Musk's 4680 battery ambition: electric vehicles + energy storage, making Tesla the king of batteries
"Electric cars are mostly battery packs on wheels" - this sentence may explain the position of battery cost in the price structure of electric vehicles.
As the world's largest electric vehicle manufacturer, the 4680 large cylindrical lithium-ion batteries developed and produced by Tesla itself are expected to enter the fast lane of mass production in the new year.
On the one hand, Tesla hopes that through the new technology of 4680 large cylindrical batteries, electric vehicle batteries can store more energy, have a longer battery life, and be cheaper. series of electric vehicle products.
On the other hand, Tesla also hopes to use lithium iron phosphate materials to apply 4680 large cylindrical batteries to the energy storage field with broad market prospects and "expected to exceed automobile production in the future".
And these may not be the fundamental purpose of Musk and Tesla's painstaking efforts to build the 4680 battery.
In the eyes of some analysts, the ultimate mission of the 4680 battery is to make Tesla the king of batteries.
Tesla sets the standard, and other battery makers choose to take sides.
You should know that for a long time in the past, the mainstream shape of lithium-ion batteries in the world was square.
New 4680 battery production capacity of 100GWh will be built in Nevada
Recently, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo (Joe Lombardo) 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 the facility - one part of the facility is used to manufacture Semi semi-trailer electric trucks, and the other part of the facility will be used to produce 4680 large cylindrical lithium batteries, with a planned annual production capacity of 100GWh.
The expansion project will add 4 million square feet to Tesla's existing Nevada Gigafactory.
In addition, Tesla plans to add 3,000 new jobs.
Tesla later officially confirmed the claim on Twitter.
Tesla said that since 2014, Tesla has invested a total of $6.2 billion in Nevada, including the construction of a 5.4 million square foot Gigafactory for the production of automotive motors and electric vehicle batteries.
"With the Nevada Gigafactory as the cornerstone, Tesla is driving the world's transition to sustainable energy," Tesla said in a tweet.
It is worth noting that once the 4680 battery production line of the Nevada Gigafactory is put into operation, it will become the third Tesla US factory with 4680 battery production capacity after the Texas Gigafactory and the Trimont Pilot Plant in California.
At present, Tesla Texas Super Factory has four 4680 battery production lines, one of which has been put into production, and the remaining three are in the debugging and installation stage.
At the end of last year, the Tremont pilot plant in California achieved a major breakthrough in the production of 868,000 4680 battery cells a week, which can supply about 1,000 Tesla Model Y electric vehicles.
In April last year, some of the Model Y models produced by the Texas Super Factory have been loaded and delivered with 4680 batteries, and the other Model Y models at the factory continue to be loaded with Panasonic’s 2170 cylindrical batteries.
Musk previously stated that all of Tesla's future electric models, including Model Y, Semi semi-trailer trucks, Cyber electric trucks and Roadster 2 electric sports cars, will use 4680 large cylindrical batteries.
In Tesla’s announcement of the expansion of the Nevada super factory, there is another detail worth pondering.
According to the autoevolution website, Tesla initially said that the new 100GWh 4680 battery capacity in Nevada would support the production of 2 million electric vehicles, but later corrected this value to 1.5 million.
The new figure means that the average battery capacity per car will be 67KWh.
Tesla has previously said that the current annual battery production capacity of the Nevada plant is 35GWh, which can support the annual production of 500,000 electric vehicles.
This means that the average electric car currently has a battery capacity of 70 KWh.
Compared with ordinary electric passenger cars, Tesla semi-trailer electric trucks and cyber electric trucks require a larger battery capacity. Why does the average battery capacity of each vehicle decrease?
The website autoevolution speculates that this seems to confirm that Tesla will launch a smaller mass-market passenger car.
The battery capacity of each car is about 45 KWh, or even lower.
The autoevolution website argues that as battery pack efficiency improves and compact cars weigh less, smaller batteries can still provide adequate range.
