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| Musk's 4680 battery ambition: electric vehicle+energy storage, making Tesla the |
| Release time:2023-01-30 09:13:56| Viewed： |
Musk's 4680 battery ambition: electric vehicle+energy storage, making Tesla the king of batteries
"Most electric vehicles are battery packs with wheels" - this sentence may explain the position of battery cost in the price composition of electric vehicles.
As the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla's 4680 large cylindrical lithium-ion battery developed and produced by itself is expected to enter the fast track of mass production in the new year.
On the one hand, Tesla hopes to use the new technology of 4680 large cylindrical battery to make the electric vehicle battery store more energy, have a longer endurance and cheaper price, and finally use it in Tesla's full range of electric vehicle products, including electric trucks and electric sports cars.
On the other hand, Tesla also hopes to apply the 4680 large cylindrical battery to the energy storage field with broad market prospects and "expected to surpass the automobile production in the future" by using lithium iron phosphate material.
These may not be the fundamental purpose of Musk and Tesla to build 4680 batteries. According to some analysts, the ultimate task of 4680 battery is to make Tesla the king of battery. Tesla sets standards, and other battery manufacturers choose to stand in line.
New 4680 battery capacity of 100GWh will be built in Nevada
Recently, Joe Lombardo, the governor of Nevada, announced that Tesla plans to invest an additional $3.6 billion in Nevada to expand its existing super factory. The expansion includes two parts of facilities - one for the production of Semi-trailer electric trucks, and the other for the production of 4680 large cylindrical lithium batteries, with a planned annual capacity of 100GWh.
The expansion project will add 4 million square feet of floor space to Tesla's existing Nevada Super Factory. In addition, Tesla plans to add 3000 new jobs.
Tesla later confirmed this statement on Twitter. Tesla said that since 2014, Tesla has invested $6.2 billion in Nevada, including the construction of a 5.4 million square foot super factory for the production of automobile motors and electric vehicle batteries.
"With the Nevada Super Factory as the cornerstone, Tesla is promoting the transformation of the world to sustainable energy," Tesla said in the tweet.
It is worth noting that once the 4680 battery production line of the Nevada Super Factory is put into operation, it will become the third Tesla American factory with 4680 battery capacity after the Texas Super Factory and the Trimont pilot factory in California.
At present, four 4680 battery production lines have been laid out in Tesla's Texas Super Factory, one of which has been put into production, and the other three are in the commissioning and installation stage. At the end of last year, the pilot plant in Tremont, California, achieved a major breakthrough in producing 868000 4680 battery cells in a week, which could supply about 1000 Tesla Model Y electric vehicles.
In April last year, some of the Model Y models produced by the Texas Super Factory have achieved 4680 battery loading and delivery, while the other Model Y models of the factory continue to load 2170 cylindrical batteries from Panasonic.
Musk previously said that all future electric vehicles of Tesla, including Model Y, Semi-trailer truck, Cyber electric truck and Roadster 2 electric sports car, will use 4680 large cylindrical batteries.
In Tesla's announcement of the expansion of Nevada's super factory, there is another detail worth pondering. According to the autoevolution website, Tesla initially said that the newly built 100GWh 4680 battery capacity in Nevada would support the production of 2 million electric vehicles, but later corrected this figure to 1.5 million. The new value means that the average battery capacity of each vehicle will be 67KWh.
Tesla previously said that the current annual battery capacity of the Nevada plant is 35GWh, which can support the production of 500000 electric vehicles per year. This means that the current average battery capacity of each electric vehicle is 70 KWh.
Compared with ordinary electric passenger vehicles, Tesla Semi-trailer electric trucks and Cyber electric trucks require more battery capacity. Why does the average battery capacity of each vehicle still decrease?
The autoevolution website speculates that this seems to confirm that Tesla will launch a smaller Volkswagen passenger car. The battery capacity of each vehicle is about 45 KWh, or even lower. Autoevolution website believes that with the improvement of the efficiency of the battery pack and the reduction of the weight of the compact car, the battery with smaller capacity can still provide sufficient range.
