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Musk and Tesla are masters of marketing. Tech in the Gigafactory and probably much more production and process knowledge for running battery production is from

Musk and Tesla are masters of marketing. Tech in the Gigafactory and probably much more production and process knowledge for running battery production is from Panasonic. Nevertheless all positive spin is benefiting Tesla. If it fails, I'm sure Tesla will spin the failure as Panasonic.

schiffern 10y ago
>Tech in the Gigafactory and probably much more production and process knowledge for running battery production is from Panasonic. I'm not so sure. Tesla has been applying their "first principles" physics-based optimizations in this area. One example from the recent Gigafactory tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib1KKHGYmLQ&t=6m06s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib1KKHGYmLQ&t=6m06s >Welcome everyone. So what you just walked through was the cathode mixing section. We're now in the coat-and-dry section. >We receive both our active anode and cathode material as dry powders, however to apply them to our substrates we need them to be liquids. So what we do is take a solvent and mix it with the material to turn it into a solid-liquid slurry. We take that slurry out of those vessels in that last room, pump them up and all the way down to the end, to the last chamber on the ground floor here. There we have this very large roll of aluminum foil that we unwind as we pull it through the oven section on the bottom floor here. We have a coating head, which is very similar to how ink is actually deposited on a piece of paper, and we use that to deposit a very thin layer of slurry onto this metal substrate. >As it comes towards us, we have several sections of air addition and removal. We use that air at very specific flow rates and temperatures to dry the solvent and evaporate [it] off of the substrate in a very prescribed fashion. By the time it gets to the end here, all the solvent has evaporated off, and we now have this dry solid layer of active material that is stuck onto our metal substrate. >We take that and we turn it vertical here, go up to our second coating booth. What was the bottom is now the top. We coat that new top section and run it back through the top of the oven in the same fashion. So when we get to the end, we have one very thin piece of metal substrate and active material stuck to both sides of it. >As the air enters each chamber, and as it leaves, it's picking up solvent from the liquid phase and into the vapor. As all the air leaves, instead of just venting it to the atmosphere carrying all this solvent with it, we combine all those outlet ducts together into one large duct, which you see at the very end of the room when it's horizontal there, which then goes through that wall up to our second floor. We have a solvent recovery system where we scrub that solvent back out of the air (to clean the air), and the air turns right around and comes back through another duct and back into the oven. So the air is in a closed loop and never leaves the building. >The solvent we just pulled into the liquid phase then comes out to our utility yard, where we treat and clean the solvent, and the solvent itself is sent right back into our mixing room too. So both the air and the solvent are closed loop, never leaving the building. >This single tool here, this large oven, used to be the largest power consumer in of any part of the factory. But over the past year, Tesla and Panasonic engineers have worked together, and we've been able to re-engineer how this oven operates and how the solvent recovery system operates, and in doing so we've been able to cut the power consumption of the system by about 80%. >So this is oven 1 of phase 1 of Gigafactory 1. And by investing these resources up-front to optimize these systems, all those savings then propogate to every other oven we have in the future. So this is oven 1 for the whole building, and right here in a few months will be oven 2. This was already a mature coat-and-dry process designed by Panasonic, and Tesla was able to wring an 80% reduction out of the energy cost of the largest power user in the factory, while closing a material loop and eliminating emissions. All that from "just" conserving the latent heat of evaporation!
- jobu 10y ago
  It would be interesting to see the details of the partnership between Panasonic and Tesla. There must be some revenue sharing as well as technology/patent sharing in the deal. Panasonic is committed to investing $1.6B of the $5B total cost for the Gigafactory ( http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/panasonic-investment-tesla-battery-plant/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/panasonic-investment-tesla-bat... )
- spectrum1234 10y ago
  Any more sources of info like this? In particular I found Musk's comments about the machine that builds the machines and designing the factory like a system on a chip the most fascinating. I would love for a research paper on designing a factory like a system on a chip.
  - schiffern 10y ago
    Musk's comments, for those who haven't seen them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvVlNkL8f_o&t=2h20m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvVlNkL8f_o&t=2h20m48s
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  > Tesla has been applying their "first principles" physics-based optimizations in this area. I dunno; what you quote sounds like what any reasonable process engineer would do to optimize this process. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about it. For one, you can't "conserve the latent heat of evaporation"; you can of course do heat recovery between the two ends, but again this is not groundbreaking tech. In fact, it was first patented by Edward Green in 1845 under the name "Economizer", which has a nice Wikipedia article about it. And I'm pretty sure the old Panasonic factory isn't just venting solvent into the atmosphere; that would be illegal essentially everywhere, and it would be a huge waste of money. Also not convinced they are comparing apples to apples with the 80% figure; obviously a lot of the power consumption here is heat for the drying air, and the old Panasonic factory is not located in a desert with an annual average outside temp. of 19 C (66 F). I'm pretty sure they're using heat pumps (or maybe also just heat exchangers) to exploit the high outside temperature in Nevada to get that decreased power usage. Which is not stupid, but it's also not a Tesla-exclusive revolutionary idea.
drcross 10y ago
>Musk and Tesla are masters of marketing. Not particularly. If you do something that a lot of people think is cool they will get behind you. "The product sells itself" is the most fundamental law of advertising.
- zardo 10y ago
  "People buy what you are, not what you sell". Musk seems to be putting in a genuine best effort at using capital and technology make a better, cooler future, and people are buying it. It's how you get early adopters on your side, and it's how you build a devoted base of customers.
jessaustin 10y ago
If it fails, I'm sure Tesla will spin the failure as Panasonic. It's a huge investment. If it "fails", Tesla won't exist to do much spinning.

