![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/tesla-cockpit.jpg\")
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It’s 5:30 am and I’m sitting in SolarQuotes office waiting for Elon Musk’s big battery day announcement.\u00a0 This is pretty early for me, so it had better be good.\u00a0 I don’t normally come into the office until 5:45 am.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
I have no idea what Elon’s going to say except it’ll be about batteries.\u00a0 My guess is he’ll say Tesla is starting large scale production of a new and improved battery cell the size of one of those annoying Japanese mini-drink cans that only contain enough fluid to accentuate how thirsty you are.\u00a0 There will be a spiel about how great they are, but nothing unexpected.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
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Unless of course, Elon Musk manages to smash some more windows with his balls<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\r\n It’s now six o’clock and the presentation<\/a> has started.\u00a0 The screen is showing battery cells being produced on an automated production line but there’s no sound.\u00a0 I was expecting it to gently fade in to alert people that things are getting underway, but there is nothing. \u00a0 Is this intentional?\u00a0 I see three possibilities:<\/p>\r\n A guy is now coming up on stage… he’s about to tap the microphone… and yes!\u00a0 There’s sound!\u00a0 He is announcing the start of the shareholders meeting.\u00a0 I have to sit through this because Tesla haven’t given a separate time for the battery day announcement.\u00a0 I don’t think this is a smart move by Tesla.\u00a0 As Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck famously said:<\/p>\r\n “There are three things you do not want to see being made.\u00a0 Sausages, laws, and little baby Bismarcks.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n Do they really want to increase the number of people who witness the Tesla board recommending stockholders vote against increased human rights reporting?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n The stockholder votes are now coming in and the results are there will be no increased human rights reporting for Tesla.\u00a0 What a beautiful sausage!\u00a0 I hope those working for Tesla and its suppliers don’t feel as though the board has just baby Otto Von Bismarcked them over.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Anyone running a small business can tell you the last thing you want to do is make a profit.\u00a0 It just attracts the wrong kind of attention.\u00a0 Like from the Tax Office.\u00a0 But big US companies seem to like it.\u00a0 Possibly because they don’t seem to pay tax<\/a> anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Tesla has turned a profit for a whole year now.\u00a0 It’s only equal to about 1% of their capital but that’s an infinitely greater amount than a loss.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Their success does come at the cost of the internal combustion engine car industry.\u00a0 Thanks to Tesla and the pandemic economy, sales for conventional cars have been flushed so far down the drain you’ll need a toilet snake with a camera on the end to find them:<\/p>\r\n That’s all I have to say about the stockholder’s meeting. I’ll leave the rest up to the people who write business articles.<\/p>\r\n The battery day announcement is about to begin and Elon Musk is greeted as he comes on stage by much honking of horns.\u00a0 The honking is because the event is being held in a car park with people sitting in cars on account of COVID.\u00a0 All the Tesla employees in the lot are wearing masks, which seems weird.\u00a0 You’d think Tesla employees would all be wearing disease proof space helmets by now.\u00a0 But it seems, when it comes to the coronavirus, there is no sacrifice Musk is not willing to let his workers make<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Elon Musk looks healthy.\u00a0 Being a billionaire must agree with him.\u00a0 Pictures of him in his 20s show he was balding, but now in his middle age he has a full head of hair.\u00a0 Amazing how that works.\u00a0 Also, not being on the edge of losing his company probably helps him seem more relaxed.<\/p>\r\n The presentation starts and Elon does a good job of public speaking by Elon Musk standards.\u00a0 His main promises are Tesla will:<\/p>\r\n The entire presentation was aimed at people like me who think:<\/p>\r\n “Tesla is nice and all, but I don’t see what is going to stop South Korea, Japan, and especially China — eating them alive.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n Everything said was aimed at keeping investors happy by explaining how Tesla is going to maintain a technological and competitive edge in the future.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n I know the idea of a US company maintaining a technical lead in manufacturing rather than just in software or tax evasion seems weird these days, but we should remember Britain was well into its decline when they invented<\/a> the automatic kettle in 1955, the ATM in 1967, the Goodies in 1970, and the World Wide Web in 1989.<\/p>\r\n To electrify transport and allow renewable generation to expand, Elon said it would be necessary to start producing batteries on the terawatt-hour scale, which is a lot.\u00a0 One terawatt-hour of batteries could power Australia for about 40 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n He said the world needs 10 terawatt-hours of battery production annually to electrify all road transport over the next 15 years.\u00a0 This is plausible.\u00a0 If the average electric vehicle battery pack is 50 kilowatt-hours then 10 terawatt-hours would be enough for 200 million EVs. \u00a0 Only 92 million road vehicles<\/a> were produced in 2019 but agricultural machinery and mining equipment can also be electrified and Tesla may be expecting future vehicle battery packs to be quite large. