Tesla Battery Day! Speakers were on an outdoor stage, in front of a big screen… at the end of a parking lot filled with Teslas!
Attendees were each assigned a car, and the audio was broadcast over the radio — yes, Tesla Drive-in Theater! (But the cars had PIN To Drive enabled, so no one could drive away.
) Attendees applauded and cheered by honking horns!
It was 95°, so the cars’ air conditioning was appreciated.
My notes:
Goal: The world needs about 10 tWh/yr to transition to electric transportation and energy storage. Today’s gigawatt-hr factories are too small. The $/kWh curve has flattened.
Plan: Terawatt-hr battery production, on a smaller footprint than today’s gigawatt factories. Make factory space more efficient. Cut the cost per kWh in
half.
Tesla’s new cells are still cylindrical, but “4680” size. [46mm diameter, 80mm length] Pilot plant now, expect about a year to ramp to 10 gWh, 100 gWh in 2022, 3 tWh/yr goal in 2030.
Improvements on Maxwell’s dry battery. New: powder onto film, eliminates massive chemical use and waste water.
Reduction of manufacturing line footprint by over 75% by this alone.
Lithium from clay. 10,000 acres in Nevada. “Remove a chunk of dirt, extract the Lithium (acid-free, saline extraction), replace the dirt.”
“There’s enough lithium in North America to replace the entire U.S. fleet.”
Coming: Single-piece castings for entire front and rear of car (new aluminum alloy, strong without coating or heat treatment)
New batteries will form a part of the vehicle’s structure, without assembly into a pack. Denser packing allows more distance between batteries and side of vehicle, lessening risk of rupture in a crash.
Overall:
56% reduction in $/kWh
54% increase in Range
69% less investment per gWh
Will take 12-18 months to start realizing this improvement; ~3 years to fully realize.
Recycling - will increase as EV volume increases. Tesla expects to replace 20 million vehicles/yr.
$25,000 car in about 3 years! (They said this several times.) “Will be fully autonomous.”
Cybertruck: over ~600,000 orders. First version will be to U.S. specs, since U.S. is largest market. Will eventually make a smaller version for other markets.
In other news: Model S Plaid opened for orders. $140,000 base price. Almost $100k cheaper than loaded Taycan Turbo S, and more than twice the range (520+ miles — slightly more than Lucid’s claimed 517).
Watch replay here:
➡️https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T9xIeZTds
Reflex Research: Tesla’s new Fremont battery “pilot line” design capacity at 10 GWh is equal to >50% of the global Li-ion battery production in 2010.
I believe Tesla's single cell "pilot line" operating at Kato road Fremont would place in the top ten largest cell factories globally and contribute ~5% of 2019 global supply. twitter.com/ReflexFunds/st…
https://twitter.com/reflexfunds/status/1308734538378612737