The cans are definitely stressed members and there is
no metallic honeycomb structure. It's simply cans glued together. I see no other way to interpret this verbiage from Elon on 2020 Battery Day, plus the slides.
"[The structural pack] also allows us to pack cells more densely because we do not have intermediate structures in the battery pack...instead of just having a filler that is a flame retardant...we have a filler that is a structural adhesive as well as flame retardant. So, it effectively glues the cells to the top and bottom sheet, and this allows you to do shear transfer between the upper and lower sheet, just like if you have like a Formula 1 craft or like a racing boat, and you have carbon fiber face sheets and, say,
aluminum honeycomb in between them, this gives incredible stiffness and it's really the way any super-fast thing works...we can actually use the steel shell case of the battery to transfer shear from the upper and lower face sheet which makes for an incredibly stiff structure, even stiffer than a regular car...I really think that long term, any cars that do not take this architecture will not be competitive."
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