I think we need more at the battery level right now compared to the chargers. 250kW on a V3 station is pretty good, if they could hold that up to 60% or so we could see a 75kWh pack regain half the battery (37.5kWh) in as little as 9 minutes. However, that 250kW right now starts to drop almost right away, by like 15% charged or something. That's not the supercharger, that's the battery pack and the chemistry. If you could get a 70 or 80% charge in 15 minutes or less, I think you basically have what you need for the next couple years. It's going to take at least five minutes or so to just use the restroom, another five to ten minutes isn't killer. I would rather see them ramp up installs (and ACTUALLY follow the time line) and improve the charge curve on the batteries (already market leading, but still...) rather than a 400kW supercharger or something that still ramps down to 75kW at 70% battery SOC....
Tesla battery day bingo When it comes to battery breakthroughs, I depend on the counsel of Thomas Edison and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who in a 2014 conference call, said: “My top advice really for anyone who says they’ve got some breakthrough battery technology is please send us a sample cell. Don’t send us PowerPoint, just send us one cell that works with all appropriate caveats. That sorts out the nonsense and the claims that aren’t actually true.”
Electrek reported today that the RoadRunner project is making cells with 2x the diameter of the current 2170. In and of itself that would cut the number of cells per pack by 4x. If that translates directly into pack production speed it would be a kick-ass advance. It also meshes nicely with the prior information about Maxell improvements in cell production speed. So that is my latest guess about the most meaty part of Sept 22: a massive jump in pack production capacity. If it also means lower costs -- watch out, world --- All is not roses, however. Tesla has to contend with cooling issues in the fatter cell. I hope that is addressed during battery day. --- Technical help, please: does a fatter cylinder improve volumetric energy density ? By up to how much ? 2170 increased the pack Volumetric energy density by about 22% over 1865 cell packs but I don't know how much of the improvement was related to changes in the cooling system
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Didn’t Tesla recently have patents on mobile battery pack swapping? That could improve cell utilization. Right now the range of a car is static from point of sale onward, and generally bias towards more range than typically needed. Although forcing buyers to pay for that capacity upfront may be slightly better for revenue, if car and powerwall production is battery constrained, offering battery subscriptions would free up cells. For example, I would subscribe to a 200 mile pack for our S (like my first S) if I could schedule a swap to 400 for road trips. Perhaps the lease is on Tesla’s side, in which I buy the 400 upfront like now, but can rent out my unused capacity to Tesla . Similar to how brokerage can utilize the shares in my account and I get a cut. This is much more appealing in combination with “million mile” batteries.
Question: Would the increased diameter of the "Road Runner" cells that Electrek is showing increase the space between batteries? Picturing 4 say D batteries together vs 4 AA batteries. The 4 D batteries leave a bigger gap in the middle of the batteries. Will the increased capacity and less packaging required result in more power even with the additional gaps? Doe the larger gaps help with cooling? Could they put smaller batteries in the gap to increase capacity?
That is exactly the solution that occurred to me Packaging is a difficult optimization problem -- beyond my ability. That is why I asked for help
Great video, the Limiting Factor (Jordan on YouTube) will have an in-person correspondent for battery day! 1:46:45 Elektrek large battery cell article discussion
As I anticipated, the big improvements (from the real breakthroughs) won't hit volume production for a while. Elon Musk confirms Tesla 'high volume' battery cell production won't start until 2022, will affect Cybertruck, Semi, and Roadster - Electrek
Ok, so I didn't get everything, but it was very cool to see the one slide where they showed the 3 different battery types (Long life, Long range and Mass sensitive). Basically, Long life is is the LFP million mile battery and that it is already implemented. I think everything else was there except for 4, 8, 9 and 10. I'm still absolutely floored by what was announced and can't imagine that they can not only demonstrate the batteries on the Plaid S, but can talk in such great detail that they mention the machine doing the dry electrode is on it's 4th iteration and that they expect full production to be on a future iteration (like 7th gen). Such great engineering detail!
Tesla has shown with >1M cars on the road that battery longevity is a solved problem. Our 8 year warranty is up in a few months, I'm not worried, still have 95% original capacity and supercharge at the same rate as new.