3 Takeaways from Tesla's Battery Day - Hint: it's not just batteries

sponsored by surfsharkvpn click on the link in the description and enter promo code undecided for 83 off and three extra months for free tesla opened a fire hose of engineering manufacturing and battery advancements in their battery day event not to mention the new plaid model s and a future 25 000 electric vehicle but i think we can break that jam-packed event down into three big takeaways it's really not about batteries i'm matt farrell welcome to undecided [Music] to say that there was a lot of anticipation around battery day would be an understatement i can't tell you how many times i was asked by someone if they should hold off on buying a tesla until after battery day to which my response was always a no don't wait the thing i think a lot of people lost sight of was that this was an investor day event not a product announcement event just like the autonomy investor day that they held it was about walking us through the details of what the company is doing behind the scenes what tesla actually delivered to this event lined up pretty well with my expectations but i was off like like way off on how much of an impact the advancements would have on the bottom line and the scalability and i didn't expect such a thorough engineering-focused walk-through of each piece of the puzzle it probably isn't a surprise but i'm kind of a nerd and kind of ate that stuff up but let's just keep that between us that brings me to the first of three big picture takeaways from the event the first one is first principles and innovation elon talks a lot about first principles thinking which challenges assumptions and the standard way of doing things it's something they've been criticized for in the past by other auto companies and industry experts like the criticism around over automating the fremont factory for the model 3 production which turned out to be the case and elon admitted as much but for my big takeaway from this event and the theme that ran throughout everything is first principles thinking and innovation just look at the separate pieces from the event the new larger beer can looking 4680 battery cell that they made the tables electrode on that cell the dry battery electrode manufacturing the high speed motion assembly increasing the use of silicon over graphite high nickel cathodes and their own cathode factory sourcing their own raw materials and recycling it's a mind-numbing list of improvements and sounds a lot like star trek technobabble i can already hear how confused my brother is going to be on our next podcast talking about this exact thing anyway if you focus in on each one in isolation they're impressive there's no doubt about that but not anything that would shake the industry to its core but collectively if tesla over the next one to three years delivers on this they will shake the industry to its core now first things first that tablets battery electrode design is mind-blowing they did a great job in the presentation breaking down some of the why but if you want a really in-depth walkthrough i strongly recommend checking out a video on the limiting factor jordan does a phenomenal job illustrating why tablets design makes a larger cell possible it all comes down to creating better pathways for electrons to move shorter distances compared to traditional tabbed jelly roll designs electrons don't have to move as far and the heat can be dissipated more effectively this is the first tablets design like this to ever hit production why well smaller traditional canned designs have been used for decades and for their purpose the design has worked really well for years so there's been no real need to redesign or rethink it at least until the advent of evs that we're in right now which requires high power output and energy density and a lot of cells why spend r d budget to innovate on a design that's hitting an acceptable cost and performance for smaller applications that's obviously not the case anymore so it's taken a company like tesla that's highly motivated to accelerate battery performance cost and manufacturing for electric storage and evs to make that happen but that's only the structure of the battery and not even talking about the materials or chemistry improvements using silicon and anodes is something battery researchers have been working on for decades it's a really tough challenge to overcome as elon and drew baglino pointed out it can store nine times more lithium than graphite can which means more energy storage but the big challenge is the expansion and contraction of silicon as the battery charges and discharges which is obviously something you want to avoid not only will it shorten the lifespan but it could make for a more dangerous battery if it's not properly controlled again here comes tesla using raw silicon and other materials is kind of ingenious because tesla is cutting out processing steps and preparing those materials for use which reduces time and cost but i still have a lot of questions around how they're actually doing this including silicon and small percentages as part of a graphite mix is something that's already done but increasing the amount is a challenge the only details they provided in the slides was coating the silicon in an elastic ion conducting polymer and then binding it all together using an elastic binder at a high level it sounds like they've solved some of the expansion problem with the elastic coatings but it's raising so many questions for me i really hope they release some more of the details about some of the specifics there but i know that they probably won't because this is secret sauce level stuff and then there's the removal of cobalt from their batteries as well as the high nickel content cathodes this isn't earth-shattering news for the industry on its own but it's a continuation down a path that tesla has been on for a long time