Here's a video from the Electric Viking who says CATL has a new very high power density cell. Tesla is set to partner with CATL. Does this board have insight into whether these numbers are real and if Tesla will benefit from the tech? We seem to have never gotten the full benefit of the Battery day presentation. Where does this leave us?
Thank you
@Thumper for mentioning this Video. In the video there is a mix up from W/kg instead of Wh/kg. Therefore I tried to find other sources for my (super fast) analysis. Actually I didn‘t watch the video but used AI to summarize it, just to be transparent. He showes the picture of an airplane in his video which lowers the credibility of this source for me - but thats just my style, trying to be objective. The Electric Viking is helpful and I liked former videos from him very much.
The Electric Viking seems to relate to the Shenxing PLUS Battery, announced in this press release on April 24th, 2024:
CATL Unveils Shenxing PLUS, Enabling 1,000-km Range and 4C Superfast Charging
At Auto China 2024, CATL unveiled Shenxing PLUS—the world's first LFP battery that achieves a range above 1,000 kilometers with 4C superfast charging. Within eight months after the launch of the Shenxing superfast charging battery in August 2023, CATL has once again pushed the boundaries of LFP...
www.catl.com
The old generation was Shenxing and was announced on August 16th, 2023:
CATL Launches Superfast Charging Battery Shenxing, Opens Up Era of EV Superfast Charging
On August 16, CATL launched Shenxing, the world’s first 4C superfast charging LFP battery, capable of delivering 400 km of driving range with a 10-minute charge as well as a range of over 700 km on a single full charge. Shenxing is expected to considerably alleviate fast charging anxiety for EV...
www.catl.com
From my web-research Shengxing is currently used in a variant of the Zeekr 001 from Geely (major chinese car manufacturer). A recent news article from April 2nd, 2024 claims a charging time from 10 % to 80 % in 11 min 28s for this car with a 95 kWh battery:
The range of this version seems to be about 650 km, i think its WLTP. The Model 3 LR AWD in the Teslas English Hongkong Webshop claims 629 km WLTP, with a much smaller battery of about 78 kWh from my memory.
The car from Geely car is probably available today in China for about 37‘500 - 40‘000 USD.
New Zeekr 001 became a huge threat to high-end EVs in China with up to 580 kW, lots of tech inside, and a starting price of 37,500 USD.
carnewschina.com
CATL‘s new generation Shenxing PLUS claims a 7 % improvement in packing density. From this I would expect a car with fast charging capability within less than 1 year from today available to buy from a major chinese car manufacturer in major markets excluding the US with a WLTP range of almost 700 km (WLTP is always optimistic) for less than 40‘000 USD.
I assume that Tesla will be able to buy these improved LFP batteries from CATL. I think the examples I used in this post do show that there are very strong players in China both in battery manufacturing and car manufacturing. This should be really nothing new. Sandy Munro predicted this like 4 years ago. But yeah, I can understand Elon that he puts the 4680 program under pressure and is defensive in committing major CAPEX in this program. I expected anyway no investment from Tesla in new 4680 battery plants until after the US election.
I think what we see here is a development Tony Seba predicted many years ago and I personnaly would‘t had commit my own money in Tesla mid 2018 without his videos. CATL‘s Shenxing PLUS battery is a sign for me that ICE‘s are not going to survive in the long term. I remember his expression: „Cost curves are like gravity“. There are many many serial S-Curves and the Shenxing PLUS technology is just another one. From my point of view it allows CATL to produce a better battery for the same price. Geely and Tesla and others will be able to offer more compelling cars in the near future using CATL‘s newest LFP Battery technology.
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Now to some Ideas I wanted to share for some weeks now (but didn‘t had a reason to start with). The current super charging technology from Tesla seems to be too slow in expansion of charging points. Elons vison is like to move a big portion of personal transport to his robotaxi network in a few years. The current super chargers are not going to support this. Super chargers were the right technology for the past and is still the right technology for the present. But the present doesn‘t matter. You need to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been (Wanye Gretzky). Robotaxis need easy to scale slower charging points which can easily be installed by the vehicle owners, like 11 kW, wireless. This is just my guess, I think we will hear about it on 8/8. With future batteries which can charge extremely fast (C-rate wise), you don‘t need a big battery for a robotaxi anymore. It is obvious to me that a head of a super charging expansion organization is not able to survive under Elon if he is not able to anticipate this. The long term solution will clearly not be using a robot to put the carging cable into the charging port. I think this was just a lack of intelligence of this head. To survive under a hyper-intelligent Elon which is under pressure because of multiple concurrent developments I covered in this post, you need a high level of intelligence and of anticipation. To say Elon that you are not going to reduce the cost/head count by the requested 20 % because it is a stupid idea and implying robotaxis are not going to happen was just a stupid move under a Elon under pressure. What did this deparement head expect? That Elon will cancel his request without hearing any valid arguments? Elon does just not has time for long discussions and this was the message he sent out by laying of the whole organization. If Elon would behave like other CEO’s, he would only be so much more effective like other CEO’s.
What we are going to observe here is likely a transformation of humanity like the introduction of telecommunication. Millions of people will be jobless within a decade because of automation of transport. He just has no time to think about the workers he just laid of. I think Elon is acting with with this level of urgency because he sees no other, likely outcome for the survival of humanity on earth (than robotaxi). And so do I.
Elon acted here to maximize the probability of success. I just wanted to offer an explanation for the layoffs in this section of the post, which were also for me a surprise in the first place.