Tesla's Battery Supply Problem

this episode of real engineering is brought to you by brilliant the problem-solving website that teaches you to think like an engineer last month elon musk and drew baglino took to the stage to share the latest developments in tesla's battery technology with investors and tech enthusiasts around the world if we were to boil down the theme of this presentation down to a single problem that tesla is attempting to address its supply chain logistics this battery day focused little on increased energy density as the gains in this department become increasingly difficult to come by and tesla is now facing a larger problem in the development of its batteries in order to succeed in their mission to accelerate the world's transition from fossil fuel power they need to scale their business quickly in 2019 tesla sold about 365 000 vehicles and over the last three years they've averaged about 90 000 vehicles a quarter this can and should be deemed a huge success but in the grand scheme of things they are barely making a dent in the total vehicle market which in 2019 totaled 90 million vehicles despite their reputation tesla is a small fish in the automotive world and have a long way to go in even matching the world's largest automotive manufacturers like toyota and volkswagen who both sold nearly 11 million vehicles each in 2019 this battery day presentation was a window into tesla's woes in this quest to become an automotive giant this slide in particular made tesla's ambition and challenge very clear in order to transition the world's total vehicle market to battery electric vehicles they estimated that 100 times growth was needed taking the current production of batteries at 0.1 terawatt hours to 10 terawatt hours and similarly they estimated that transitioning our total energy consumption would take another 10 terawatt hours of battery production every year a 1 600 time increase of current production for that sector we need to transition away from fossil fuels quickly but it's not going to be easy in today's video i'm going to explain the challenge tesla and every other battery manufacturer faces in scaling and some of the improvements they are working on to reach their goals the battery supply chain starts with mining there are a number of different elements we need to build a battery and without them the supply chain can't start there are a range of battery chemistries that different manufacturers use for different applications and we will briefly run over the most common in order to get a basic shopping list of ingredients together let's first quickly run over how a tesla battery works and how we can get a bit creative to ease the supply chain woes a lithium-ion battery like all batteries contains a positive electrode the cathode and a negative electrode the anode separated by an electrolyte these batteries are called lithium-ion batteries because they power devices by transporting positively charged ions in the form of lithium ions between the anode and cathode creating an electric potential between the two sides of the battery that forces electrons to travel through the device it is powering to equalize the electric potential critically this process is reversible for lithium-ion batteries as the lithium ions are held loosely sitting into spaces in the anode and cathode's crystal structure this is called intercalation so when the opposite electric potential is applied to the battery through charging it will force lithium ions to transport back across the electrolyte bridge and lodge themselves in the cathode once again that's the core of what a battery does the anode and cathode materials provide little storage bins for lithium ions to park in between charged and uncharged states lithium is a constant feature of these batteries it's used because it's the third lightest element and the lightest metal allowing its ions to provide fantastic energy-to-weight characteristics for any battery this is our first raw material that we will need to source to build our battery however lithium by itself does not determine the energy capacity of a battery that is more dependent on the weight and size of the storage bins that the lithium ions park into for example tesla's batteries primarily use graphite as an anode material graphite is a light material however to store a single lithium ion the graphite anode requires six carbon atoms this gives a theoretical maximum battery capacity of 372 milliamp hours per gram but we can do better if we made our anode from silicon something tesla is actively researching we need just a single silicon atom to bind 4.4 lithium ions so even though a silicon atom is 2.3 times heavier than carbon with the reduced number of atoms needed and the added storage space it gives us 11.3 times the energy capacity with a theoretical maximum battery capacity of 4200 milliamp hours per gram this means we need less silicon to make a battery with the same capacity so improving our cell chemistry not only makes our battery lighter it means we use less material in our batteries too easing the strain on our supply chain the problem is those 4.4 lithium ions lodging themselves into the silicon crystal lattice causes a volume expansion of 400 percent when charging from empty to full this expansion creates stress within the battery that damages the anode material that will eventually destroy its battery capacity over repeated cycles making it a very difficult anode material to work with but tesla is working on methods of fixing this and