Tesla recently unveiled plans to develop a new secret battery
that could improve an electric car’s range and power which Tesla's CEO Elon Musk
predicts will help dramatically reduce costs and allow the
company to eventually sell electric vehicles for the same price as gasoline-powered ones.
Welcome to Smart Sense! In today’s video, we are
going to talk about Tesla’s new battery technology and the real purpose behind
all these changes which I'll get to at the end of this video.
Tesla's engineers have been working on a new battery tech
to make batteries more efficient, while still cutting down on the manufacturing costs. And the
new Tesla battery technology has been shown to achieve those goals by quite a good margin.
Cutting down on the battery costs is crucial to Tesla to produce more
affordable as well as durable Electric Vehicles, featuring
more power, greater range, and longevity. With an ultimate goal of moving the world towards
sustainable energy, especially in the automobile industry, CEO and owner of the company
Elon Musk still has to go a long way. Making Electric vehicles affordable for the masses
is the single most crucial task that they need to achieve. And although the existing price range
of the EVs produced by Tesla is quite reasonable for an
Electric Vehicle given all the amazing specs and performance,
with minimal to non-existent maintenance costs –yet still they are significantly
out of the reach of the middle class which makes up the largest
consumer base. Hence, the necessity to produce cheap yet efficient batteries.
Over the last decade alone, the prices for EV battery packs have dropped
by an impressive margin of 87%. And yet they are still
quite expensive compared to normal gasoline cars. With the new battery
technology, Tesla is hoping to cut the costs further by half –which
means we would finally be able to get a ~$20,000 hatchback in a couple of
years. We have discussed this topic in detail in our previous video,
which you can find the link for in the description.
Furthermore, it would also bring the rates of all the EVs further down, and more manufacturers would
surely adopt this technology, and hence more diversification of EV market,
not only in the US but also in other countries –such as China
–where Tesla has recently opened their new Giga factory in Shanghai.
And for reducing the production costs, there are two main solutions:
First, production of more affordable individual battery cells, and
Second, scaling the battery production to huge levels.
This two-step solution, however, requires Tesla to carry out vertical integration,
and start manufacturing their batteries,
and raising their production to scale. Whereas, up till now, Tesla has been sourcing its EV
Battery packs from local manufacturers, like Panasonic –for Tesla Model 3, and Model Y.
Turning to what we learned about the new technology from the Battery day event:
Tesla revealed their 5 step plan to bring down the overall
production costs per Kilo-Watt-Hour (KWh). Cell design
Starting from the core, Tesla has made improvements to the
cell design where they have removed the separator tab from the cells –hence the name
‘Tabless’ and increased them in size as well. These two
changes will result in a simpler manufacturing process
–so less resource and raw material consumption, which means they will need fewer parts,
and 5 times shorter electric paths between the cells and the
load – which means less energy dissipation. Nonetheless, the deal about these cells
is not just about lowering the production costs –as these cells
are also way more efficient than the previous ones,
and are expected to make the batteries up to 6 times more powerful, and increase the range of
the EV by at least 16%. Tesla is calling these new cells
the 4680 cells. Tesla’s pilot Cell factory
In the new Cell factory, which is aimed to achieve the production rate of 10 GWh per annum, the cell
manufacturing process has been made much simpler and straightforward.
Although, this simpler process is not to be confused with it
being a simple task for Tesla engineers who have given the last drop of their
blood, sweat, and tears to make it possible. In the new electrode manufacturing,
the ‘Wet process’ has been skipped –which is a multi-step process,
and is just simply replaced with a single ‘dry’ step. This
simplification in the production process will reduce the overall waste produced by the factory,
and cut down its Carbon footprint by 10 times, and would also need 10 times less energy
consumption than the old procedure. Tesla’s short-term production goal
for the cell factory is to achieve 10 GWh by the end of 2022, and the
long-term plan to achieve a production capacity of 1 Terra-Watt-hour by 2030.
Anode material Silicon is the second
most abundant material, readily available from the earth’s crust, and comes very
cheap. And contains all the properties of excellent anode
material. However, the thermal properties of Silicon have been the biggest hurdle in achieving
the required efficiency, as part of a cell. The good news is, that Tesla engineers have
found a way to circumvent this problem. The utilization of
an inexpensive material like silicon shall further cut down the production costs per KWh by 5%.
Cathode material Tesla has also
announced that it will eliminate the use of Cobalt in Cell Cathodes –mainly due to the
ethical and humanitarian issues linked with Cobalt mining. Conversely, Tesla has found an at-par
alternative in Nickel –which is also cheaper than Cobalt, as well as other suitable metals.
This step leads to an incremental 12% decrease in battery production costs.
Cell Vehicle Integration Tesla is going to produce
its Single-piece casting for the front and rear body of the vehicle –which is
currently under production in Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing plant.
And on top of it, Tesla is developing their high-strength casting alloys.
They are also introducing ‘Structural batteries’, in which batteries serve a dual purpose:
being the power source as well as a
structural element to the body. This innovation in design and
architecture shall lead to 370 less parts needed in the assembly, up to 10%
reduction in mass of the vehicle, a 14% range increasing opportunity, and decrease
the production costs by 7%.
This 5-step plan is expected to cut the production
costs of EV batteries by up to 56% for now. And verily,
these costs are going to further decrease as more improvements are made over time.
So, at the beginning of the video, we talked about how there's a bigger purpose for all
these changes on Tesla's batteries.
Elon Musk’s goal is to make gasoline cars completely obsolete,
and he does not flinch at other manufacturers who are stepping
into the EV industry. He has also relinquished all of the Tesla patents
and released all the new company designs for others to follow.
Reducing the number of parts, the total mass of the battery
pack, and therefore enables Tesla to improve efficiency and ultimately the
range of its electric vehicles with the final goal of being the best
EV on the whole market. VIDEO ENDS
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