4/16/2023 0 Comments Quiz factory car logo quiz answersStill, despite those factors, the savings Tesla is expected to achieve will end up making the 4680 battery the industry's "best in class" for the foreseeable future, one source said. The rising cost of battery materials and energy pose a risk to those forecasts, however, and Tesla has not yet been able to significantly improve the new battery's energy density or the amount of power it packs, as Musk has promised. If all the potential efficiencies from dry-coating and the bigger cells are realised, the manufacturing cost for the Model Y’s 4680 battery pack should fall to $5,000 to $5,500 - roughly half the cost of the 2170 pack, according to the sources. Production yields were so low that all the anticipated cost savings from the new process were lost, the source said. "They can produce in small volume, but when they started big volume production, Tesla ended up with many rejects, too many," one of the sources with ties to Tesla told Reuters. Maxwell developed its dry-coat process for ultracapacitors, but the challenge with coating electrodes for EV batteries is that they are much larger and thicker, which makes it hard to coat them with consistent quality at mass-production speeds. That means it's cheaper, faster and also less environmentally damaging.īecause of its simplicity, the process allows Tesla to cut capital spending by a third and slash both the footprint of a factory and its energy consumption to a 10th of what would be needed for the wet process, Tesla has said.īut the company has had trouble commercializing the process, the sources said. With the new technology, electrodes are coated using different binders with little use of liquids, so they don't need to be dried. Once coated, the electrodes are dried in massive ovens, with the toxic solvents that evaporate in the process being recovered, treated and recycled - all adding to the cost. To coat electrodes in the wet process, battery producers mix the materials with toxic binder solvents. It's expensive because it needs a substantial amount of electricity, machinery, factory space, time, and a large labour force. The technology allows Tesla to ditch the older, more complex and costly wet-coating process. Tesla acquired the know-how in 2019 when it paid over $200 million for Maxwell Technologies, a company in San Diego making ultracapacitors, which store energy for devices that need quick bursts of electricity, such as camera flashes.īuilding on Maxwell's technology, Tesla began making 4680 dry cells this year, first in a pilot near its Fremont, California plant and more recently at its new global headquarters in Austin, Texas. In August, Musk told shareholders Tesla would be producing high volumes of 4680 batteries by the end of 2022.Īccording to the experts, Tesla has only been able to cut the Model Y's battery cost by between $2,000 and $3,000 so far, about half the savings Tesla had planned for the 4680 battery, which it unveiled two years ago.īut those savings have come mainly from the design of the new 4680 cells, which are bigger than those in Tesla's current 2170 battery, they said.īut the heart of the drive to push down costs is the dry-coating technology, which Musk has described as revolutionary but difficult to execute.Īccording to the sources, it should deliver as much as half of the $5,500 cost savings Tesla hopes to achieve, by slashing manufacturing costs and one-time capital spending. It's going to take some time to really test it," he said. "I think he will solve it, but it won't be as quick as he likes. Stan Whittingham, a co-inventor of lithium-ion batteries and a 2019 Nobel laureate, believes Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been overly optimistic on the time frame for commercializing the new technique. The sources predict that Tesla will find it difficult to fully implement the new dry-coating manufacturing process before the end of this year, and perhaps not until 2023. Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. tax credits when many rival EVs may no longer qualify.Īmong the 12 battery experts Reuters spoke with, nine have close ties to Tesla and three of the nine have examined Tesla's new and old battery technology inside and out through teardowns. plants, the SUV will remain eligible for U.S. Tesla is one of only a handful of major automakers that produce their own EV batteries and by manufacturing Model Y cells at U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |