Welcome back everyone, I’m Jordan Giesige
and this is The Limiting Factor.
This is the final video in the Battery Investor
Day series.
Rest assured, there will be more videos on
the topic.
I expect, at minimum, to do a livestream on
the day and a follow up video on my predictions.
However, I felt there should be a final video
for now to put a cherry on top.
That is, to correct my errors, share new information
and information, address points made in the
comments, and restack what we can expect from
Tesla’s new battery chemistry based on the
new information.
Let’s start with the errors:
In the technical deep dive video, I shared
this research paper.
This is the first major area where my speculation
was off.
I referred to the paper as Shirley Meng’s
research paper because it involved Shirley’s
lab.
However, this paper actually involved two
labs: The second lab was the Army Research
Laboratory.
The first lead on the research was Judith
Alvarado.
Judith now works at Sila Nanotechnologies,
which should ring a bell for those of you
who watched the technical deep dive video.
The second lead was Marshall Schroeder, who
works for the Army Research Laboratory.
The primary overseer was Kang Xu, also from
the Army Research Laboratory.
Kang Xu is one of the world’s leading experts
on electrolytes.
There is a lot of interesting work coming
out of the Army Research Laboratory and I
may do a video on them in the future, or alternatively,
an entire video on the military’s interest
in battery technology.
The second correction is that this chemistry
probably won’t be the chemistry Tesla uses
in their upcoming batteries.
I selected this paper because the chemistry
hit the right notes.
That chemistry was LNMO, or Lithium Nickel
Manganese Oxide.
It was:
Cobalt Free, which would reduce costs;
High energy density;
Non-flammable; and
The chemistry was slated to be tested with
Maxwell’s dry electrode technology, so I
expected it was within striking distance of
commercialisation.
However, the one drawback we discussed was
that it didn’t appear to have the excellent
cycle life required to hit 1 million miles.
We had to rely on some speculation to get
there.
It turns out that speculation was too optimistic.
The paper indicates that the LNMO - MCMB full
cells were tested at a C/5 cycling rate and
the material cost of this new electrolyte
is unknown in the context of a commercial
application.
On other words, it would be stretch for the
chemistry to last a million miles, and it
might be expensive.
MCMB stands for mesocarbon microbeads, which
is just a type of graphite anode and a C/5
cycling rate is a cycling rate of 5 hours
for charge and discharge.
While this electrolyte system is a promising
route to make use of the high voltage capability
of LNMO, it would be difficult to scale this
material for the thousands of tonnes Tesla
would need.
Extensive safety testing, long term storage
and long term cycling also needs to be completed
before it can be considered for any commercial
application
I also overestimated the specific energy of
the cathode material.
The specific energy of LNMO is low, and even
with the extra voltage potential it sustains,
it still ends up with a lower specific energy
than current market leading chemistries.
This slide from CATL does an excellent job
of summarising this.
We can clearly see the high nickel/lower voltage
chemistries edge out the high voltage LNMO
chemistry by about 10%.
The high voltage just doesn’t quite close
the gap.
One thing I underestimated was how much voltage
effects the specific energy of the battery.
Even a .1 volt increase can have a significant
impact on specific energy.
We’ll come back to this when we restack
our new battery chemistry.
In the technical deep dive video, I offered
a potential alternative route to hitting 385wh/kg
by increasing the cell diameter.
As a point of clarification, all watt hour
per kilogram numbers I provide in this video
will be at the cell level.
Cell diameter is second major area where my
speculation was off.
I suggested that increasing the cell diameter
could increase the energy density.
I still see this as a possibility, but the
impact of changing the diameter wouldn’t
be as drastic as I calculated in that video.
To understand why, we need to look at how
increasing the diameter would increase energy
density.
When the diameter of the battery cell is increased,
it of course becomes larger.
Larger objects have lower surface area in
proportion to volume.
This means a larger battery cell has less
casing material by weight and more active
material.
Therefore, the cell has a higher specific
energy density.
I suggested that the increase in specific
energy would be proportional to volume.
That would look something like this if it
were true (show exponential graph).
That is, a small change to diameter having
a big impact on specific energy, but that’s
incorrect.
When we change the diameter it actually has
a less drastic impact.
It would look something more like this (show
linear graph).
This graph takes into account the surface
area to volume ratio, rather than just volume.
As you can see, changing the diameter has
an impact on energy density, but it’s not
huge.
