can be made, Cao told China Daily. Cao said that hydride ion conductors have emerged as promising candidates for energy storage and conversions that allow ions to move without a liquid or soft membrane to separate the electrodes. Chen said their short-term goal is to demonstrate a new all-solid-state hydride ion battery with practical potential, the China Daily reports.
