When Tesla unveiled its 4680 battery cells at the Battery Day event in 2020, the company showed announced a new 4680 cell form factor that would increase energy density, maintain similar thermal properties of smaller cells, improve power-to-weight ratio, streamline production and reduce costs.
During the opening ceremony of Giga Texas, Tesla did not share the specifications of the renewed Model Y and all vehicles went to Tesla employees at the time. According to the Battery Day presentation, the 4680 cells and structural design of the battery pack were expected to increase vehicle range by as much as 54%, reduce vehicle weight, improve acceleration, and be cheaper and more durable to manufacture. .
End of 2020, Musk announced Tesla wanted to halve the cost of the most expensive part of an EV by producing its own batteries. Tesla’s 4680 lithium-ion batteries — 46 millimeters in diameter and 80 millimeters in length — contain about 5 times the energy of today’s smaller 2170 cells. Tesla can use a smaller number of new cells for the same energy and driving range, reducing costs.
Since the Battery Day corporate event, updates on the 4680 battery innovations have been fairly quiet.
Instead, the focus is on the 2170 cells used in Model Y and manufactured at the Fremont Factory and Gigafactory Berlin. Tesla’s last-generation 2170 cells are in non-structural battery packs with an EPA range of 318 miles, 4.8 0 to 60 mph time, and have a starting price of $67,990 in the Model Y pack.
In January, Panasonic announced its intention to invest $700 million to expand its battery plant in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, and bring in new equipment to manufacture the new 4680 battery cells developed by Tesla. When completed, the plant will be capable of producing approximately 10 gigawatt hours per year of the new batteries, enough to power approximately 150,000 electric vehicles. That’s about 20% of the company’s total battery production capacity at its plants in Japan, the US and other countries.
Earlier this year, Tesla employees celebrated the milestone of: a million 4680 cylindrical lithium-ion battery cells. The cells are part of the structural battery packs to be included in the all-electric company’s catalog, starting with the Model Y vehicles manufactured in Giga Texas.
Currently, the Austin plant is Tesla’s only factory that builds cars using structural batteries.
Samsung SDI is preparing a pilot for Tesla 4680 batteries
Samsung SDI is configuring a pilot line at its factory in Cheonan, South Korea, to test 4680 cylinder batteries it will supply to Tesla, according to information released by South Korea. the Elec† The factory will prepare at least two versions of the battery, with the alternative version shorter than 80mm. The actual mass production line is likely to be built at Samsung SDI’s battery factory in Seremban, Malaysia.
Samsung Electronics Vice President Lee Jae-yong confirmed production of the 4680 battery cells during a recent European visit.
The pilot line being prepared in Cheonan has an annual capacity of just under 1 GWh with a production rate of 20 ppm. The goal is to increase the production rate to 200 to 300 ppm, which is equivalent to 8 GWh to 12 GWh of annual production capacity.
Samsung SDI added production of 2,170 cylinder batteries there last year. The factory started making cylinder batteries in 2012.
Really fast charging of Model Y with 4680 battery cells
Meanwhile, a Tesla Model Y owner confirms that a Texas-made Tesla Model Y with 4680 battery cells was able to complete a charge from 0% to 97% in 52 minutes.
Regarding the vision that “electric cars are not the future, they are here and now,” Ryan Levenson of the kilowatt designed an experiment in which he piloted the Model Y until the battery had 0 miles of range. No limiters were revealed when Levenson reached 0 miles. Then Levenson pulled into a Supercharger V3 station. The entrepreneur noted that the Texas-made Model Y’s charging curve jumped to 250 kW immediately when plugged in, compared to previous Tesla data indicating a more gradual increase to 250 kW.
In less than an hour, the Model Y gained 270 miles of range, in line with the Dual Motor Model Y specifications of 479 miles per charge on a full battery.
In an email to TeslaraticLevenson mused about the untapped potential of the 4,680 battery cells.
“Collecting this data opens up more questions for me than it answers. Like why wasn’t my regenerative braking limited even when the pack was full, and why wasn’t my acceleration limited when i was almost empty? To me, it indicates that there’s something big that we don’t know or understand about the 4680 package yet. Sure, it’s wishful thinking, but it could definitely mean there’s more capacity for these new Austin-built Dual Motor Model Ys than Tesla is advertising or giving us access to at the moment.
While not a peer-reviewed study, Levenson’s experiment suggests that Tesla’s 4680-equipped electric cars have some capabilities and benefits that have not been fully disclosed by Tesla.
The claim supports a statement by Munro & Associates, which purchased a Texas-based Model Y for research purposes.
Built our Austin @Tesla Model Y is here! We haven’t had it for 24 hours and the demolition has already started. #MunroLive #SandyMunro #TeardownTitan pic.twitter.com/nL37jxmzV9
— Munro Live (@live_munro) June 30, 2022
According to new sourcesTesla has started selling a second variant of the updated Model Y with 4680 cells and a structural battery pack. The new vehicle, manufactured in Giga Texas, is a Model Y Long Range and starts $9,500 cheaper than the Long Range Model Y produced at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant.
The 4680 battery cells on the production line
The Tesla team didn’t just look from one angle, but all angles: cell design, manufacturing, vehicle integration and materials. Battery Day’s targeted results have the potential to increase the range of Tesla vehicles while also being more fuel efficient; the plan is to halve the cost per kilowatt hour.
Major Chinese battery manufacturers including: CATL, EVE and BAK Battery plan to start mass production of the 4680 cylindrical battery model this year. So be too LG and others.
The growing demand for rechargeable batteries that are fully scalable and sustainable is leading researchers to a holistic, closed-loop infrastructure for materials discovery, manufacturing and battery testing. It will likely require a common data infrastructure and autonomous workflows to bridge big data from all domains of the battery value chain to provide a transformative reduction in discovery time.
Multi-sensory and self-healing capabilities in future battery technologies, as well as integration physics-aware machine learning models capable of predicting the spatio-temporal evolution of battery materials and interfaces are in high demand. Success in this R&D makes it possible to identify, predict and prevent possible degradation and failure modes. The result is improved battery quality, reliability and longevity.
Such successes will have to be strong enough to fit a specific cell design such as the Tesla 4680 battery cell without compromising the quality, reliability and longevity of the battery cell.
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