Additionally, the new Nevada battery production facility is strategically located near the battery recycling facility of battery recycling company Redwood Materials.
In July last year, Redwood Materials said it planned to spend $3.5 billion to build a battery materials plant in northwest Nevada to produce anodes and cathodes for lithium-ion batteries.
Not only that, but lithium mines, the key raw material needed for batteries, are not far from the new site.
It is understood that Nevada has the only lithium mine in production in the United States.
Just before that on January 16, the U.S. Department of Energy said it would provide up to $700 million in loans for the construction of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine project in Nevada.
All of this will benefit the further improvement of Tesla's 4680 battery supply chain.
The 4680 battery turned to lithium iron phosphate material to be suitable for energy storage, and the total battery capacity hit 1000GWh
In 2020, Tesla grandly launched the 4680 large cylindrical lithium-ion battery on its battery day. Compared with the 2170 cylindrical battery, the battery is larger in size, adopts electrodeless technology, has a higher monomer capacity, and can effectively reduce the battery life. Cost of production.
If the 4680 battery three years ago was born for cheaper and longer-range electric vehicles, it will now shoulder another mission-used in energy storage products such as Tesla's Megapacks and Powerwall.
Recently, Musk said in response to a question from an investor: "Our long-term goal is to produce more than 1,000GWh of batteries within Tesla."
"To be clear, we will continue to use other battery suppliers (currently Tesla's battery suppliers include Ningde Times, LG New Energy, Japan's Panasonic), but the demand for lithium-ion batteries is almost unlimited and will continue to grow." Quite a long time. We want to scale up faster." Musk also revealed, "We already have an amazing plan to make 4680 batteries low-cost and high-energy density."
According to autoevolution's speculation, Musk's last sentence may indicate that the 4680 battery will achieve a more diverse chemical composition of the positive electrode material.
According to the different cathode chemical materials, there are currently two mainstream technical routes for lithium-ion batteries: lithium iron phosphate and nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary lithium.
Lithium iron phosphate batteries have higher security, low energy density, and low cost, and are most suitable for energy storage; ternary batteries have higher energy density, but poor stability and durability, and are usually used to meet the long-term requirements of electric vehicles. Endurance requirements.
Currently, the 4680 batteries produced by Tesla use high-nickel ternary cathode materials.
Starting in 2021, the batteries used in Tesla's energy storage products Megapacks will switch to lithium iron phosphate materials.
Therefore, in the transition to the 4680 large cylindrical battery, considering the performance of the material and more favorable cost, it is very likely that lithium iron phosphate material will be used.
According to Musk, the global demand for renewable energy storage is soaring.
He had expected future growth in Tesla's Megapack energy storage business to outpace that in car production.
Among various battery shapes, cylindrical lithium iron phosphate batteries have the lowest manufacturing cost and the longest life.
However, for Musk and Tesla, 2023 is not yet a bright year for 4680 batteries.
Although the production of 4680 batteries has achieved a milestone increase, large-scale and stable production still needs to overcome quite a few technical difficulties.
Take the tabless technology of the 4680 battery as an example. In the past, the tab was one of the most basic structures of the power battery, and it was a necessary part for connecting the positive and negative current collectors in the battery cell to the front and rear cover plates.
The tabless design completely omits the tab part. Through the direct connection between the positive and negative current collectors and the cover/housing, the area of the current conduction is doubled, and the current conduction time is also shortened to a certain extent. distance.
This design, by optimizing the battery structural parts, 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 heat generation of the battery, and increases the peak power of charge and discharge.
But just like all the latest technologies, the 4680 battery omits the tab structure, but adds a current collector adhesion process, which poses a new challenge for production.
Not only that, according to the latest disclosure on the autoevolution website, the dry coating technology for battery electrodes that was originally promised to be used by the 4680 battery 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 cyber electric trucks." Musk said, "The focus is to improve the quality of components and increase battery production as much as possible. If With these key targets achieved, we will be ready for the '4680' in 2024."
The Paper reporter Sen Ning