[yazr]

The robo-taxi connotation is even worse.

Any robo-taxi can be programmed to drive like a grand-ma to improve battery life. The cost of a x2 battery size is easier to amortize. Its life time can be managed and optimized with ML.

And yes - it can get the greatest and latest battery chemistry.

At this stage - we just dont need a "battery miracle" or a Musk-moonshot (trade-mark?) for passenger EVs.

[zaroth]

The point of the Robotaxi use case is it presents a very high duty cycle (multiple full charges per day) but with lower maximum range constraints.

So it’s particularly well suited for a chemistry which provides slightly lower density trade-off for double the total lifetime cycles. Similarly for EV buses and trucks.

Better chemistry at lower cost benefits passenger cars but also public transit and grid storage. It’s a multi-hundred-billion if not trillion dollar market overall.

It has nothing particularly to do with “Musk-moonshot” other than Tesla hyping and accelerating the pace of EV mass adoption, which drives a virtuous cycle for battery chemistry investment.