Let’s run the numbers on a diameter increase
with better information:
I advised in the technical deep dive video
that when Tesla moved from the 18650 to 2170
cell size it yielded a 3% specific energy
density increase.
I found a better resource, which is a paper
by Jason B. Quinn, et al.
They calculated it should be more like 2%,
so I’ll use that number.
Instead of getting the 21% increase in energy
density by doubling the diameter, it would
be more like 5%.
Although 5% is disappointing compared to 21%,
it’s still quite an impact.
The real benefit of increasing the cell size
would be to decrease manufacturing complexity.
Here is another illustration from Jason’s
research paper showing that the roughly 33%
increase in volume means 33% fewer cells.
33% fewer cells means 33% fewer cell casings,
jellyrolls, electrolyte fillings, and connections
to weld.
There was some good feedback in the comments
about the structure that cylindrical cells
add to Tesla vehicles.
And, for that reason, the diameter couldn’t
be changed.
However, that doesn’t seem to be the case
from my research.
Tesla chose cylindrical cells because they
were cheaper, widely available, and the cell
wall provided structure to the cell itself
which made the cell more durable.
If the cells truly were that important to
vehicle structure, then removing and adding
battery cells to the vehicles would affect
the vehicle structure.
Tesla removes and adds cells to the pack often,
and I know of no cases where it affected vehicle
structure.
The symptoms would be reduced crashworthiness
or poor handling.
If these things were happening, I’m sure
there would be an uproar.
The last major error I made was using an incorrect
slide for Sila Nanotechnologies.
This slide shows the performance of their
Cathode material rather than their Silicon
anode material.
This was just a case of me jumping the gun
when I found the research.
I assumed that Sila was only working on silicon
anodes.
The Silicon Anode material has pretty well
been kept under wraps and there doesn’t
seem to be any research information in the
public sphere.
This is a good time to discuss why I chose
Sila Nanotechnologies as the supplier for
the high silicon anode, Nano One as the supplier
for the single crystal cathode, and SilLion
as a manufacturing partner.
As a quick reminder, a single crystal cathode
means that the cathode materials have an additional
coating that reduces cracking, which makes
the cathode material more durable.
Gene Berdichevsky is the co-founder and CEO
of Sila.
Gene was employee number 7 at Tesla and he
was instrumental in solving some of the early
battery challenges the company faced with
the Roadster.
Kurt Kelty is Sila’s VP of automotive.
Kurt was Senior Director of Battery Technology
at Tesla for over 10 years and was the mastermind
behind Gigafactory and the Panasonic partnership.
As we mentioned earlier, Judith Alvarado,
who worked with Shirley Meng, is now also
working at Sila.
It’s either a very small world, or Sila
has something special.
As for NanoOne, there are many companies that
can produce single crystal coatings, such
as CATL in China.
To compete, any startup will need a good process
and plenty of capital.
They appear to have both.
They have a streamlined process for producing
their materials and here is a snapshot of
their assets vs liabilities which appears
to be rock solid.
This is why I chose NanoOne of all the possibilities.
As a side note – This is not investment
advice.
It’s very possible that Tesla could manufacture
some of these battery materials in house,
use another producer, or acquire a producer.
Finally, SilLion.
This is already a done deal.
The founders were hired by Tesla.
This WAS public information available on their
LinkedIn profiles.
Previously, they listed that they were working
for Tesla, but that’s now been changed back
to SilLion.
However, the website is still down for SilLion,
so it looks like it’s closed for business.
Additionally, the PDF document that I referenced
in my video is no longer available online.
It appears someone has been doing some scrubbing.
Beyond that, Tesla is hiring people in Colorado,
right next door to SilLion.
Thanks again to Galileo Russell for this excellent
breadcrumb.
Let’s look at the first new piece of information:
The best place to start is the gap we now
have in our battery chemistry.
Earlier we talked about the Lithium Nickel
Manganese Oxide chemistry.
It was cobalt free, but it didn’t have high
specific energy and it couldn’t hit 1 million
miles under real-life testing conditions.
The best place to look for a million-mile
battery is Jeff Dahn’s lab at Dalhousie
University, which happens to be Tesla’s
exclusive research partner.
Tesla uses a battery chemistry called NCA
or Nickel Cobalt Aluminum.
It’s mostly Nickel, probably around 85-90%,
2.8% Cobalt, and the remainder 7-12% being
Aluminum.
At the atomic level, it’s a layered structure.
The NCA material forms sheets.
In between those sheets is where the lithium
ions hang out.