now removing cobalt not only reduces costs but it also helps avoid humanitarian issues with cobalt mining in some parts of the world the high nickel content image that they showed reminded me of the million mile battery research paper that got a lot of tesla press excited one of the highlights from jeff don's research group was about using a single crystal cathode to achieve a million mile battery so many of us were expecting some kind of news around what tesla was going to be doing in that regard but the image that they showed with a high nickel cathode didn't look like a single crystal to me the chunks in the image don't look uniform or one type of crystal which could mean it's polycrystalline but then again it's one image that i'm trying to study and i am not a material scientist but i do know that polycrystalline is cheaper to manufacture and with cost being so important to what was being presented it makes sense that it's probably not a single crystal design there's a lot more to dive into there which i'm still trying to do and elon did hint that there would be more to come so maybe we'll get more details about alternate chemistries and what's going on with those silicon polymer coatings later the innovations didn't stop at the battery though and this part is the key part for me with the first principles takeaway bucket they just hammered through so many clever manufacturing and engineering advancements going to first principles thinking made them challenge the norms of how things have been done for years details on how they were going to integrate maxwell technologies into their manufacturing stack was something i've been eagerly waiting for since they announced the acquisition of the company one of my favorite moments from the presentation was the visualization of the wet electrode process versus the new dry process from maxwell technologies i mean come on you don't need an engineering degree to understand how impactful that's going to be once they've perfected the system and while this process is still very much a work in progress the rate of iteration is impressive they're already on the fourth revision of the system and are iterating every three to four months as cool as some of the details from the high speed motion assembly and formation were the real highlight from the engineering and manufacturing side was the casting machine and battery to cell to pack or more cell to structure that they talked about this was the clearest example yet of first principles thinking to me and ties back to the cyber truck one of the ways they're keeping the manufacturing costs and weight down for the cyber truck is with the exoskeleton design it's something that's never been done before for passenger vehicles or trucks but is something common in airplane design it's so cool to see them pull the same approach into the integration of batteries into the car in case you miss the details they're integrating the cells as a structural element of the bottom of the car instead of building cells into modules of the modules into a pack and then installing that pack into the car this pack integration makes the battery part of the car itself just like the wing of an airplane that holds the fuel this was another moment my mind was blown a little bit but i also had a moment of silence for the right to repair movement we've seen this happen in laptops and mobile devices over the past decade less modularity and more streamlined internal designs that add strength and thinness to the device apple loves this approach for iphones and macbooks but it also makes it extremely difficult for third parties or diy repairs i'm really curious how this battery integration is going to impact that for cars in the end though i think the pros outweigh the cons since i'd rather have an affordable lighter weight and strong car than a more modular approach the weight that they cut out from the car by doing this helps to offset the heavy weight of the battery pack and that's no small feat and finally on the first principle's angle is the tighter vertical integration sourcing their own lithium in nevada building their own cathode plant spinning up their own first part of recycling all of the manufacturing and supply chain logistics are going to not only reduce cost but reduce delays keep them more nimble and in control of their own destiny it's the antithesis of how traditional auto companies are structured and organized the importance of this vertical integration cannot be understated it's going to power their ability to iterate and innovate quickly which brings me to the second big takeaway or bucket from the event competition we've been seeing some moves from the competition this past year that have shown signs of life like gm's big battery event in march and their announcement of their ultim batteries and before you scoff it off their announcement gave me a little bit of hope for them in partnership with lg chem they came up with a clever design for a very modular battery pack that can power a wide variety of cars and trucks across their lineup it's meant to give them freedom to move between chemistries and energy needs depending on the requirements of a specific vehicle it shares some of the similarities to the design principles tesla showed off during battery day some and they're building their own gigafactory in ohio that should produce about 30 gigawatt hours of batteries per year when fully spun up vw as much as you might hate them for dieselgate has also been showing some really good signs of life for evs they're building out their own battery factories too as well as backing research into next-gen batteries like solid state while i tip my hat to them for making some moves in the right direction tesla just came out and dunked on the entire industry gm vw and others are iterating too slowly and probably felt like they were just starting to catch up or even past tesla a little bit but tesla