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Battery Day started 2 minutes ago. Are you watching?
"Terra is the new Giga" Elon Musk.
Need to scale up battery production 1,600 x. Building far too slow.
How do we rethink battery cells to drop the cost more. The rate of cost reduction has been falling.
Are going to halve the cost of production of batteries.
Unwrapping a battery to see what it is made of. Get your kids to watch this.
We are removing the "0" that no one can explain off the battery name. (Who did add that 0 on the 18650..?)
Explaining the new tabless cell design. A shorter path for the charge to travel. (Whoops said for the electrons to travel - but we know what he means)
New cell 5 x energy. 16% more range 6 x the power. Thew 4680 cell. 46mm dia. 80mm long.
The audience is in cars like a drive in. They toot horns instead of clap.
New cell pilot plant to be 10GWh within one year.
This will give a 14% cost reduction this year.
change in cell production technique should make factory up to 10 or more times more productive or 10 times smaller, aim is to be the most efficient factory in the world. simplify the process, remove steps, reduce the number of processes
can reduce the investment in manufacturing by 75% and should be able to do even better
new target 3TWh per year production by 2030, will be at 200GWh by 2022.
now moving to battery materials, can we use silicon instead of graphite? can we solve the problems with that idea?
silcon will drop costs another 5%
onto the cathode now. can we go to nickel with no cobalt? yes and this will reduce that cost part by 15%. will there be enough nickel?
explaining the cathode manufacturing process and how complex it is, like digging a ditch and filling it back in, not efficient at all, so have looked at that whole process
new process 66% less investment needed, using the nickel powder directly, and the bonus it will enhance recycling. will build a cathode plant in USA
lithium is not in short supply, enough lithium known in USA already today to convert the whole USA vehicle fleet, have looked at a new lithium extraction process for lithium from the ore using table salt
investing in a battery recycling center in Nevada. Tesla is the gift that keeps on giving for Nevada!
moving to car castings now, making the whole rear of the car in one piece in a new allow, "Giga Casting Innovation". Had to develop their own new allow. More advanced materials on the way also. So front and rear of car each in one piece.
in the new cars the battery is going to become a structural part of the car, joining the front and rear sections, gave the analogy of how plane wings became the fuel tanks. can actually achieve weight reductions doing this.
the new flame retardant that is between the cells will also be a binding structural glue to give the battery pack the structural properties. plus the new cells pack denser with more kWh per litre of space
this also means the battery can be narrower in the car, reducing any side impact crash issues.
so stacking all these up you get 54% range increase, 56% cell cost reduction, 69% reduction in battery factory investment cost/TWh...
these changes will be starting now BUT take up to 3 years to fully implement.
This will result in a US$25,000 EV. Cheaper than an ICE car. Aiming to have this available in 3 years. Cheaper to buy, cheaper to drive, and cheaper to maintain.
