Investors tout Tesla's 4680 battery: Possibly one of the most important technological advances in modern history
Although the "pie" drawn by Musk at Tesla's investor day did not satisfy investors, Tesla's self-developed 4680 battery immediately saved him some face.
According to US domestic media CNBC, last week, one of Tesla's important investors, Ross Gerber (Ross Gerber), after visiting Tesla's Austin, Texas Gigafactory, praised Tesla's progress in batteries. progress.
Ross Gerber tweeted that he was "pretty shocked" by what he saw at the Austin Gigafactory.
In an interview with CNBC, Ross Gerber said that he saw a prototype of the 4680 large cylindrical lithium-ion battery at Tesla Battery Day in 2020. When he visited the Texas factory, he saw that Tesla's 4680 battery production facility had a very small footprint, which allowed Tesla to scale up battery production faster and easier and reduce manufacturing costs.
4680 battery assembly line
Comparison of three types of cylindrical batteries, among which 2170 batteries are mainly provided by Panasonic
"The 4680 battery may be one of the most important technological advances in modern history, capable of taking Tesla to a new level." Ross Gerber said.
Ross Gerber also predicted that with the 4680 battery technology, Tesla will dominate battery production in the future. "Battery production is key to the success of renewable energies and electromobility," says Ross Gerber.
As of December 31, 2022, Gerber Kawasaki Wealth Management, of which Gerber is the CEO, holds 440,000 shares of Tesla. Previously, Ross Gerber also sought to enter Tesla's board of directors on the grounds that he was worried about Elon Musk's leadership and hoped that he could help Tesla "grow".
In fact, with regard to the progress of Tesla’s 4680 battery production and technology, the outside world had expected that Musk and Tesla would give a major surprise at the investor day on March 1, but it was actually a bit disappointing. . However, some fragmented language still revealed some important information about the 4680 battery.
First of all, 4680 battery production has become one of Tesla's overall goals.
Tesla's current overall goals include producing 20 million vehicles per year, producing 1TWh of energy storage products per year, and expanding battery production. Taking electric vehicle batteries as an example, “Battery supply is currently one of the constraints on our expansion of production.” Tesla Vice President Colin Campbel said, “We see that batteries are constantly evolving, and we need to cooperate with the software and hardware of the car. For batteries, we want batteries to be more efficient. There are many things that can be done about batteries, for example, we need better connectors to connect batteries, and make corresponding designs to make car maintenance easier."
Second, Tesla will not immediately enter the mining process, but will invest more in refining and the production of battery materials.
Regarding the question of "whether Tesla will mine to reduce costs", Tesla executive Drew Baglino said, "Tesla does not do mining. If there is a need in the future, it may be considered, but at present we already have a large upstream As a lithium concentrate supplier, the refining capacity of lithium mines is the company's biggest bottleneck."
"We are also building a production line related to battery cathode materials. At present, there is no cathode material supplier in the United States that can meet the scale required by Tesla." Drew Baglino said.
At present, Tesla's Corpus Christi lithium smelter in Texas has started construction and is expected to be put into trial operation by the end of 2023. Its main business includes lithium ore purification and refining, etc. The smelted lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide and other lithium salts will be further used Production of battery cathode materials.
It is understood that many of Tesla's lithium salts and battery materials currently come from China and South Korea. On December 31, Ganfeng International, a subsidiary of Ganfeng Lithium Industry, supplied battery-grade lithium hydroxide products to Tesla.
Again, lithium iron phosphate may become an important technical route for Tesla's future 4680 battery.
Musk previously revealed, "We already have an amazing plan to make the 4680 battery low cost and high energy density." According to outside speculation, this implies that the future 4680 battery will contain lithium iron phosphate route. At present, the positive electrode material of the 4680 battery that Tesla has produced still uses nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary material.
In fact, Musk and company executives did mention lithium iron phosphate materials "intentionally or unintentionally" during the Investor Day event. For example, Musk said, "Iron resources are one of the most abundant elements on the earth. We need to consider how to make full use of iron to develop lithium iron phosphate materials, which is very important."
For another example, when it comes to electric ships, Musk said that the use of lithium iron phosphate batteries can be considered, and long-distance transportation can also be completely powered by batteries, and the energy density of (lithium iron phosphate batteries) can reach a relatively high level.
In addition, Colin Campbel, vice president of the company, said, "Our (rare earth-free) new power system is compatible with any battery chemical composition." This also implies that both ternary lithium materials and lithium iron phosphate materials can be matched in the future .
However, for Tesla, the most important thing is still to expand the existing production scale of 4680 batteries. Looking at the demand for electric vehicles alone, all future Tesla electric vehicle models, including the Model series, the semi-trailer electric truck that was launched at the end of last year, and the Cyber electric pickup that will be delivered this year, will all be used 4680 battery.
Cyber-truck to be delivered this year
In addition, according to the pie drawn by Musk, by 2030, Tesla's annual production of electric vehicles will be 20 million. Based on the average battery capacity of 75KWh per vehicle, this requires about 1500GWh (1.5TWh) of battery capacity.
So what is the current Tesla 4680 battery production capacity? In addition to the Austin, Texas super factory that Ross Gerber visited this time, Tesla also has 4680 battery production capacity at the Fremont super factory in California, and has planned 100GWh of 4680 battery production capacity in Nevada. At the end of last year, the weekly production capacity of 4680 batteries in the Fremont plant in California exceeded "868,000 batteries". According to estimates by industry experts, if this "comparatively modern" description method is converted into a unified GWh unit, the weekly production capacity will be converted to 0.08GWh, and the annual cumulative capacity will be 4.16GWh.
The goal of 1500GWh seems out of reach. However, a Tesla executive also said at the investor day, "Tesla's 4680 battery production capacity is improving every week."