claim they already have batteries on the road with small percentages of silicon in the anode so let's add these two materials into our raw material list now let's move on to the cathode here different manufacturers opt for different materials some optimize for cost like the manganese filled batteries of the nissan leaf while sacrificing energy density while others optimize for energy density like tesla who primarily use a nickel cobalt aluminium cathode called an nca battery but they also use a different chemistry for their stationary power walls where energy density isn't as important here they use a nickel cobalt manganese cathode tesla also uses lfp batteries supplied by their chinese battery partner catl in their chinese standard range model 3s whose cathodes are made from iron and phosphate if we plot the specific capacity and average discharge potential of each cathode material we get a picture of each type's performance with tesla's typical batteries the nca's being the clear winners and lfp batteries performing the worst it would be great if all batteries could use this nca chemistry but as we will see some materials like cobalt do not have robust supply and come with a host of geopolitical hurdles which not only affects the supply of batteries but their final cost it's wise that tesla is already diversifying the materials on their shopping list and reducing their reliance on any one material which will help mitigate any potential bottlenecks if one material becomes hard to come by this is a decent shopping list of raw materials for potential batteries graphite silicon lithium nickel cobalt aluminium manganese iron and phosphate let's go shopping first i want to look at the relative abundance of each of these elements on earth we are shopping in the earth's crust after all these figures show the percentage each material makes of the earth's crust silicon dominates as the second most abundant element on earth making it even more attractive as an anode material aluminium and iron come next with manganese and phosphorus sitting mid-table with relatively high abundance which is why manganese iron and phosphate are attractive for cheaper batteries however if we look at the bottom of this list we see our three problematic materials nickel cobalt and lithium for the purposes of this video we are going to focus on these three materials this gives us a glimpse into the supply problems battery manufacturers are facing but make no mistake this small percentage of earth's crusts is still more than enough to meet our demands and relative abundance isn't necessarily a sign of a robust supply chain as we're finding some materials is more difficult than others there is not a huge amount of lithium in a battery as elon put it it's like the salt on a salad on average there is about 70 grams of lithium per kilowatt hour scaling that up to the average tesla 100 kilowatt hour battery contains about 7 kilograms of lithium a typical tesla 100 kilowatt hour battery weighs about 600 kilograms so in total the 7 kilograms makes up a small fraction of the total materials used however when scaling that up to 10 terawatt hours which is 100 million 100 kilowatt hour battery packs things get out of hand quickly we would need 0.7 billion kilograms or 0.7 million metric tons of lithium every year that's a lot of lithium even though it's just a tiny portion of the battery so how much are we currently producing per year this is the breakdown per nation according to the u.s geological survey with a grand total of 77 000 metric tons about 4.8 percent of where it needs to be it is however important to note that worldwide reserves amount to 17 million metric tons and this is being held to prevent oversaturating the market and tanking the price if demand rises sharply this reserve can take up the slack with enough there to satisfy 24 years of tesla's 10 terawatt hour dreams or even 12 years of their greater 20 terawatt hour dream in the long term there are many lithium deposits scattered around the world billions of tons of lithium is present in our oceans but we have no cost-effective way of separating it at present instead we currently rely on thousands of years of geological processes to concentrate seas into salt pans like those perched atop the andes in chile bolivia and argentina here lithium-rich water lies beneath the surface which is pumped to the surface and evaporated to collect the salts there are also hard rock deposits in places like australia who are the current largest producer of lithium we can also extract from clay deposits which musk touched on during battery day where he told shareholders that tesla had secured rights to 10 000 acres of lithium clay in nevada but the process for extracting lithium from clay is unproven and these large reserves have historically prevented any serious investment into new mines however it's clear tesla wants to vertically integrate their supply chain and lessen their dependence on external suppliers who can hold back supplies to keep prices higher sourcing materials locally will also reduce the environmental impact and price of shipping it from overseas even though there may be bumps along the road lithium for now isn't that high of a concern the same cannot be said for cobalt this table again from the u.s geological survey shows the world's supply of cobalt with one country providing a little over 70 percent of the world's total production in 2019 the democratic republic of the congo this has been a major controversy for tech companies who