When you charge the battery, it forces the
ions exit the sheets and move to the anode
side If those sheets break down, then the
ions can’t exit the sheet and you lose battery
life.
Cobalt was added because it was thought to
keep these sheets clean, orderly, and well
structured.
However, since those early studies were done,
the process to create these layers has improved.
Due to this, there’s been a question in
the scientific community as to whether the
cobalt was even needed anymore and could be
replaced by extra nickel.
The push to remove cobalt is for three reasons:
Nickel has a similar energy capacity, it’s
1/5th the cost of cobalt, and it’s difficult
to source cobalt that hasn’t been mined
by children in a mud pit – no company in
their right mind wants that association.
Aluminum was added to the chemistry because
it provides thermal stability and safety.
It’s cheap, at 1/6 the cost of Nickel and
1/30 the cost of Cobalt.
It’s plentiful and it doesn’t have the
public image risks of Cobalt.
It doesn’t add much energy capacity to the
cell, but it might be possible to reduce the
Aluminum content to 5%, which would allow
for very high nickel.
Which would of course mean high energy density.
This brings us to Nickel.
You can only stuff so much Nickel in a battery
cell before the particles start to crack and
cause unwanted reactions in the battery.
These unwanted reactions reduce battery life.
Nickel needs a bit of assistance to hold itself
together.
Enter this paper, by Jeff’s team, lead by
Hongyang Li, et al, titled “Is Cobalt Needed
in Ni-Rich Positive Electrode Materials for
Lithium Ion Batteries?”
I’ll translate the abstract, but first,
we need to understand what it’s talking
about when it mentions phase transitions.
When you charge and discharge a battery, the
alignment of the crystal structure changes.
This is called a phase transition.
When the crystal structure changes, it affects
the flow of ions in and out of the cathode
sheets we mentioned earlier.
If these changes are large and the crystal
structure changes a lot, it’s an indication
that the material isn’t as stable and it
will degrade sooner.
There are two ways to test these phase transitions:
The first is to measure the voltage and current,
which will show spikes where there is a large
phase transition.
The second is to take x-rays.
Let’s go back to the translation of the
abstract:
“NCA is a widely used chemistry.
The cobalt and aluminum are believed to add
safety.
However, there’s no proof that cobalt adds
safety.
We tested the phase transitions of multiple
chemistries to test this.
We started with a high nickel chemistry and
then swapped doping materials in and out.
Those other materials were cobalt, aluminum,
manganese, and magnesium.
The high nickel chemistry that had no doping
and the high nickel chemistry doped with cobalt
had huge phase transitions.
The high nickel chemistry doped with magnesium,
aluminum, or manganese were all very stable.
In fact, just as stable as the widely used
NCA chemistry.
We then tested to see what affect cobalt,
aluminum, manganese, and magnesium had on
battery cell flammability.
All of them suppressed flammability except
for cobalt, which took off like a rocket.
We believe we need to get this cobalt **** out
of batteries immediately and we hope you start
researching these cobalt-free materials as
well.”
Tesla’s choice to go with NCA chemistry
years ago has turned out to be an excellent
choice for the long run.
Over the years, as more evidence has come
out that Cobalt isn’t needed, they’ve
reduced the amount of Cobalt in the battery.
This research paper puts a nail in the coffin
of cobalt.
I expect Tesla would use Nickel Aluminum rather
than Nickel Magnesium because it would be
a logical evolution of their current NCA chemistry.
I expect the Nickel Manganese would be the
least likely choice, because of the three
low flammability doping agents, it was the
most flammable.
We’ll refer to the Nickel Aluminum cathode
as NA 9505, which stands for 95% Nickel and
5% Aluminum.
Based on this graph from CATL, the similar
NMC chemistry has experienced a roughly 10%
increase in energy density for a 30% increase
in Nickel fraction.
Or a 1 to 3 ratio.
If that ratio held for Tesla’s NCA chemistry,
which is probably around 85-90% Nickel, the
increase to 95% Nickel content could yield
a 2-3% specific energy density improvement.
Split the difference and that’s a 2.5% improvement.
We’ll come back to this number when we restack
our cell.
However, there’s one thing that’s needed
before cobalt can be completely removed.
That one thing is a single crystal coating.
As I suggested earlier these coatings reduce
cracking in the cathode material.
This is especially true for high nickel cathodes
that are susceptible to cracking.
Why is a single crystal coating so effective
at preventing degradation?
This would require its own deep dive video,
but the cliff notes are that the coating is
made of titanium.