In addition, Nevada's new battery production facility is also strategically located near the battery recycling facility of Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company. Last July, Rosewood said it planned to spend $3.5 billion to build a battery material factory in northwest Nevada to produce positive and negative poles of lithium-ion batteries.
Moreover, lithium ore, the key raw material for batteries, is not far from the new plant site. It is understood that Nevada has the only lithium mine in production in the United States. On January 16, the US Department of Energy said it would provide up to US $700 million in loans for the construction of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine project in Nevada.
All of these will be conducive to the further improvement of Tesla 4680 battery supply chain.
4680 battery turned to lithium iron phosphate material for energy storage, and the total capacity of the battery hit 1000GWh
In 2020, Tesla launched a 4680 large cylindrical lithium-ion battery on its battery day. Compared with 2170 cylindrical battery, the battery size is larger, and it adopts the non-polar ear technology, with higher monomer capacity, and can effectively reduce the production cost of the battery.
If the 4680 battery was born three years ago for a cheaper and longer range electric vehicle, it will now shoulder another mission - to use it in energy storage products such as Tesla's Megapacks and Powerwall.
Recently, Musk said in response to an investor's question, "Our long-term goal is to produce more than 1000 GWh of batteries inside Tesla."
"What needs to be clear is that we will continue to use other battery suppliers (at present, Tesla's battery suppliers include Ningde Times, LG New Energy and Panasonic). However, the demand for lithium-ion batteries is almost unlimited and will continue for a long time. We need to expand the scale faster." Musk also revealed that, "We have an amazing plan to make the 4680 battery have low cost and high energy density."
According to autoevolution, Musk's last sentence may indicate that the 4680 battery will realize a more diversified chemical composition of the positive electrode material.
According to the different cathode chemical materials, there are two mainstream technology routes for lithium ion batteries: lithium iron phosphate and lithium nickel cobalt manganese ternary. Lithium iron phosphate battery has higher safety, low energy density and low cost, and is most suitable for energy storage; Ternary batteries have higher energy density, but poor stability and durability. They are usually used to meet the requirements of electric vehicles for long endurance. At present, the 4680 battery produced by Tesla uses high nickel ternary cathode material.
From 2021, batteries used by Tesla's energy storage product Megapacks have been converted to lithium iron phosphate. Therefore, in the transition to 4680 large cylindrical battery, considering the performance and more favorable cost of the material, lithium iron phosphate will be very likely to be used.
In Musk's view, the global demand for renewable energy storage is soaring. He had predicted that the future growth of Tesla Megapack's energy storage business would exceed that of the automobile production business. Among various battery shapes, the cylindrical lithium iron phosphate battery has the lowest manufacturing cost and the longest service life.
However, for Musk and Tesla, 2023 is not the year of high light for 4680 batteries.
Although the output of 4680 battery has been improved by a milestone, the large-scale and stable production still needs to overcome many technical problems.
In the past, the pole lug is one of the most basic structures of the power battery, and is a necessary part for the connection of the positive and negative current collector in the cell and the head and tail cover plates. The design of the non-pole lug completely omits the pole lug. Through the direct connection between the positive and negative pole fluid collector and the cover plate/shell, the area of current conduction is multiplied, and the distance of current conduction is also shortened to a certain extent.
By optimizing the battery structure, this design not only simplifies the production process of the battery, reduces the production cost, but also reduces the internal resistance of the battery to a certain extent, significantly reduces the battery heat, and improves the peak power of charge and discharge. But just like all the latest technologies, the 4680 battery omits the lug structure, but adds the fluid collection adhesion process, which poses a new production challenge.
Not only that, according to the latest disclosure of autoevolution website, the dry coating technology of battery electrode that 4680 battery initially promised to use and can greatly improve production efficiency has not yet been successfully realized.
"For the 4680 battery team, the goal in 2023 may be to launch a cost-effective battery for the Cyber electric truck." Musk said, "The focus is to improve the quality of parts and components and increase the battery output as much as possible. If these key goals are achieved, we will be ready for the '4680' year in 2024."
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