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n To replace fossil fuels in other areas we were told an additional 10 terawatt-hours of batteries will have to be produced each year for 15 to 25 years, and Elon says the actual annual production required may be higher.\u00a0 This graphic breaks down where non-vehicle battery production will be going — although I don’t know why they have 1,500 gigawatts for “Future EV”:<\/p>\r\n Elon’s figures may not be correct.\u00a0 If people start using self-driving taxis rather than owning private cars the amount of battery capacity required for vehicles will be reduced.\u00a0 It’s also possible to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation without using any battery storage, but using batteries will make it a hell of a lot easier.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n The actual amount of battery storage used will depend on cost and if Tesla cuts costs by more than half then Elon Musk’s estimates may turn out to be right.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n In order to produce the vast amount of battery storage they say will be required, Tesla intends to build factories that annually manufacture batteries on the terawatt-hour scale.\u00a0 Because of all the advancements they’re making these will supposedly have their capital costs reduced by 75% per gigawatt-hour of annual production capacity and be 90% smaller:<\/p>\r\n The size reduction will come from simplifying processes and improving automation.\u00a0 Because modern automated factories don’t even have people with clipboards walking up and down between machines, I believe him when he says the factory size will be much smaller.\u00a0 I hope he’s right about the capital cost reduction, because that’s important for bringing down the price of batteries.<\/p>\r\n To stay in business and at least one step ahead of the competition, Tesla hopes to dramatically reduce the cost of batteries.\u00a0 They say Tesla have a plan to cut the price by more than half, although it’s hard to tell from the graph below as they neglected to put any numbers on the y<\/em> axis:<\/p>\r\n A cynical person might say there are no numbers so Tesla can fill them in after the fact, but I’m sure the numbers were there.\u00a0 They were probably just knocked off after Elon Musk hit them with one of his balls of steel.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Elon comes straight out and tells us they intend to drop the price by 56% by 2025, but they never actually give the current figure Tesla says they are going to cut.\u00a0 It may be $100 US a kilowatt-hour since Elon predicted batteries would cost that much soon.\u00a0 So soon, in fact, he predicted Tesla would be at that point about a year ago.\u00a0 As far as I can tell, Tesla batteries are around that now.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Here’s a shot of Elon Musk and Drew Baglino, Tesla Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, in front of a graphic showing a breakdown of how savings in 5 areas will total to give a 56% reduction in the cost of batteries per kilowatt-hour:<\/p>\r\n In the interest of fairness, I’ll point out Tesla didn’t label the areas with red Comic Sans typeface — I did that.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n The 5 areas they claim Tesla will make savings in are:<\/p>\r\n Cell Design:\u00a0 <\/strong>Tesla’s new battery cell will be larger and cheaper per kilowatt-hour.\u00a0 It’s called a 4680 cell because it’s 46mm wide and 80mm long.\u00a0 Normally, making cells larger reduces the rate at which they can be charged because the energy passes through one connection point called a tab.\u00a0 So, Tesla got rid of it and these cells will be tabless with dozens of connection points.\u00a0 This will allow vehicles using these cells to still be supercharged while reducing cell cost and simplifying manufacture.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n These changes will apparently increase the amount of stored energy per kilogram of battery pack by 16%.\u00a0 But I can’t be certain because the figures weren’t given with enough context for me to completely understand what they were talking about.\u00a0 When dealing with people who are fond of rubbery figures<\/a> it’s wise not to take anything at face value.<\/p>\r\n Tesla are currently producing these cells in a pilot facility.\u00a0 They say it will take about a year to reach a 10 gigawatt-hour annual output.\u00a0 Actual production plants may have 200 gigawatt-hours or more of annual output.<\/p>\r\n Cell Factory:\u00a0 <\/strong>Their new cell factories will eliminate many production steps; reducing costs, time, energy use, waste, and required space.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Anode Materials:\u00a0 <\/strong>The anode is the battery electrode that electrons flow out of when it’s discharged.\u00a0 To lower its cost Tesla will use silicon similar to what’s used for solar cells, grind it up, stick it in an elastic gel that can cope with the fact that it expands and contracts when used, and shove it in battery cells.\u00a0 They say this is much cheaper than other, more complex, approaches and comes to $1.20 US per kilowatt-hour.\u00a0 This may increase energy density by 20%, but I take that claim with a grain of salt.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\r\n Cathode Materials:\u00a0 <\/strong>When a battery is discharged the cathode is the part of the battery electrons flow into.\u00a0 To reduce costs Tesla will eliminate the most expensive metal use for this part, which is cobalt.\u00a0 Nickel is better for energy density but isn’t as stable as cobalt and so removing it can result in faster battery degradation.\u00a0 This degradation will be countered in various ways and this graphic shows how Tesla will use different cathode compositions for different applications:<\/p>\r\n If you want a battery with a long cycle life and don’t care if it weighs more per kilowatt-hour, one with a lot of iron in the cathode can be used.