[Pacific Auto Network New Car Channel] Tesla Annual Shareholders' Meeting and Battery Day event was held at 4:30 am on September 23, Beijing time at the California Fremont Factory. On "Battery Day", Musk disclosed a series of technologies about Tesla's new battery.
At Tesla's battery day, Tesla released the new 4680 battery and said that the energy density of the new battery has been increased by 5 times and the battery life has been increased by 16%. In addition, the battery uses the unmistakable ear technology developed by Tesla, which is 6 times more power than the battery with the helical ear.
pole ear is a metal conductor that leads the positive and negative electrodes from the battery cell. After the electrodeless ear design is used, the electronic path can become shorter, thereby reducing the problem of heat generation and solving the problem of heat dissipation while increasing the energy density. It is understood that using the battery cell of the poleless ear can effectively reduce the internal resistance of the battery by about 13%, solve the problem of battery charging and heating, and shorten the charging time. Meanwhile, Musk said the new 4680 battery has been put into production at the power battery factory in Fremont, California, with an annual production capacity of 10 gigawatt hours.
As the press conference approached the end, Musk said that he would launch a new model priced at only US$25,000 (about RMB 170,000) in the future. The model will also be equipped with a new 4680 battery, and the name of the new car has not been announced yet. For reference, the Model 3 currently starts at $31,690 in the United States.
In addition, the battery day mentioned that Tesla will gradually launch batteries that use silicon material to replace graphite with negative electrodes. Theoretically, the energy density of using silicon material as the negative electrode can be increased by about 50%, but the silicon-based material as the negative electrode will have a volume expansion rate of 400%, which can easily cause rupture. Musk mentioned the use of coating or silicon nanomaterials to solve this problem. In addition, Tesla will also pursue batteries with completely cobalt-free materials, increase the proportion of nickel, etc.
In addition to improving battery materials and processes, Tesla will also explore ways to reduce costs and increase capacity density and range from every step of raw material collection, factory design, manufacturing process, battery recycling and element reuse. It is expected that the range of the future can be increased by 54%, while the cost can be reduced by 56%. Tesla has now obtained the right to mine lithium on a 10,000 acres in Nevada. Tesla will further optimize the mining process of lithium ore to reduce costs and its impact on the environment.
It is worth mentioning that Musk mentioned that in the future, Tesla will improve the body design and integrate a more compact battery module into the body chassis, eliminating the design of the battery pack's separate shell. This can save costs, while further reducing the center of gravity of the car body, optimizing the body weight and improving handling. According to reports, Tesla plans to produce its own 100GWh power battery in 2022. After completing all innovations by 2030, Tesla will be able to achieve a battery capacity of 3 megawatt hours per year.
In addition, the Battery Day event also mentioned: the PLAID Model S model will be launched, and pre-orders have been started and will be delivered in 2021; the electric pickup Cybertruck has received 600,000 orders, and the annual output is expected to reach 250,000 to 300,000 units; the heavy truck model Semi will not be launched globally and is still being optimized for the North American market; Tesla has achieved profitability for four consecutive quarters from the third quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020; Tesla's sales in 2019 increased by 50% year-on-year; the future vision is to establish at least one factory on every continent to improve efficiency and scale, accelerate the delivery cycle, and improve the liquidity of funds. At present, the second phase of Tesla's Shanghai factory has begun construction, and factories in Berlin, Germany and Texas, the United States have also started. (Text: Pacific Auto Network Guo Rui)
