How Tesla's Next Gen Batteries Will Power 21st Century

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] tesla recently held an event referring to it as battery day it was a socially distanced outdoor shareholder meeting slash event where elon musk and drew baglino shared their next big move for the electric automobile industry the main focus of tesla is to become a mass-market automobile manufacturer because let's face it there aren't that many people who are willing to shell out north of forty thousand dollars just for the entry-level tesla model three without the autopilot feature which costs ten thousand dollars more toyota the leader and the mass-market automobile manufacturer alone sold over 10.7 million vehicles last year tesla does not even feature in the top 15 largest car manufacturers by production the last one in the list of mass-market automobile manufacturers features a chinese company called gili which sold around 1.36 million cars in 2019. in comparison tesla as of 2019 sold just 367 500 vehicles since its inception in with a plan to deliver 500 000 vehicles by 2020 tesla still has a long way to go before it can sell a million cars every year as envisioned by elon because the whole point of tesla was to wean off automobiles from oil into something less polluting and renewable the goal cannot be reached when more than 90 percent of the population in the world can't afford tesla cars tesla's ultimate mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy with electric cars solar and integrated renewable energy solutions for homes and businesses in order for the whole world to effectively make the transition from gasoline cars to electric cars the first and foremost objective would be to make tesla cars affordable and manufacture utility storage solutions that store renewable energy quite ambitious because you see car manufacturing is not so easy tesla in order to become a mass car manufacturer has to understand something called the economies of scale so today's batteries can't scale fast enough uh they're just too small the two most important components in order for tesla to be successful are the batteries and the solar power generation cells which not only needs to be efficient but also needs to be manufactured inexpensively the gist of the problem that tesla faces is the difficulty of innovation and manufacturing new technologies at a scale adequate enough to make a tangible difference rapidly scaling battery manufacturing capacity at a global level is the foundation on which large-scale electrification and climate change goals could be achieved when it comes to battery musk has two main goals the first is achieving a terawatt-scale battery production yeah in the future instead of the now gigafactory we will have the terrafactory just to give you tesla's present capacity in terms of battery production the gigafactory in nevada is capable of 0.15 terawatt hour capacity the second main goal is to make more affordable battery cells here are some key takeaways from the battery event of tesla and what might be the future for tesla incorporated it still sounds crazy back in the day when the first tesla was powered by laptop batteries today it's quite sane a regular tesla battery is of 2170 form factor where 21 and 70 represents the diameter and length of the battery in millimeters musk announced major design changes moving away from the traditional design of the cell this is a basic diagram of a cylindrical battery cell with a cathode and anode and an inner and outer separator that prevents them from touching each other the sheets are folded together to form a spiral jelly-like roll the foil of the cathode and anode acts as an electrode tesla invented and patented new cylindrical form cells called shingled spiral this tables battery will enable the reduction of the electrical path from 250 millimeters to 50 millimeters five times reduction of electrical path means less distance for the electron to travel the significance of this tables design would make the manufacturing process a lot simpler with this new tech musk plans to move on to a larger form factor of 4680 46 millimeters diameter 80 millimeters long compared to the current 2170 form factor this new cell would have at least five times the energy storage plus 16 additional range and six times power just from this form factor alone musk goes on to explain how this form factor would result in the 14 reduction in cost per kilowatt hour a cell has to go through the four major manufacturing steps creation of the electrode coating winding assembly and formation each and every step of the process needs to be made efficient to achieve economies of scale tesla's current coating process consists of mixing powders with solvents here they have substituted the wet electrode process with a dry one tesla is effectively moving to a dry coating process to eliminate the solvent step completely and with their recent acquisition of maxwell technologies the ultracapacitor company gives them the required specialization elon musk is desperately trying to reinvigorate the entire assembly process itself taking the automated bottling industry in the early 1920s as an inspiration focusing on speed and the density of the production process lastly the formation step where the cell is charged and discharged for the first time and the quality of the cell is verified instead of carrying out this process with individual batteries tesla decides to take up thousands of batteries and then go through the same procedure this allocated 75 reduction in formation footprint and 86 reduction in investment involved in this operation the typical anode material in a lithium-ion battery is a combination of lithium oxide and graphite here they have opted for a better material than graphite i.e raw metallurgical silicon since it can store nine times more lithium than graphite and is quite abundant this adds another five percent reduction in cost and a steep 20 increment in range tesla will take a three-tier diversified approach when it comes to cathode materials and its batteries iron for long cycle life nickel plus manganese as cathode for long range tesla sedans and a new high nickel cathode for a very long range which would be targeting the tesla cyber truck the cathode process is of great significance to tesla when it comes to the economies of scale as tesla plans to use these above materials to significantly cut down on investment by a whopping 66 percent and reduce the process cost by 76 at the same time yielding zero waste water by directly consuming raw nickel metal powder thus simplifying the entire process tesla plans to build a new cathode facility in north america securing a terawatt our scale lithium resource in the u.s they have leased a lithium clay deposit in nevada which is claimed to have enough lithium to electrify the whole fleet of vehicles in the u.s this cathode innovation would result in a 12 reduction in the cost per kilowatt hour one of the most significant changes that tesla applied in manufacturing is that they have used a single piece casting of aluminum alloy an invention of their own which can be casted without any heat treatment for the front and the rear body of upcoming model y eliminating around 370 small parts per car for this they have commissioned the biggest casting machine ever made in history the gigacasting here the battery not only provides energy but also supports the casting with the battery stacking up the casting completely there is even more space for them to fill up and therefore can be made bigger and wider which brings the final seven percent reduced cost and a 14 range increment all of these five major modifications stack up to a total reduction of cost by 56 per kilowatt hour and a total increment in range by 54 this also involves a massive cut down in investment per gwh by 69 which is a revolution in the battery manufacturing industry on its own in order to replace all the vehicles that run on natural resources to electric and become 100 renewal it is required to produce terawatt hour scale batteries accelerate accelerate the transition to sustainable energy must produce more evs that need to be affordable and a lot more energy storage goal number one is a terawatt hour scale battery production that implies generating one terawatt of energy for a year which is approximately 70 times more than what they are manufacturing now i.e 15 gigawatts per hour the approximate lifetime of an electric vehicle is around 15 to 20 years which means producing 15 to 20 terawatts per hour for a year generating this much amount of sustainable energy in a year would require up to 135 gigafactories around the world as soon as tesla meets all of their objectives they would be able to manufacture a compelling 25 000 electric vehicle which would pave the way for tesla to become a mass automobile manufacturer their ultimate goal is to produce a fully autonomous electric vehicle powertrain that costs less than a combustion engine which they are claiming to release in 2023 being fully autonomous not only means staggering up the high tech features of the car but also ensures the safety of the driver currently tesla's level 2 autopilot requires the driver to remain alert and ready to act making it safe to drive it is believed that autonomous cars will decrease the probability of an accident by 85 percent taking one more step ahead in expediting the world transition to sustainable energy tesla decided to produce batteries on a large scale at this moment they are procuring raw materials for electrodes from panasonic lg and cult and assembling them at the gigafactory in story county nevada but they aim for a 100 in-house production of batteries as well as a total production of 100 gigawatt hour per year by 2022 and a staggering three terawatt hour per year by 2030. so we'll leave it right here hope you guys have enjoyed the video see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Startup Division

Views: 22,654

Rating: 4.8804779 out of 5

Keywords: Tesla, Elon Musk, Batteries, Battery, Tesla Battery

Id: QnroEnyeaI0

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BobsReddit_]

I'm two minutes in and this seems to be short seller propaganda