Titanium is one of the most corrosion resistant,
durable, and lightweight metals known to man.
Note that the research paper shown on screen
was led by Lin Ma at Jeff Dahn’s lab, and
the titanium material being referenced was
the same that was used in testing for the
million mile battery.
After the cobalt removal paper was published,
later in the year, in September, Jeff’s
team at Dalhousie went on to drop a bombshell
paper that lays out a benchmark chemistry
for a million-mile battery.
The paper, led by Jessie Harlow, was titled
“A Wide Range of Testing Results on an Excellent
Lithium-Ion Cell Chemistry to be used as Benchmarks
for New Battery Technologies.”
We’ll just refer to it as the million mile
battery paper.
A quick summary of the paper is that a single
crystal cathode with the right combination
of electrolyte solution and additives can
hit 4000 cycles in abusive conditions.
The cathode material was NMC 532.
This just means that it was 50% Nickel, 30%
Cobalt, and 20% Manganese.
The testing took three years for the long
term cycling tests.
However, within a few weeks they would have
gotten indicative results with high precision
coulometry and known they were on to something.
If you want to know what high precision coulometry
is, check out my Jeff Dahn video.
They could have then started to test the single
crystal Nickel Aluminum cathode with these
same electrolytes.
If that’s the case, why haven’t we seen
such research from Jeff Dahn’s lab?
As we mentioned earlier, there is an exclusive
research agreement between Jeff Dahn and Tesla.
I imagine if they did do these tests it’s
commercial confidential.
Testing the cobalt free chemistry with the
same type of additives and coatings as the
million mile battery would have been the next
logical step and exactly what Tesla is looking
for.
If you look closely, you’ll also notice
another benefit of the million-mile battery
chemistry.
It operated at 4.3 volts instead of the usual
4.2 volts.
That’s a .1 volt increase.
In the tech deep dive video, my calculations
for the effect of a voltage increase were
incorrect.
I would have this .1 volt increase as the
2.4% increase from 4.2 to 4.3 volts.
However, the base voltage of a lithium ion
battery is 3 volts.
This means the jump would actually be from
1.2 to 1.3 volts, which is an 8.3% increase.
Let’s look at the second new piece of information.
Maxwell stated in their marketing material
that their dry battery electrode technology
would improve energy density by 10%.
I didn’t elaborate in the technical deep
dive video why this might be the case.
I see two potential ways the dry electrode
tech could boost specific energy:
The first is straightforward.
With a dry electrode coating there is less
inert material and more active material per
unit of mass.
In other words, there’s less junk and more
good stuff.
Let’s see if we can work out how much more.
I found some great in-depth information from
a research paper titled “Solvent-free additive
manufacturing of electrodes for Li-ion batteries”
by Brandon Ludwig.
Typically, a wet slurry electrode is 10% binder
and graphite.
With a dry coating, this can be reduced to
1% each and still provide similar durability
and conductivity to a wet slurry coating.
This means that a dry coating offers an 8%
increase in energy density.
However, this was a lab situation and not
yet a fully commercialised product.
The commercial product may find a balance
point that seeks greater durability and conductivity.
8% is our theoretical maximum, unless there
is some other magic happening with the dry
battery electrode that we don’t know about.
Given the range is 0% to 8%, I’d view Maxwell’s
10% claim with scepticism.
However, a 5% increase seems perfectly reasonable.
We’ll revisit this number when we restack
the cell.
The second might allow for beyond a 10% increase
in specific energy.
I noticed in quite a bit of the Maxwell collateral
the cathode thickness frequently came up.
Most battery cathodes are 100 micrometres
thick.
Maxwell was aiming for a cathode that was
200-300 micrometres thick.
I didn’t realise the significance of this
until I ran a calculation on the impact of
thicker cathode.
If I’ve calculated this correctly, it looks
like a 25% increase in cathode thickness would
mean a 10% increase in energy density at the
cell level.
Conventional batteries using a wet slurry
process can coat thicker than 100 micrometres.
However, cathodes aren’t coated much thicker
than this because the ions have a difficult
time pushing through the extra thick cathode.
That means more heat, and slower charge and
discharge rates.
In fact, cathodes are often made thicker or
thinner depending on the application.
Thicker cathodes are higher energy density
but lower output, and thinner cathodes are
higher power output and lower energy density.
For reference, power is how quickly a cell
puts out electricity and energy how much energy
it stores.
This presents us with a tricky problem.
