What's wrong with Tesla's announced increased capacity battery

Hello dear guests and subscribers of my channel. Just the other day, there was a presentation of a new battery from Tesla, which was supposed to literally turn the entire market for lithium-containing batteries. After all, the new batteries had to be at least 6 times more powerful and 5 times more capacious than the existing counterparts.

In words, everything turned out to be beautiful, but, as it turned out, it was not without rigging.

What's wrong with new batteries

As it turned out, the capacity of Tesla's new battery cells was not due to the use of any new technological innovation, but corny due to an increase in the volume of the cell itself.

The "bloated" form factor 4680 (cell diameter 46 mm and height 80 mm) was presented to the public. So, if you just compare with the currently used cell 2170, which is actively used in batteries Tesla, it turns out that the physical volume of the 4680 form factor is exactly six times more.

It turns out that the whole innovation lies in the "inflation" of the cell. Moreover, during this process, the capacity did not increase sixfold, but only fivefold.

According to company representatives, such processing will increase the range on a single charge by approximately 16%.

Also, the transition to a new form factor was relatively easy, because we had to solve the problem of removing excess heat. So the decision was made to remove the copper spacer and instead wrap the entire element in a heat dissipating copper spacer.

Why the new 4680 batteries are needed

Calculations and tests have shown that the new battery form factor will reduce the cost of storing a kilowatt-hour immediately by 14 percent. But this still will not allow to fully compete with classic gasoline cars.

After all, as the calculations of Carin Energy Research Advisors have shown, electric cars will become competitive when the cost of energy storage drops to $ 156. So the 14% cost reduction does not yet give the required competitive price.

But the company is looking for more ways to lower the cost. And one of the ways will be a complete or partial abandonment of expensive cobalt and a switch to nickel while simultaneously solving the issue of processing spent elements at our own plants.

Since Elon Musk said (it was he who presented the "new" batteries), the release of current and new 4680 cells will be increased by at least 85 times in the next three years and will be about 3000 GW * h (now this figure is 35 GW * h).

But the truly full-scale release of the new 4680 batteries will not start until three years from now. New nickel cathodes will be produced at their own factory, which has not even been built.

So the presentation was over, and as always, there is not much specifics and additional information will be provided later.

This is how the new battery of increased power from Tesla turned out. If you liked the material, then put your thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. Thank you for your attention!