Blog Tesla Unveils Tabless Battery Cell That Boosts Range by 16%

Tesla unveiled Tuesday at its Battery Day event a new 4680 battery cell, a larger form factor that would increase range by 16%.

Tesla said the new cells will have a 5x  increase in energy and a 6x increase in power capacity. The new cell is 46mm by 80mm, featuring a “tabless” design that enables the efficiencies.

Tesla has reduced parts, created a better electrical connection from the battery, and simplified the manufacturing process. The efficiency in the manufacturing process of the new cell is expected to reduce the price per kWh by 14%. Tesla hopes to eventually reduce that price by 50%.

Tesla is currently producing the cells at a facility near its factory in Fremont, Calif.

Musk also raved about efforts to make the battery factory more efficient, driving home the idea that battery production needs to speed up in order for EVs to have a significant impact on climate change. Musk said it will be a “highway” at “max-velocity” once at scale. Still, Tesla’s new homegrown cells are not expected to reach mass production until 2022. 

Musk said it will take a year for the first facility to reach its 10 GWh production capacity.

Musk hinted that the new battery design will lead to savings necessary for Tesla to introduce a $25,000 electric vehicle.

Watch the full presentation here.

 

[Ed Hart]

Would anyone care to explain what this curve means? I did an accurate overlay on a screen capture from yesterday's Powerpoint. I have been expecting a battery cell with lower internal resistance - the tabless design - to be faster to charge because of reduced taper.....but I cannot deduce that from this particular chart. So, what is this chart telling us? I have trouble imagining that Tesla would launch a new cell design that is slower to charge than the current 2170 or 1865. Help!

 

[marcopone]

Would anyone care to explain what this curve means? I did an accurate overlay on a screen capture from yesterday's Powerpoint. I have been expecting a battery cell with lower internal resistance - the tabless design - to be faster to charge because of reduced taper.....but I cannot deduce that from this particular chart. So, what is this chart telling us? I have trouble imagining that Tesla would launch a new cell design that is slower to charge than the current 2170 or 1865. Help!View attachment 591569

the blue line show the increase of charging time caused from bigger diameter cells of normal tabbed type. the red line state the very low charging time of the tabless cells type. also in case of big diameter batteries the charging time does not increase much and it is a fraction of actual tabbed batteries.
this is probably the main breakthrough of the new tabless cells: charging time will be close to ICE refueling time. besides the advantage for the drivers, who will not have to wait idle for half an hour, the superchargers capacity in terms of number of cars recharged per day will increase 10 to 20 times.

 

[rkmvca]

I do not understand the claims that Tesla are making, especially the "+54% Range". Compared to what? In what vehicle?

- Is it more range per battery cell?
- More range per kg of battery?
- More range per kWH of battery energy?
- More range per $ spent on battery?
- More range per $ spent on car ?
- More range for per 'level' of car (eg, entry level M3)?

Come 11:59 PM December 31, 2022 (Musk said that we wouldn't see "serious volume production" of these technologies until sometime in 2022), how will we judge whether they've met their claims or not?

A verifiable claim would be something like this: A Model 3 Standard Range Plus, which appears to be the entry level model, currently retails for $37,990 and has a range of 250 miles. Taking the 54% range increase at face value, I would expect that an entry level 2022 Model 3, available for under $40K, would have a range of 385 miles. That would be cool! Should we expect this? Somehow I don't think that's what we're going to get though. I'm not sure what we will get, and how it relates to this claim of "54% more range".

The $/kWH reduction is also problematic, but less so. I assume the claim is that cost per kWH at the pack level will be 0.44X what they are now (a "56% reduction"). Of course we don't really know what the baseline is. Did they specify $/kWH at the cell, pack, or car level? I believe that $/kWH at the pack level is the correct answer, however we also don't know what the current value is. I've seen speculation that it's around $150, also that it already approaches $100, also that it's over $200. I think that we are supposed to assume that after the "56% reduction", it will be at or below $100/kWH at the pack level, which people seem to think is a magic number at which EV's will reach purchase cost parity with comparable ICE cars (of course, I think that EV's have reached already reached cost parity at the operating cost level, but that's a different discussion). That would be great, and would mean that current pack level costs are at or below $100/0.44, or around $227 /kWH, which seems in the ballpark. So this goal looks feasible, if a little "spongy" since Tesla, to my knowledge, hasn't 'fessed up to their current costs. Nor should they.

