Electric vehicle OEM Tesla and Canada’s Dalhousie University have renewed their research agreement to boost cycle life of lithium-ion batteries.
The partnership has been renewed until at least 2026 and follows an agreement initially signed between Dalhousie and Tesla in June 2015.
Since the start of the partnership, Tesla has been working with the institute’s science professor Dr. Jeff Dahn to file patents on battery technology, including one in 2019 that could enable a million miles in a battery pack.
In 2016, Dahn transitioned his research group from their 20-year research agreement with 3M to Tesla under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)/Tesla Canada Industrial Research, of which he is chairman.
The announcement comes as Chongyin Yang and Michael Metzger were named as Dalhousie University’s newest research chairs and joined the university’s partnership with Tesla. Both work very closely with Dahn.
Dr. Yang is the Tesla Canada Research chairman and has been working on materials and devices for energy conversion and storage for 12 years.
Dr. Yang’s research group will focus on developing high-performance materials for advanced lithium-ion batteries, which includes sustainable electrode materials that contain no transition metals. A crucial part of the Dalhousie-Tesla partnership will seek lower-cost, longer lifetime, and higher-energy battery technologies as the next-generation energy storage solution for electric vehicles and sustainable green energy.
Dr. Metzger is the Herzberg-Dahn Chair and received a diploma from the Technical University of Munich in Germany. While completing his graduate studies, he developed methods to study the lifetime and aging of lithium-ion batteries in close collaboration with BASF and BMW.
Dr. Metzger’s research group will focus on developing novel methods to study the performance and lifetime of advanced lithium-ion batteries, lithium metal batteries and desalination batteries. The goal is to create fundamental understanding that will help develop new electrode materials and electrolytes for stationary and electric vehicle batteries.
Image: Michael Metzger, left, and Chongyin Yang will both work very closely with battery pioneer Jeff Dahn.