I’ve created this triangle to represent
it.
If we move to any corner of this triangle,
we move further away from the other corners.
This means Tesla couldn’t significantly
increase charge and discharge rate, increase
cell size, and increase cell diameter all
at the same time.
If you want a higher discharge and charge
rate, you generate more heat
If you want a thicker cathode for more energy
density, you generate more heat
If you want a bigger cell for ease of manufacturing,
the battery would be harder to cool
In order to beat the triangle problem, you’d
need to shrink the triangle.
There are three ways to do this:
1) Maxwell dry battery electrode technology
is more conductive and allows quicker and
deeper access into the cathode material.
This means less heat and faster charging and
discharging.
2) A better cooling system.
This one is obvious, but we’ll go into some
options below.
3) Supercapacitors AKA supercaps.
Maxwell also specialises in Supercaps, which
have no issues with soaking up and discharging
huge amounts of power quickly.
For number one, as I stated in the Model Y
scaling video, Maxwell’s dry battery electrode
technology will likely be implemented for
Tesla’s new in-house battery cell, but not
for their legacy cells.
Hold that thought for the restacking we’ll
do later in the video.
To better understand the cooling opportunity,
here’s an illustration of the Tesla Model
3 cooling system.
There are three ways to improve upon this:
1) Each cooling band cools two rows of cells.
The number of cooling bands could be doubled.
A higher energy density cell would make space
for this.
2) Total immersion, which was illustrated
in this patent in the terawatt scaling video.
3) Tab cooling or plate cooling, which we
haven’t discussed before.
Thanks to Sagan on Sustainability who brought
this to my attention.
Researchers have found that cooling the ends
of the batteries is extremely effective.
The ends contain the battery tabs, which are
connected to the cathode and anode foil.
Cooling the battery ends conducts through
the entire battery.
If the Cybertruck, roadster or semi has two
layers of batteries, they will almost certainly
need to do this.
Tesla has made improvements to cooling in
the past.
With a new battery chemistry comes new battery
cell physics.
With new cell physics comes a new pack design,
especially if Tesla moves to cell to pack
technology discussed in the Terawatt scaling
video.
Elon has said several times that supercaps
won’t be used in Tesla vehicles.
This is a large subject area and beyond the
scope of this video.
In short, the cost-benefit of supercapacitors
may not be high enough to make them worthwhile.
I’ll take Elon at his word on this and cross
supercaps off our list.
With these three options in mind, Tesla can
shrink the triangle.
However, they would still need to make some
trade off decisions, which will be discussed
in a moment.
In light of all this new information, let’s
restack our battery cell.
In the Terawatt Scaling video, I suggested
that Tesla will continue working with Panasonic
in the near future.
With that in mind, we need two predictions:
One prediction for the 2170 and 18650 cells,
and another prediction for what will be in
the Tesla manufactured dry cell.
I’ll refer to the 18650 and 2170 as the
legacy format and the Tesla cell as the advanced
format.
I expect both the legacy and advanced format
to use a cobalt free, million-mile battery.
This will be achieved with a high nickel,
slightly higher voltage, single crystal coated
cathode made of Nickel and Aluminum and a
Dalhousie special electrolyte.
In 2019, CATL had prismatic, high nickel batteries
sprinkled silicon that were achieving 270
watt hours per kilogram.
Earlier I mentioned that Tesla could achieve
even higher nickel contents, allowing for
a 2.5% energy density improvement.
If that’s the case, this would push the
energy density to 277 watt hours per kilogram.
This is my low-end estimate for Tesla’s
legacy chemistry.
I’m assuming this is a 4.2 volt chemistry.
If the battery management systems of the Model
S, X, Y, and 3 can handle 4.3 volts, we might
expect 300wh per kilogram.
This would be the 8.3% boost from the .1 volt
increase discussed earlier, which could be
multiplied in to the 277 watt hours per kilogram
base number.
We’ll cap the legacy chemistry at 300wh
per kilogram, because a high loaded silicon
anode may not be compatible with wet-slurry
based cells.
The advanced format would use the full 4.3
volts and have a specific energy of around
300wh/kg as a base number.
This is based on my speculation of a new battery
pack and battery management system, which
could be designed to handle 4.3 volts.
Returning to the Maxwell dry battery electrode,
the 5% increase from a denser cathode material
would increase the energy density on our 300wh
per kilogram battery cell to 315wh per kilogram.
Our next options are a thicker cathode and
larger cell diameter.
This brings us back to the triangle problem.
