In the past two days, a Tesla tweet has caused an uproar in the industry — a pilot factory in California produced 1 million 4680 batteries in January and is expected to begin delivering the new Model Y with 4680 batteries.
It's been a year and a half since Tesla released the "4680 Battery" on Battery Day in September 2020.
What is the 4680 Battery? Why did his loading news cause an uproar? Will his arrival "shoot" the lithium iron phosphate battery on the beach? Brother Qing mainly comes to discuss the above three issues with you today.
Tesla's ternary lithium battery has always been a cylinder, just like our remote control, toy car used, the earliest is 1850, that is, the diameter of 18mm, height 50mm shell, then 4680 compared to the first generation of batteries how much larger, I believe we should be able to calculate it.
Therefore, 4680 is not a new material, the positive and negative electrodes are still mainly based on high nickel + graphite, high nickel + silicon carbon / silicon oxygen, which is also the strategy of other shaped cells in the current industry, so it is white that it is a larger ternary lithium battery.
However, this "big" component is indeed very heavy, for example, it means that the energy density is higher, the energy of the single cell is increased by 5 times, and the output power is increased by 6 times; at the same time, the Model Y with 2170 batteries uses about 4416 2170 battery cells for the whole car, but if it is changed to 4680 batteries, the whole car will only need 1000 pieces, and the reduction in the number of battery packs is also lower, which is expected to reduce the price of power batteries by more than 56%.
Of course, since the battery is larger and the density can achieve such an effect, why don't we all do it? Among them, there are naturally technical difficulties, such as the full polar ear technology on the 4680.
Traditional polar ear battery, the current concentration on the polar ear has become the hottest place for the battery, in order to solve the heat problem, the industry has made a bipolar ear, multi-pole ear and so on. Full polar ear or electrodeless ear battery, there is no centralized heating point inside the battery, and there is a great advantage in the thermal management of the battery package. The elimination of the design of the polar ear is disruptive to the industry' changes, and for battery thermal management, the reduction of heat generation also means that the design of the battery liquid cooling system may not be needed.
In fact, the production of 4680 batteries is also a very difficult thing for Tesla, otherwise it will not drag on for nearly two years, the main difficulty is the low yield brought about by the extreme difficulty of polar ear laser welding, the initial 4680 yield rate they manufactured was only 20%, and by October 2021, it will be increased to 80%.
Now can roar out the slogan of about to load the car, because its yield rate has reached an average of 92%, the highest reached 97%, the lowest is 79%, basically has reached the level of mass production, from this point, Tesla's ability to improve and control the yield rate can be seen, at least this round is ahead of Panasonic and other international battery giants.
It's just that the 4680 battery is good, but if you say that he can revolutionize the life of the lithium iron phosphate battery, it is still far from the point of view of Qingge.
In essence, after all, 4680 is only a size, a large size container, since it can be filled with ternary lithium, naturally it can also contain lithium iron phosphate, and even further reduce costs. From the current trend of major battery manufacturers, it can also be seen that many parties in the industrial chain are actively laying out 4680 batteries. Taking Ewell Lithium Energy as an example, its investment of 46.3 billion yuan to build the Jingmen Power Energy Storage Battery Industrial Park has officially started, covering the entire industrial chain of lithium batteries and bringing together many lithium battery industry leaders. At the scene of the start of the construction activity, Liu Jincheng, chairman of EWELL Lithium Energy, made it clear that "it may be the first mass production base of 4680 and 4695 batteries in the world, and the batteries produced here will be equipped to the world."
In addition, in the "20GWh passenger car large cylindrical battery production line and auxiliary facilities project" of Ewell Lithium Energy, it is inevitable that the 4680 large cylindrical battery will also be indispensable, so in a high probability, the future 4680 lithium iron phosphate battery will also flock to it. There is also a very wonderful point here, in the field of square batteries, the Ningde era is undoubtedly the big brother, but on the cylindrical battery, almost all domestic manufacturers are on a horizontal line, with the deepening of Tesla's domestic production, the global share of domestic power battery companies is expected to further increase, for this new species of 4680, domestic power battery companies, will open a new round of competition.
Second, let's do the math. 1 million 4680 large cylindrical battery cells can only meet the needs of 1050 Tesla cars, but Tesla sold 936,000 vehicles in 2021, and it is likely to rush to 1.5 million units in 2022 with the expansion of production capacity, and it is obvious that it is difficult to achieve full coverage of 4680 batteries in a short period of time.
This also means that Tesla will run a dual-track 4680 and lithium iron phosphate - there is no conflict between the two, lithium iron phosphate batteries will still act as the main force, and tesla's current battery suppliers of lithium iron phosphate batteries in China will not have any impact.
At present, Qingge is more curious about two points, first of all, the first batch of 4680 will appear on which models, I think in addition to Tesla's official announcement of model Y should also have relatively small sales, but also have higher requirements for battery energy density models, such as Model S, Model X and Cyberruck in research and development, so how much will the price of these products be compressed? After the 4680 is fully rolled out, which brands will be fatally affected by the compression of car manufacturing costs? These are also worth looking forward to, so let's wait for time to give us an answer.