\u00a0 For higher energy density, which can give a vehicle more range, a nickel and manganese cathode can be used.\u00a0 For even greater energy density a high nickel cathode can be used.\u00a0 (If you are wondering what the image in the top left corner is meant to be, it’s their future $25,000 US EV and not the ghost of internal combustion engine cars come to haunt them.)<\/p>\r\n My take from this is, if you are buying a long-range electric vehicle, don’t assume its battery warranty will be better than that of a shorter range vehicle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n To further reduce costs Tesla will simplify cathode production by eliminating some steps and improving others.<\/p>\r\n Cell Vehicle Integration:\u00a0<\/strong> Tesla intends to reduce the cost of its vehicles by producing the frames in three main parts:<\/p>\r\n Making the entire front and rear sections in one piece is very difficult because they’re made of aluminium and not dried toothpaste.\u00a0 The process requires the largest aluminium die casting<\/a> machine in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n The front and rear sections will be held together with the battery pack, which will provide strength.\u00a0 Battery packs have to be strong anyway to resist impacts and protect occupants, so Tesla are going to make use of this to provide structural support for the vehicle, allowing them to reduce the weight of other parts of the frame.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Elon said in the future all batteries will be made from recycled old ones, but at the moment there aren’t enough old batteries for that to be possible.\u00a0 It was also said that recycled materials will be used because the desired materials concentration is higher than they are in ores.\u00a0 This isn’t always correct, as sometimes recycled materials are contaminated in a way that makes it cheaper to use fresh material, but I hope this is correct.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n I’ve reproduced the image below just to show how little lithium and cobalt there is in an average cell as I’ve noticed some people worry way too much about the price of these materials.\u00a0 They are only a small portion of the total cost of batteries.\u00a0 When manufacturers blame high raw material costs for batteries not falling in price as they promised they are generally lying.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n Example Australian ore concentrations: Nova nickel mine in WA 1.85%. Greenbrushes lithium mine in WA 1.2%. Grawler mine ore in SA 1% cobalt.<\/p><\/div>\r\n With all the battery cost reductions Tesla will be making, Elon says in three years time they will produce a fully self-driving electric vehicle for $25,000 US.\u00a0 At the current exchange rate plus GST that comes to $39,000 Australian.\u00a0 While that’s a little pricey for someone in my stinginess bracket, its running costs will be much lower than for any similar-sized petrol or diesel vehicle.\u00a0 Unfortunately, while we can hope they have improved, given Tesla’s past performance with getting things done on time it may be 4 years before it’s available in the US and longer before you can get the EV here.<\/p>\r\n I have no trouble believing that someone will have autonomous vehicles that are permitted to drive on roads in three or four year’s time, I just find it very hard to believe whatever Elon Musk says on the topic given the large number of things he has said about that have turned out to be untrue<\/a>.\u00a0 So I’m automatically primed to call shenanigans<\/a> whenever he mentions it.<\/p>\r\n The figure given for battery manufacture employment at the 20 terawatt-hour a year level was 2.8 million.\u00a0 A message repeated a number of times through the presentation was Tesla wanted talented people to come and work for them.\u00a0 This certainly makes it seem as though Tesla is rapidly expanding.\u00a0 After all, as Tesla workers are usually reasonably young, they probably aren’t just trying to make up for those they lost to the plague.<\/p>\r\n Improving worker productivity might be why Elon Musk wants to stick computer chips in people’s brains<\/a>.\u00a0 While it might sound weird, it’s not that strange given we already have cochlear implants<\/a>.\u00a0 But what I find really odd is how another billionaire, Bill Gates, is spending money to develop vaccines to save lives and people accuse him of using it as a front to inject mind-controlling computer chips into people, but when Elon Musk says, “I will put a computer chip in your brain,” people think it’s great.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\r\nIt Starts With A Shareholder Meeting<\/h2>\r\n
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![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/teslaagenda.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\nTesla Is Making A Profit!<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/teslaprofits.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\n![\"ICE](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/teslaglobalsales.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\nThe Battery Day Announcement<\/h2>\r\n
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Massive Battery Growth Required To Replace Fossil Fuels<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/tesla_terawattproduction.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\nTerawatt-hour Battery Factories<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Terawatt-hour](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/tesla_terrorfactory.jpg\")
<\/p>\r\nMuch Cheaper Batteries<\/h2>\r\n
![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/tesla_batteryprice.png\")
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Recycling<\/h2>\r\n
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A Self Driving EV For $25,000 US<\/h2>\r\n
Tesla Now Hiring<\/h2>\r\n
Good Luck, Elon<\/h2>\r\n