"2024 will be the year of '4680'!"
Once upon a time, Elon Musk ambitiously announced that 2024 would be the highlight moment of the "4680" battery, just like you and me who are determined to lose weight every New Year, full of confidence and vowing to let the world witness miracles. However, the reality is always so skinny that people want to cry, and Tesla's large cylindrical battery cell this time looks more like an inexhaustible "big cake".
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Speaking of which, the 4680 battery cell is 46 mm in diameter and 80 mm in height, and it is a round little fat man. According to Musk's rhetoric at the time, the energy of this little fat man alone is five times that of his predecessor's 2170 battery cells, which can make Tesla's car run 16% more distance in one go. It sounds like "five minutes of charging, two hours of battery life" in the electric vehicle industry!
However, the dream is plump, and the reality is skinny. More than two years have passed, and the production capacity of these 4680 cells has climbed, which is more like climbing a mountain, and it is also the kind of Mount Everest. Tesla's power and energy engineering boss Drew Baglino once admitted in a conference call that this matter is not so simple, the production capacity ramp-up is not a straight line, but a tortuous S-shape, when to reach the top, no one knows the score.
You may be wondering, why is it so hard? You must know that this 4680 battery cell has not only become larger, but the technical work in it is earth-shaking. For example, with the use of the all-pole ear structure, it sounds like the peerless internal skills in martial arts novels, and it is invincible in the world after practicing it, but this kung fu is not easy to practice. The rumored silicon anode material and dry electrode process are like hidden levels in the game, and they have not yet been cleared.
Tesla makes its own battery cells, just like you and I want to make homemade bread on a whim, the ideal is a fragrant baguette, but the result is a hard stone. The yield rate once hovered around 90%, which is considered a "passing margin" in the industry. Finally, by the end of last year, it was able to touch the threshold of 95%, but this is still a small gap from the top 99% in the industry, which is enough to give Tesla a headache.
What's even more heartbreaking is that even if Tesla is running at full power, it can produce one million 4680 battery cells a week, which sounds like a lot, but it can't stand up to the big appetite. Take the Model Y all-wheel drive version as an example, these million battery cells are barely enough to assemble more than 1,200 vehicles, which is a drop in the bucket for players of Tesla's magnitude, and it is not enough to even plug the gaps.
So, Tesla began to wonder, let's not do it ourselves, just buy ready-made. No, it's going to be with Panasonic, LG and other established suppliers in the battery industry. It seems that sometimes admitting that you are not superhuman is also a kind of wisdom.
As for those former rhetoric, what is the first generation of battery cells with a capacity of 98Wh in 2022, 108Wh in the second generation in 2023, and 118Wh in the third generation in 2024, it now seems to be more like the brightest star in the night sky, which is unattainable. said that "happiness is reality minus expectations", and this time Musk's own expectations may have been greatly reduced.
However, then again, Tesla's "confession" is actually a true portrayal of the industry's innovation. After all, how can scientific and technological innovation be smooth sailing, how to know how to go without planting a few heels. Tesla's 4680 battery cell shows that even a big guy like Musk occasionally has an "idiocy index", but this does not prevent him from moving forward and looking for the next spark that will change the world.
So, let's give Tesla a little time and space to see if this 4680 battery cell is the superhero of future electric vehicles, or just a beautiful misunderstanding. After all, every attempt on the journey of electric vehicles is a step towards a carbon-free future of mobility. Even if sometimes, this step is a little faltering.
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