I’ll speculate that Tesla will not go with
a thicker cathode.
The thicker cathode and anode would offer
great energy density improvements but have
the largest negative impact on the charge
and discharge rate.
Battery cathodes and anodes are like parking
lots for ions.
The surface of those materials are like exit
and entry roads.
If you keep the same number entry and exit
roads, increasing the parking lot size means
more traffic at the entry and exit points.
This means it’s harder to get in and out.
In our battery cell, this means more resistance,
which in turn means more heat and slower discharge
and charge rates.
Instead, my view is that Tesla will instead
keep the increased charge and discharge rates
that Maxwell’s technology provides, which
will also keep the battery cooler.
This will allow for an increase the cell diameter.
However, even with less heat generation, the
cell would more difficult to cool and warm
because it is thicker.
This could be dealt with an improved thermal
management system.
A larger cell diameter would normally mean
lots of retooling and millions in capital
expense.
However, if they are creating a new battery
line anyways, this shouldn’t incur additional
cost, but would save money and increase manufacturing
line speed significantly.
The diameter increase would also net another
5% in specific energy.
This would bring us up to 330wh per kilogram.
What about the 385-390wh per kilogram battery
I suggested in past videos?
That’s still attainable, but probably 4-5
years away from commercial production.
There may be a loophole to this, which we’ll
discuss in a moment.
But first we need to understand why silicon
is so difficult to incorporate into batteries.
The issue with a high silicon anode is that
it expands and contracts several hundred percent
as the battery charges and discharges.
This causes the battery materials to become
unstuck from each other and from the electrode
foil.
Maxwell claims that the battery dry battery
electrode has a better sticky factor, which
makes sense given that it has the consistency
of bubble-gum.
This means the dry battery electrode may be
a prerequisite for a high silicon anode.
If Maxwell and SilLion can get the high loaded
silicon anode to stick, it would be pretty
astounding.
My wild speculation is that this is what Tesla
is working on in Colorado with SilLion, and
they are attempting to accelerate this technology
from 4-5 years to maybe just a few years.
A high loaded silicon Anode with a Nickel
Rich cathode would top out at around 400wh
per kilogram, which is the theoretical limit
for this type of chemistry.
With a restacked chemistry and new information,
let’s compare the odds table from the tech
deep dive video against our final update.
Once again, this is what I expect to be in
production within 1 year from battery investor
day.
As you can see, we start in the same place,
but the taper is much stronger.
Let’s put this into perspective.
If Tesla gets to 300wh per kilogram, that’s
industry leading.
If the battery is also 1 million miles and
cobalt free, we’d be looking at the culmination
of about 40 years of work by Jeff Dahn.
Jeff was one of the pioneers of the Lithium
Ion battery.
He was probably 5th in line behind Goodenough,
Whittingham, and Yoshino when they received
a Nobel Prize for the Lithium Ion battery
last year.
A 1 million mile, cobalt free battery might
secure an eventual Nobel Prize for Jeff.
Anything beyond 300wh per kilogram is insane.
In fact, I don’t know if Tesla will even
reveal the gravimetric and volumetric energy
density at battery investor day.
Elon has been cagey about specific numbers
in the past.
I suspect the focus will be on 1 million miles,
the magic of Jeff’s additive combination,
cobalt free, cost per kilowatt hour, a new
pack design with reduced pack weight, the
impact on range, the impact on charging speed,
and the impact on performance.
One last point to cover and get your opinion
on is that there were several comments suggesting
that Tesla would pull out of the Giga Nevada
very soon or by the end of the year.
My opinion on this is that is unlikely, for
3 reasons:
1) Tesla would need to produce or find 40
gwhs of cells and fast, and Panasonic would
need to find someone to buy those cells fast.
I don’t know of any way Tesla could replace
those cells in the next few years, or anyone
who has use for 40gwhs of cells from Panasonic.
2) It would be a huge waste of capital, energy,
and effort for both parties.
The battery cell lines are like money printers,
there is no reason to shut them down for any
timeframe if the demand is there.
3) Just a few months ago Panasonic suggested
they were ready to ramp up to 54 gwh of production.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this,
so let me know in the comments below.
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I also have a Patreon, Twitter, and a Subreddit.
You can find the details of those in the description.
A special thanks to Joel Sapp, Johan Knagenhjelm,
and Bears on a Submarine for your generous
support of the channel, and all the other
patrons listed in the credits.
I appreciate all of your support, and thanks
for tuning in.