rely on cobalt for their batteries in 2019 a landmark court case was launched in washington dc against apple google dell microsoft and you guessed it tesla for the horrible mining practices in the drc that their businesses fuel child labor and dangerous mining practices are commonplace in what the industry disingenuously terms artisanal mining tesla's primary workaround for this issue has been to reduce the quantity of cobalt in their batteries this is obviously a complicated geopolitical problem and i'm not entirely sure how tesla is supposed to intervene in another country's human rights problems and honestly this is beyond my realm of knowledge so i'm not going to weigh in on a solution but it is a problem and for this reason cobalt at this time is the largest supply chain bottleneck that worries companies like tesla a single supplier country with a history of instability and human rights violations is a rusty link in the chain that is just waiting to break it's difficult to find an exact answer for how much cobalt goes into a typical tesla battery but in their recent conflict mineral report tesla claimed that their latest generation 2160 battery has less cobalt than the next generation nickel manganese cobalt cathodes of their competitors batteries with an 811 ratio of nickel manganese cobalt which would have about 6.6 kilograms of cobalt for a 77 kilowatt hour battery the best source i could find states that the model 3 has about 4.5 kilograms of cobalt in its 75 kilowatt hour battery scaling that up to 10 terawatt hours would require 600 million kilograms or 600 000 metric tons a year this vastly outstrips current output of 140 000 metric tons but in this case there is not a lot of room for improvement in supply with the drc sitting on the primary source and there are about seven million metric tons of cobalt in reserve but again half of this is held by the drc the only other major untapped cobalt resources are under the ocean with an estimated 120 million metric tons but i think we can all agree that dredging the sea floor is not the solution to climate change we need to find an alternative to cobalt tesla is working to replace cobalt completely with nickel which is a little over three times more common in the earth's crust than cobalt and has a far more robust supply chain being more evenly spread across the continents however nickel makes up most of the weight of tesla's cathode and nickel is going to be a bottleneck moving forward tesla's batteries contain about 700 grams of nickel per kilowatt hour so a 100 kilowatt hour battery would have 70 kilograms of nickel significantly more than either of our previous materials scaling this up to 10 terawatt hours and we would need 7 billion kilograms or 7 million metric tons of nickel and that's with today's chemistry if tesla did replace cobalt completely they would need even more today the annual production is 2.7 billion kilograms or 2.7 million metric tons with 89 million metric tons in reserve but it's a highly sought after material being primarily used in the steel industry as a vital alloying metal used for stainless steel currently the electric battery market only uses three percent of the annual nickel supply increasing to 10 terawatt hours of production would swing that percentage drastically and nickel mining would need to ramp up quickly to keep up with the demand elon practically begged nickel producers to sign an exclusive contract with them for an environmentally friendly extraction method referencing the issues they are having with their primary suppliers in indonesia whose mining practices are making people question whether battery electric vehicles are actually good for the environment as they are dumping the waste product of the mining into the deep sea while another russian nickel producer spilled 20 000 tons of diesel oil into a river in the arctic circle last year so it's clear nickel and cobalt are our two largest bottlenecks in our early stage supply chain but we are currently in the early days of battery-powered vehicles with few of these vehicles coming to the end of their life each year but that will soon change the number of batteries available for recycling is soon going to explode at which point a more cyclical supply chain through recycling will emerge with mining becoming less critical to the supply chain today most lithium-ion batteries are not recycled in fact you likely have plenty of useful lithium-ion batteries in old electronics in your drawer at home sitting there because there is no accessible way of recycling them at present that trend cannot continue for battery packs for vehicles for the electric vehicle market to survive and overcome these supply chain issues a cyclical supply chain needs to emerge there are multiple startups vying to be the world's first large-scale lithium-ion battery recycler one of them redwood materials is headed by tesla's former cto and founding member but the supply chain is much longer than this these raw materials don't magically assemble themselves into the form of a battery so tesla is working to remove bottlenecks in manufacturing also according to their slides with current manufacturing techniques tesla will need to build around 67 gigafactories to reach that 10 terawatt hour milestone with at least one trillion dollars in investment required building factories and raising the capital to do it takes time this too is a bottleneck in order to reach their goals sooner they need to increase the throughput of their current factories which means