As for the "Investment per GWH reduction", well, I assume this means the $1B spent on a battery factory starting in 2022 will get you 70% more GWH out than a current Gigafactory. I do not know how we'll judge the validity of this claim, because factories are multi-year, multi-billion dollar capital investments which are continually being improved … again, what's the baseline?

 

[Electroman]

the blue line show the increase of charging time caused from bigger diameter cells of normal tabbed type. the red line state the very low charging time of the tabless cells type. also in case of big diameter batteries the charging time does not increase much and it is a fraction of actual tabbed batteries.
this is probably the main breakthrough of the new tabless cells: charging time will be close to ICE refueling time. besides the advantage for the drivers, who will not have to wait idle for half an hour, the superchargers capacity in terms of number of cars recharged per day will increase 10 to 20 times.

Nope.

The curve tells you that tabless cells do not have a negative impact on larger diameter m cells, compared to tabbed one’s. In fact the curve shows the charge time for this new battery will be the same as 2170 or infact be marginally higher

 

[arnolddeleon]

If batteries are struturally integrated into the vehicle, how do you suppose they'll swap out bad cells? There will be bad cells. There are always bad cells.

You change the entire pack. Grind up the the old pack. Tesla hasn't had serviceable packs for a while now. Making a pack modular/repairable has costs. The bet is presumably that the failure rate will be small enough.

 

[brucet999]

Would anyone care to explain what this curve means? I did an accurate overlay on a screen capture from yesterday's Powerpoint. I have been expecting a battery cell with lower internal resistance - the tabless design - to be faster to charge because of reduced taper.....but I cannot deduce that from this particular chart. So, what is this chart telling us? I have trouble imagining that Tesla would launch a new cell design that is slower to charge than the current 2170 or 1865. Help!View attachment 591569

Actually, Supercharging time is a by-product, not the primary goal of the new cell design.

They explained that with tabbed battery cells, the average electrical path is quite long (because all current flow from both ends of the electrode jelly roll must flow to the center where the tab is), generating a relatively large internal resistance and heat. With the tabless cell, current flows directly to one edge of the foil, vastly reducing the length of the electron path (reduced from 25cm on average, to just 40 mm) and thus the internal resistance and resulting heat.

The graphs you asked about were used to identify the cell diameter sweet spot where DC fast charging time of a tabless cell is still very short compared to the very long time needed for a tabbed cell (blue line).

Why is this important? Larger cells package a certain area of electrode (with a certain amount of energy capacity) using less shell metal than several small diameter cells, reducing material cost. And one large cell can be rolled faster than those several smaller diameter cells, which speeds production and reduces cap ex for machinery needed to produce a certain gWh of production. Tabbed cells DC fast charging time increases too fast with increased diameter to allow those economies of cell size. Having perfected tabless design, manufacturing cost can be reduced, shell materials reduced. Also as DC charging time is reduced as the last step of production, then fewer charging stations are required, further reducing capex and required factory space, bringing cost per kWh even lower.

The inverse of charging time is discharge rate. Cutting down internal resistance produces less heat loss, in this case, 16% less, hence the increase in power and range.

 

[arnolddeleon]

Would anyone care to explain what this curve means? I did an accurate overlay on a screen capture from yesterday's Powerpoint. I have been expecting a battery cell with lower internal resistance - the tabless design - to be faster to charge because of reduced taper.....but I cannot deduce that from this particular chart. So, what is this chart telling us? I have trouble imagining that Tesla would launch a new cell design that is slower to charge than the current 2170 or 1865. Help!View attachment 591569

Did they really have no units on the y-axis? That's a little disappointing, but as long as it below the 2170 curve it is not worse. We just don't know how much better it really is. The graph shows a dramatic difference but without the units on the y-axis all we can conclude is they similar in the worst case.

 

[mrco]

With the much higher range the Plaid Model S very likely needs the new batteries, so I would expect Model S refresh (now late next year) and probably Model X will accommodate the new batteries. This would chime with their low volume production in c1 year. They will also be needed for Cybertruck and Semi so production of those models will ramp as they get into 'volume' production of the new cells in 2022. My guess is that they won't have them for 3/Y until they are significantly refreshed (by which time they will have more battery production capacity available).

 

[RidgeRunner]

I'm pretty sure they'll do what Mercedes is doing for their electric car.

 

[Brando]

You change the entire pack. Grind up the the old pack. Tesla hasn't had serviceable packs for a while now. Making a pack modular/repairable has costs. The bet is presumably that the failure rate will be small enough.

