- 2846 - ELON MUSK - defines his battery? During Tesla's long-awaited "Battery Day" on Tuesday September 22, 2020, Elon Musk announced several innovations that could transform the battery industry. Musk focused on an in-house redesign of the lithium ion battery, which he says will use nickel cathodes, rather than cobalt.
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--------------------------- 2846 - ELON MUSK - defines his battery?
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- Elon Musk sees future economies of scale in battery production, making a $25,000 Tesla possible in the next three years.
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- During the Tesla CEO's highly anticipated "Battery Day" event. Musk announced an ambitious slate of innovations, and even an all-new manufacturing plant, that Tesla will pursue over the next 10 years in order to start producing its own batteries.
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- He says it is incredibly important that we accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Musk sees Tesla taking on a more significant role in sustainable energy generation and storage, in addition to creating more affordable electric vehicles.
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- Musk plans to phase out cobalt in its battery cathodes in favor of nickel, a silvery lustrous metal found in mines across the globe, with high concentrations of nickel ore in Indonesia, Russia, Canada, and the Philippines.
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- This, plus other redesigns of the lithium-ion battery, will enable Tesla to make more energy-dense, in-house batteries that not only increase the range for the company's luxury electric vehicles, but also enable cost benefits that will lead to a $25,000 fully autonomous electric vehicle in the next three years, by 2023.
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- Tesla's ultimate plan is to halve the cost of a kilowatt hour in the factory, leading to greater economies of scale in the electric vehicle, lithium-ion battery, and sustainable energy generation industries. To do that, Tesla is redesigning the fundamentals of the battery cell.
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- Each cylindrical battery has a "cap" (+) and a "can," (-) which are the negative and positive portions of the cell. Inside the can, there is a tab connected to the cell, plus a "jellyroll" that contains the positive and negative electrodes.
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- In a Tesla cell, there's about one meter's length of jellyroll, which looks like a rolled-up Swiss cake. From there, the lithium ions move between the anode and cathode to recharge or give off energy.
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- Tesla sees the ideal cell design having a 46-millimeter diameter. The company has introduced a new "tabless" architecture that it's calling the 4680 cell.
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- The resulting battery is simpler to manufacture, requires fewer parts, and looks a bit like a mandala of metallic shingles. It enables six times more power than Tesla's previous battery, and gives Tesla vehicles about 16 percent more range before taking into account other battery improvements.
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- The distance that the electron has to travel is much less. Even though the cell is bigger, it has more power, the power to weight ratio is much smaller than with tabs.
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- To transition all vehicles with an internal combustion engine to electric ones, it will take a great deal of battery production, about 150 terawatt hours per year. Tesla has generated about 17 terawatt hours of solar energy to date.
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- A terawatt is 1,000 times more than a gigawatt. One terawatt is equivalent to one trillion watts. That represents a huge leap in sustainable energy growth. Tesla will need to generate 100 times more battery power than current levels to reach its ambitious new goal of 10 terawatt hours of battery production per year.
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- Is the World Ready for the EV Battery Boom? Tesla's existing Gigafactories in Sparks, Nevada; Buffalo, New York; Shanghai, China; and a fourth under construction in Berlin, Germany, aren't satisfactory for these lofty energy production goals just yet.
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- In fact, it would take 135 Nevada Gigafactories to produce 20 terawatt hours of battery power each year. Tesla is ramping up production of its new tabless cells at its pilot battery manufacturing firm at an undisclosed location near Fremont, California. A full-fledged manufacturing plant could produce energy on the order of 200 gigawatt hours per year.
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- The cathode is a structure that holds ions while retaining its structure and shape. Without it, battery capacity quickly drops. In a sense, cathodes are like bookshelves, where the metal is like the shelf, and the lithium is the book. Depending on the metal used in the cathode, there are different amounts of "books," or lithium, that can fit.
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- Nickel is the cheapest and most energy-dense material that companies could use in cathodes. However, cobalt is currently the most popular option, due to its stability. Instead, Tesla wants to move toward a reliance on nickel, bringing its batteries down to zero percent cobalt.
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- All of this adds up to a 76 percent reduction in process costs and a move toward sustainability, with zero percent wastewater as a byproduct. In addition, Musk says the goal is to move beyond the need for new battery-grade nickel, and instead focus on using recycled nickel from existing batteries. That way, there's less reliance on mining.
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- Last December, 2019, International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit against Tesla, along with Apple, Google, and Dell, representing 14 parents and children who allegedly died or were injured while working in the cobalt mines that supplied the metal to those tech companies.
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- In the future car shells will be made of batteries. In the early days of aircraft planes actually carried their fuel tanks like cargo. Today, though, manufacturers have realized a better design, wherein the fuel tanks are fitted inside the wings, becoming part of its structure.
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- Taking a leaf out of that book, Tesla will use its new batteries as a structural component in its cars. Because the non-cell portion of the battery has negative mass, it allows Tesla to pack the cells more densely.
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- This will lead to 370 fewer parts in the cars, representing a 10 percent reduction in mass that should make the vehicles feel more agile.
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- It's no secret that Teslas are a luxury vehicle, and, that's detrimental to the company's green missions. Although there are other mass model electric vehicles, from the Nissan Leaf to the Chevy Bolt, the price tag on each of Tesla's cars lead to lost customers that may instead purchase a car with an internal combustion engine.
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- So the goal is to create a more affordable Tesla. With the expected economies of scale that will result from Tesla's in-house battery operation, Musk said the budget car could be here sooner rather than later.
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- What does it all add up to? It's not exactly clear. While the Tesla shareholders who showed up to the Battery Day event in person.
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- But for now, we're definitely not holding our breath for that cheap Tesla.
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- September 27, 2020 2846
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