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Again, form factor is not nearly the issue, and for many automotive OEM's, they do not feel that Tesla's cells are superior in total. That's mainly because they hope to get away with less thermal management and less cell protection using more stable battery chemistry that is close to Tesla's specific energy. In other words, its better for them to put less work into the pack and bank on the likes of LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and SK Innovation to provide battery cell chemistry improvements. If the chemistry improvements are sufficient, it can negate Tesla's current lead. Of course, if it doesn't, then they are locked in behind Tesla's chemistry. And we then have to factor in the effects of poorer thermal management on real world capacity at a wide variance of temperature and the cell degradation. There are just many different approaches with many tradeoffs. Thus far, other OEMs have not chosen to utilize Tesla's approach due to many factors that still hold true today.
Also, patents are really not the end all be all of the IP. It's just like the fact that AC induction motors have been around for a very, very long time and their operation and design are well understood. But that doesn't mean that Tesla's AC induction motors and the motor controllers are easy to reproduce in no time. Everyone else is almost completely using permanent magnet motors that have some pretty good characteristics for low power, short range EVs made in small quantities. But at higher power ranges with much higher scale of production, they'll probably end up switching over to AC induction motors and have to go through the development steps for such motors and power electronics. Again, just because everyone knows how an internal combustion engine works doesn't mean that everyone can build the same engines as the same specs at volume.
I've been wanting to see this too... so thanks for asking:
that's short shares held over time... if you consider dilution, the percentage of float held is probably roughly the same as the peak in 2013... or maybe even less.
Not clear from your critique of my post as to what conclusion you find correct and what facts you find to be incorrect. As I have stated, Panasonic has already established 2170 manufacture in Osaka and are in the process of replicating that line in Gigafactory1. You have correctly stated my position that each succeeding line for 2170 production will be easier as a result of the learning process. 2170 cell production will likely not be a limiting factor for Model 3 production.
jhm
Well-Known Member
Nice, I hadn't thought specifically of Superchargers as a disruptive technology, but I see it now. It also is closer to Christensen's ideas that initially even Superchargers are not as fast at energy transfer as gas pumps. That would take about 1 MW charging rates. So certain incumbents, eh hem Toyota, feel that they are safe and that hydrogen has some essential advantage.
I do hope that Tesla starts to load up Supercharges with Powerpacks. Not only would this save Tesla on peak demand charges, but these stations could also sell services to the grid. For example, it could provide peak power to protect substation transformers from damaging high loads. There are of course many other places batteries can be placed, but if Tesla is going to go the cost of say MW of storage for a station, they may as well monetize any spare capacity that may afford.
MitchJi
Trying to learn kindness, patience & forgiveness
Tesla's pack building technology (how they assemble the packs) is a very carefully protected trade secret.
There are a lot less barriers to paying Tesla to use their supercharger network and the advantages are much more obvious.
I don't believe that the 2170 format are worth squat as a technology advancement. The size is optimized for the Tesla pack modules which is an advantage for Tesla.
If @vgrinshpun is correct (it looks likely), the cooling technology is a big improvement, but it's not dependent on the size of the cells.
Everyone on this board confuses the fact that the main reason that Tesla can build superior packs using small cylindrical cells is because the format is superior.
It's because Tesla has overcome the problems associated with building packs using small cells. The rest of the industry has decided to go in a different direction. If Tesla had decided for historical reasons to use pouch cells I believe it's obvious that they would have been able to get similar results.
I agree with your comments and is my understanding. However, I think this is about to change, based on the need for others to extend range in a price competitive manner. The Chevy Bolt is not close to the car that Model 3 is and Chevy loses ~$9K/car. With the ZEV program, they can afford to do this. When we get to volume production of Model 3 next year, everything will change. Compliance cars will have to become real competitors to Model 3 and other Tesla cars and trucks to come. GM and other manufacturers must see this coming and must be taking a closer look at Tesla/Panasonic technology. I expect the change over to Tesla-like technology may already be underway. We just don't know about it yet. Yesterday's Gigafactory1 is a significant stimulus to this process. The next Model 3 reveal and other milestones coming this year will be constant reminders that others must find a way to compete on performance and price.
Since form factor is a thing again, let me repost this piece of JB Straubel's keynote at the 2014 Energy Storage Symposium:
If you haven't heard this entire keynote, it's one that is worth it.
If you haven't heard this entire keynote, it's one that is worth it.
I think that "home charging". Is way more important than superchargers as the cause of the disruption, especially if solar powered.
Ever seen the Model S dashboard torn down? I have. It's.... not simple.
Redesigning the dashboard and windshield to accomodate the HUD properly is nontrival. The AP 2.0 hardware changes were, by comparison, trivial.
Notice that Model 3 has a completely different airflow design from model S. Others have pointed out that this leaves lots of uninterrupted space to put the HUD equipment into. The windshield was designed from scratch and could have been made to be compatible with the HUD from day one. For model S, this would all be *retrofit work*, which is harder.