BAD cells have never, ever been replaced. Which is why batteries can be put into chassis - eliminating modules and packs.

(Try to find a bad cell replacement - you won't find any.)

 

[brucet999]

BAD cells have never, ever been replaced. Which is why batteries can be put into chassis - eliminating modules and packs.

(Try to find a bad cell replacement - you won't find any.)

Some high-mileage Teslas (over 200,000 miles) have received battery pack replacements, due to degradation. I wonder how degradation would be addressed with integrated cells concept? The gif that played during the presentation seemed to show a structural battery pack case being joined to front and rear under-body castings to form the frame of the car. Seems unlikely that it could be swapped out for another one after the pack performance degrades.

 

[brucet999]

That was a classic. Fun to see it again.

 

[Brando]

Some high-mileage Teslas (over 200,000 miles) have received battery pack replacements, due to degradation. I wonder how degradation would be addressed with integrated cells concept? The gif that played during the presentation seemed to show a structural battery pack case being joined to front and rear under-body castings to form the frame of the car. Seems unlikely that it could be swapped out for another one after the pack performance degrades.

the key word is "SOME"
IF you almost never charge to 100% and only charge to 80% - batteries may never wear out.
80% also much faster at charging stations (saves you time in the long run)
Newer batteries may be fine to 85 or 90%.

 

[ZeApelido]

Would anyone care to explain what this curve means? I did an accurate overlay on a screen capture from yesterday's Powerpoint. I have been expecting a battery cell with lower internal resistance - the tabless design - to be faster to charge because of reduced taper.....but I cannot deduce that from this particular chart. So, what is this chart telling us? I have trouble imagining that Tesla would launch a new cell design that is slower to charge than the current 2170 or 1865. Help!View attachment 591569

They purposely do not show scale and make it hard to differentiate what the heating differences would be with a 2170 mm cell with or without tabs. So we do not have a direct comparison with current cells on how much less heat is generated.

In addition, supercharging rates are not just limited by heat generation, but other factors that affect long term degradation of the cells. Tesla has likely improved on those facets as well.

So, it is impossible to know how much better the recharge rate will be. Again, on purpose, because Tesla does not want to Osborne current sales.

Based on the fact V3 superchargers might be able to charge up to 600 kW, we might see recharge rates drop to ~30% of current times.

 

[Hrtme]

Ya they should have showed a chart with temperature profile charging tabless vs tabbed. The assumsuon is less internal resistance and less heat but how much.

 

[Weeee]

Some high-mileage Teslas (over 200,000 miles) have received battery pack replacements, due to degradation. I wonder how degradation would be addressed with integrated cells concept? The gif that played during the presentation seemed to show a structural battery pack case being joined to front and rear under-body castings to form the frame of the car. Seems unlikely that it could be swapped out for another one after the pack performance degrades.

Think about how often does that happen and when it happens will it be expensive to swap out the entire structure if the overall cost to manufacture it is lower?

 

[brucet999]

Think about how often does that happen and when it happens will it be expensive to swap out the entire structure if the overall cost to manufacture it is lower?

It certainly won't be like that automated pack-swapping machinery they tested for Model S several years ago.

 

[brucet999]

Ya they should have showed a chart with temperature profile charging tabless vs tabbed. The assumsuon is less internal resistance and less heat but how much.

16% less energy loss to internal resistance. That is where the 16% more range figure comes from.

 

[micheljull]

16% less energy loss to internal resistance. That is where the 16% more range figure comes from.

Hi ! The bulk of the 16% more range *from form factor alone* comes from the 14% more height imho. You would get a similar increase with hypothetical 2180 cells.

 

[Ed Hart]

Thanks, everyone. I think my conclusion is this:

1. Tesla wants The Street to continue to see Tesla as the leader in EV technology....but the SEC is watching; alway alert to things that might be considered stock manipulation (Nikola, for example.)

2. The curves show that - all other things being equal and unchanged - the lower internal resistance of the tabless design allows the superior thermal management over tabbed designs. "All other things being equal and unchanged" includes cooling methods, anode and cathode designs, material choices, etc.

3. Tesla does not wish to fully reveal the capability of coming vehicles. The could otherwise suffer from the Osborne Effect: the promise of something better tomorrow slows sales today.

4. Which brings me to the conclusion that the new 4680 cells will create packs that can Supercharge at less than half the current times, perhaps only one third.

5. The final design is far from finalized, so we will just have to wait.