just moved that line way out and this ties directly to tesla's tighter and tighter vertical integration that they're building out for themselves it gives them the ability to find simple or deceptively simple tweaks to the manufacturing and engineering of everything from the batteries to the cars themselves and near the end of the event elon said this you know we really try to tell these companies hey you really need to do this or you won't exist in the future uh but they don't believe it you know so i mean we've we've talked until we're blue in the face what are we supposed to do um but we really are hopeful that other companies will also do what we're doing and that will make the sustainable future come sooner every auto company out there should be worried right now tesla has been delivering on their goals that they set for themselves over a decade ago and with this event they set the road map not just for the next few years but the next decade they laid out a blueprint that other companies can copy not gigafactories but terrafactories the world needs 20 terawatt hours of battery production a year to meet our needs and tesla is setting a goal for themselves to be at 100 gigawatt hours with internal cell production by 2022 and 3 terawatt hours by 2030 and that doesn't count third-party battery suppliers they're still going to be using like panasonic lg and catl the only way to scale production to that level is with changes like they've walked us through gm vw bmw fill in whatever company you want they're not thinking at that scale yet but hopefully they take some cues from tesla's blueprint and that brings me to my final big takeaway but before i do i'd like to thank surfshark for sponsoring this video i know we're not traveling much right now but i still like to use a vpn when i want to protect my privacy online surfshark encrypts all the data that you send over the internet so your private data like passwords messages photos videos and whatever you're doing online stays private that means you can protect your online identity from tracking and commercial targeting that we see with so many services today with surf shark's clean web it will block ads trackers and malicious websites making it safer to use the internet even at home one of the best parts of surf shark is that it's easy to set up on all of your devices whether that's iphone or android mac or pc surfshark is the only vpn to offer one account to use with an unlimited number of devices and whenever we do end up traveling more again i always use a vpn when using free wi-fi and airports and hotels use my code to get 83 off plus three extra months for free surshark offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so there's no risk to try it out for yourself link in the description below and thanks to surfshark and to all of you for supporting the channel so the biggest takeaway from the event is what this means for the future of evs or more appropriately what it means for internal combustion engines they're dead well more like they're on their deathbed but this is the tipping point that we've all been waiting for when it comes to the cost and affordability factor there's one slide in the entire presentation that really summed everything up and crystallized the impact this is going to have when you put together every innovation and change they walked us through it means a 54 increase in range a 56 reduction in the cost per kilowatt hour and a whopping 69 reduction in the investment per gigawatt hour cost for tesla these are not insignificant and none of them are related to a next-gen chemistry that's still trying to come out of the lab stage they're already producing these new cells in their test plant and they have a casting machine up and running in fremont we've been getting so close to the point where evs cost the same as an equivalent internal combustion engine car up front evs are already cheaper when you're looking at the cost of ownership long term but these types of changes are going to bring us right to the tipping point and once that happens ice cars are dead hopefully you didn't get caught up in the hype too much because some of the predictions got way out of control and you weren't disappointed by the event because what they talked us through was genuinely amazing over time tesla is really cementing their reputation as an industry leader and innovator they're doing it in the ev solar and energy storage space what apple did to the computer music and smartphone space it's so exciting to watch all of this unfold and for a company with sustainability as their gutting star leading the way so what do you think jump into the comments and let's have some fun picking apart the event i know some of you are far more knowledgeable about this stuff so really looking forward to hearing what your thoughts are and as always a special thank you to all of my patrons for helping to make these videos possible i'd like to give a shout out to one of my newer producers sr and a big welcome to new supporter plus members mirak goshri and geraldine walsh i hope i didn't butcher your names if you like this video be sure to check out one of the ones i've linked to right here and be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell if you think i've earned it and as always thanks so much for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 348,291

Keywords: tesla battery day, tesla battery day 2020, tesla battery day event, tesla battery day highlights, tesla battery day news, tesla battery day predictions, battery day, tesla battery cell, tesla battery investor day, tesla battery pack, tesla battery reveal, tesla battery technology, elon musk battery day, battery, battery investor day, tesla cybertruck, tesla manufacturing, tesla news, tesla plaid, tesla stock, elon musk, innovation, model 3, undecided with matt ferrell

Id: 4q3mF9ZLGNM

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020