less factories are needed while also increasing the capital they are raising to build new factories with this in mind let's see how tesla is working to lessen the effects of these manufacturing bottlenecks one of the most interesting design innovations they displayed during battery day was the tablets battery design which will dramatically increase their factory's throughput batteries have two current collectors a copper foil for the anode and an aluminium foil for the cathode these can be rolled as part of the battery jelly roll assembly but the machine has to stop periodically to weld something called a tab to each collector these tabs then connect to the positive and negative terminals of the battery to transport the electrons out of the battery to the circuit having to stop the rolling process to weld these tabs is kind of like forcing cars to stop at a toll booth on a highway it slows down the number of vehicles passing through per minute and causes a bottleneck in traffic this new tablet's battery has the tab rolled with the current collectors and then folded in this beautiful spiral origami fashion at the top and bottom to connect to the batteries terminals this process removes this toll booth effect in the factory that slows down throughput if this new battery manufacturing technique speeds production up by just 2 that means they need 1.3 less factories to achieve their goal so it's clear tesla is prioritizing rapid growth they are entering a new stage of their evolution as a company where their scale is beginning to pose new engineering challenges however in the grand scheme of things tesla's batteries can't and won't solve this energy transition problem alone lithium-ion batteries are well suited to the transport sector but while tesla focused on that 20 terawatt hour mark in their presentation i made my simple calculations based on the transportation portion of their goals at 10 terawatt hours today lithium-ion batteries are used in energy storage for the grid simply because they are currently the best suited for the task at their price point but they do come with some drawbacks they are limited in life cycles aren't suited for longer term storage and last year a large lithium-ion battery firm exploded in arizona causing manny to reconsider lithium as a safe option at this scale not to mention there is little need for high energy density batteries for the grid we aren't moving them anywhere smaller household power walls are one thing but larger massive scale batteries like this tesla battery farm in australia are a waste of lithium and nickel those materials are going to be needed for the transportation sector as countries around the world rush to increase their renewable percentages they are lacking behind on critical energy storage facilities to stabilize their grid and looking towards lithium-ion batteries in desperation cheaper grid storage technologies are needed now and lithium-ion batteries simply aren't the long-term answer tesla thankfully doesn't have to take the weight of global climate change on its shoulders alone we are in this fight together there is a vast array of potentially cheaper grid scale energy storage methods in development at the moment and i think in the next five years or so manny will hit a point where they can be commercialized and compete with lithium-ion batteries and cost i recently spoke with professor donald sottoway a professor of materials chemistry in mit founder of ambry a liquid metal battery company and one of my academic heroes about his views on the future of grid storage and the potential of liquid metal batteries segments of this interview will feature in an upcoming video on liquid metal batteries energy storage for the grid is a young and developing field that needs more mines working on it it's going to be one of the defining technologies of this decade that future generations will likely take for granted but people like us will look back with admiration for the men and women that help save our planet you could be one of those people if you choose to enter this field but you're going to need a good understanding of math physics and computing to get started in your career brilliant is the perfect place to hone your skills with easy to follow curated courses that will take you from knowing nothing to having a well-rounded understanding of the building blocks of an engineering career brilliant's thought-provoking math science and computer science courses help guide you to mastery by taking complex concepts and breaking them up into bite-sized understandable chunks you'll start by having fun with their interactive explorations and over time you'll be amazed at what you can accomplish if you are naturally curious want to build your problem-solving skills want to develop confidence in your analytical abilities or like me find fulfillment and continual lifelong learning then get brilliant premium to learn something new every day if you are looking for something else to watch right now why not watch my previous video about the astounding floating harbours which were floated across the english channel on d-day or real science's latest video detailing the astounding new technique that may allow scientists to create a universal blood type you

Channel: Real Engineering

Views: 1,466,287

Keywords: engineering, science, technology, education, history, real

Id: 1Xwxe0wU4b8

Length: 24min 1sec (1441 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 24 2020

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