Yep, take a look at it from a Gas Station perspective and it becomes easy to see. Different business model - Tesla isn't selling markup on the energy but a flat fee access to the system (embedded in the car purchase) that they are happy to open up to other manufacturers. The analogy I see here is like a Costco that makes their money on their membership fees, where product markup is all to cover overhead. As well it is fundamentally a different and smaller market since most of your charging is at home. Gas Stations certainly can't compete by installing charging stations the markup would need to be ridiculous to have a car fill up a space for 30mins. Car companies don't think of themselves as infrastructure companies and by now they are way behind. Even if a car company made a real direct competitor to a Tesla you would always go with a Tesla because of the ability for long distance travel - it isn't really about range but the ability to travel. It will become obvious in the future that car companies need to buy into the Tesla supercharger network once they have cars that can actually charge quickly.
I suspect that the $9k loss figure includes program development costs, something that Tesla doesn't put into their COGS. If you believe that the Bolt is mostly a derivative of the Gamma 2 platform, then maybe their development costs aren't so high... but if you believe that the development amounted to near a normal platform development cost, that's roughly $1 billion dollars. At only 30,000 volume initially, maybe ramping to 50,000 or so, over 3 years, that's not a lot cars to amortize the development costs of a platform. Tesla's development costs have been actually quite low... its just that Tesla doesn't have access to the same level of funding. After the Faraday Future presentation the other night, maybe it's a blessing that Tesla couldn't say yes to every little whim their product designers dreamed up. FF seems to have gone through a lot funding without nearly as much progress, given that Tesla blazed a very well lit trail.
As for the other OEMs, I'll believe it when I see the very big and public battery production investments that put the Gigafactory 1 to shame. For the U.S. alone, there are roughly 16 to 20 million cars sold each year. For 25% of that to be long distance BEVs, that's 4 Gigafactory 1's worth at full output, not counting stationary storage at all. That's likely a $10 billion dollar investment for each, and given how cost inefficient the major OEMs tend to be (look at the Daimler battery assembly factory that uses cells made elsewhere), they might need more.
MitchJi
Trying to learn kindness, patience & forgiveness
Your statement in bold above overlooks the fact that the main advantage of the larger scale of the Gigafactory is that this made it economically feasible to design and produce new larger scale and more efficient cell manufacturing equipment.
You stated that Panasonic was using the same cell manufacturing equipment in Japan, so that was the reason that they could get the Gigafactory phase one up so quickly. It's exactly the opposite.
They designed, developed and produced new equipment for the Gigafactory phase one. It's possible that they have also simultaneously produced cell manufacturing equipment using that design in Japan but we don't have any confirmation of that. It's also possible and much more likely that they modified some of their existing equipment to produce 2170 cells instead of 18650 cells.
If they built newly designed equipment in Japan they would be able to produce a lot more cells for substantially less money than their existing 18650's. The evidence seems to be that the volume of 2170's coming out of Japan is very limited.
I agree that Tesla would have done better with pouch cells. However, they would be heading in that direction if pouch cells looked even to be potentially equal to the cylindrical cells they have chosen to use. I trust Tesla's engineering savvy and believe that the path they chose is superior, even today after several years of development of both technologies. Has any one come close to the engineering/cost achievement of the Model 3? As we all well know, most of that achievement is in the battery cells and pack.
racer26
Active Member
Sure, redesigning it is non-trivial. That's what the R&D team is there for.
Changing over the production line, though, to start putting a differently designed pre-assembled dashboard assembly into the same mounting brackets, is trivial. So far as I know, the dashboard is assembled outside the car, and then put in with a few bolts into the A pillars in a single step. No reason you couldn't put a different one in there (with differently designed/routed ductwork) fairly easily.
I'm *still* expecting mass production to be delayed until September, because even with Tesla harassing all suppliers to deliver on time, *someone* is going to screw up *something*. This was basically Elon's point when he said that the July 1 was not achievable and that if he know which part was going to hold it up, he'd fix that, but he doesn't know.
I can just see them needing to get a new supplier due to a shortage of something dopey like lug nuts or fabric glue, discovered at the last minute, causing a three-month delay.
What you're pointing out -- that all the *major* components seem to be well in line and ready to go -- is, however, why I am extremely optimistic about full M3 production happening in Q4 2017.
3Victoria
Active Member
2170 have bigger gaps. Assuming each cell lives in a square, and touches its neighbour: 2170s: 4900-3846.5=1053.5 mm^2, 18650s 4225-3316.6=908.4 mm^2. If the rows are staggered, then the gap is smaller, but the relationship between the two should not change.
Edit: oops, did not see your edit.
What is your opinion about how the new cooling works? a cooling base with gap-filling counter-current fins between the cells? [[ I can't remember the name of those little miracles. ]]
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