schiffern 10y ago

>Tech in the Gigafactory and probably much more production and process knowledge for running battery production is from Panasonic. I'm not so sure. Tesla has been applying their "first principles" physics-based optimizations in this area. One example from the recent Gigafactory tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib1KKHGYmLQ&t=6m06s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib1KKHGYmLQ&t=6m06s >Welcome everyone. So what you just walked through was the cathode mixing section. We're now in the coat-and-dry section. >We receive both our active anode and cathode material as dry powders, however to apply them to our substrates we need them to be liquids. So what we do is take a solvent and mix it with the material to turn it into a solid-liquid slurry. We take that slurry out of those vessels in that last room, pump them up and all the way down to the end, to the last chamber on the ground floor here. There we have this very large roll of aluminum foil that we unwind as we pull it through the oven section on the bottom floor here. We have a coating head, which is very similar to how ink is actually deposited on a piece of paper, and we use that to deposit a very thin layer of slurry onto this metal substrate. >As it comes towards us, we have several sections of air addition and removal. We use that air at very specific flow rates and temperatures to dry the solvent and evaporate [it] off of the substrate in a very prescribed fashion. By the time it gets to the end here, all the solvent has evaporated off, and we now have this dry solid layer of active material that is stuck onto our metal substrate. >We take that and we turn it vertical here, go up to our second coating booth. What was the bottom is now the top. We coat that new top section and run it back through the top of the oven in the same fashion. So when we get to the end, we have one very thin piece of metal substrate and active material stuck to both sides of it. >As the air enters each chamber, and as it leaves, it's picking up solvent from the liquid phase and into the vapor. As all the air leaves, instead of just venting it to the atmosphere carrying all this solvent with it, we combine all those outlet ducts together into one large duct, which you see at the very end of the room when it's horizontal there, which then goes through that wall up to our second floor. We have a solvent recovery system where we scrub that solvent back out of the air (to clean the air), and the air turns right around and comes back through another duct and back into the oven. So the air is in a closed loop and never leaves the building. >The solvent we just pulled into the liquid phase then comes out to our utility yard, where we treat and clean the solvent, and the solvent itself is sent right back into our mixing room too. So both the air and the solvent are closed loop, never leaving the building. >This single tool here, this large oven, used to be the largest power consumer in of any part of the factory. But over the past year, Tesla and Panasonic engineers have worked together, and we've been able to re-engineer how this oven operates and how the solvent recovery system operates, and in doing so we've been able to cut the power consumption of the system by about 80%. >So this is oven 1 of phase 1 of Gigafactory 1. And by investing these resources up-front to optimize these systems, all those savings then propogate to every other oven we have in the future. So this is oven 1 for the whole building, and right here in a few months will be oven 2. This was already a mature coat-and-dry process designed by Panasonic, and Tesla was able to wring an 80% reduction out of the energy cost of the largest power user in the factory, while closing a material loop and eliminating emissions. All that from "just" conserving the latent heat of evaporation!

jobu 10y ago
It would be interesting to see the details of the partnership between Panasonic and Tesla. There must be some revenue sharing as well as technology/patent sharing in the deal. Panasonic is committed to investing $1.6B of the $5B total cost for the Gigafactory ( http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/panasonic-investment-tesla-battery-plant/ http://fortune.com/2016/05/20/panasonic-investment-tesla-bat... )
spectrum1234 10y ago
Any more sources of info like this? In particular I found Musk's comments about the machine that builds the machines and designing the factory like a system on a chip the most fascinating. I would love for a research paper on designing a factory like a system on a chip.
- schiffern 10y ago
  Musk's comments, for those who haven't seen them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvVlNkL8f_o&t=2h20m48s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvVlNkL8f_o&t=2h20m48s
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
> Tesla has been applying their "first principles" physics-based optimizations in this area. I dunno; what you quote sounds like what any reasonable process engineer would do to optimize this process. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking about it. For one, you can't "conserve the latent heat of evaporation"; you can of course do heat recovery between the two ends, but again this is not groundbreaking tech. In fact, it was first patented by Edward Green in 1845 under the name "Economizer", which has a nice Wikipedia article about it. And I'm pretty sure the old Panasonic factory isn't just venting solvent into the atmosphere; that would be illegal essentially everywhere, and it would be a huge waste of money. Also not convinced they are comparing apples to apples with the 80% figure; obviously a lot of the power consumption here is heat for the drying air, and the old Panasonic factory is not located in a desert with an annual average outside temp. of 19 C (66 F). I'm pretty sure they're using heat pumps (or maybe also just heat exchangers) to exploit the high outside temperature in Nevada to get that decreased power usage. Which is not stupid, but it's also not a Tesla-exclusive revolutionary idea.

drcross 10y ago

>Musk and Tesla are masters of marketing. Not particularly. If you do something that a lot of people think is cool they will get behind you. "The product sells itself" is the most fundamental law of advertising.

zardo 10y ago
"People buy what you are, not what you sell". Musk seems to be putting in a genuine best effort at using capital and technology make a better, cooler future, and people are buying it. It's how you get early adopters on your side, and it's how you build a devoted base of customers.

jessaustin 10y ago

If it fails, I'm sure Tesla will spin the failure as Panasonic. It's a huge investment. If it "fails", Tesla won't exist to do much spinning.