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I've never understood what their lead in batteries really is. Isn't it well known that Panasonic manufacturers and supplies battery cells to Tesla? And cost-wi

I've never understood what their lead in batteries really is. Isn't it well known that Panasonic manufacturers and supplies battery cells to Tesla? And cost-wise LG Chem seems competitive enough to Panasonic anyway, keeping in mind leaked figures for Bolt.

azernik 9y ago
The narrative I've heard is that the secret sauce is the battery-pack that combines the cells, controls temperature, balances loads, etc. Not sure if this is an accurate narrative.
- rohit2412 9y ago
  That can only explain the performance or the ludicrous mode, if really. I thought Tesla was always marketing that their selling point is cheaper batteries, which cant be a USP, as Panasonic can always manufacture the same for GM/Ford etc.
  - bradlys 9y ago
    How can it explain the performance or the ludicrous mode? Ludicrous mode being a software update could easily be that you already have the performance innately but they cap your output at 85%. Same as any game where you have to pay to get the extra features/items (DLC) but every other player in the game already has the item when you're around them. All the players get it, it's just a flip of a bit to enable the item for you. Just costs $10k in this case...
    - calvinbhai 9y ago
      There a lot more electronic / electric circuit magic in there with the battery for it to achieve the ludicrous mode ability. Initially when I heard that, I thought Tesla was bluffing. But the Ludicrous mode with P100D performance, and the fact that no other electric car maker is able to match that, leads me to believe that they are not bluffing.
      - giobox 9y ago
        > ...the fact that no other electric car maker is able to match that... The 100,000 dollar plus luxury electric saloon market isn't exactly overflowing with competition yet, so I'm not sure this really proves anything. Given time and a stronger focus on electric models, I have few doubts the usual German contenders will build electric cars every bit as quick. The "legacy" car manufacturers have been slow to wake to Tesla's successes in some regards, but that looks set to change rapidly over the next decade.
      - lafar6502 9y ago
        Maybe nobody else thought ridiculous mode is worth the money. What magic exactly do you need to discharge 100 kWh in 10 minutes?
        calvinbhai 9y ago
        I dont know. If I knew, I'd be working for Tesla, or working on a startup that'd compete with Tesla, similar to how the head of battery engineering at Tesla did. :)
    - itengelhardt 9y ago
      Initially ludicrous mode was not just a software update. You could get it on your (already delivered) MS P90D, but had to bring it into service. They changed a fuse and activated ludicrous mode in software. Of course, today all Tesla P100D get built with that fuse already in place - so it's "just a software upgrade" today. There's quite a bit of electrical magic going on for a fuse to be able to handle insane current bursts while retaining a good response time in case of a catastrophic fault.
      - amluto 9y ago
        IIUC the fuse is an electrically triggered explosive device. Badass, huh? What's going on is that the current drawn while flooring a ludicrous vehicle is a largish fraction of the current that should cause an instantaneous fuse blow. A fuse that melts at a given temperature and heats up as I^2 R wasn't going to cut it. In the electrical distribution industry, you'd get a fancy circuit breaker with an electrical trip device and call it a day. This has two issues for Tesla. First, your average electrical trip device uses a current transformer, and those don't work for DC. Second, DC current is considerably harder to interrupt than AC, and the current the fuse needs to carry is in the kA range (I have no idea what the short circuit current is), so a circuit breaker would be rather large. Hence a fuse, with a little explosive inside, with an active circuit, presumably using a Hall effect sensor, the voltage drop across the fuse, or maybe just a reed switch. (Hmm. It's nice when fuses and such don't need external power. I wonder if there's sufficient voltage drop across the fuse during a fault to power the circuit that blows the fuse? I bet there is. It could even be a very simple circuit like a Zener diode in series with a resistive heater that sets off the explosive.)
        tyingq 9y ago
        Explosives in high current fuses is interesting, but not new or specific to Tesla. https://youtu.be/yTdngnsyNSE https://youtu.be/yTdngnsyNSE
        amluto 9y ago
        I think that's the other way around. The fuses in that video trigger a tiny exclusive as a side effect of blowing. IIUC Tesla'a fuse blows because an explosive is triggered.
r00fus 9y ago
It was that since they secured rights to a key resource for it's products. It's essentially the Apple move - by outmaneuvering competitors on key resources it allows higher margin or products that others can't even create.
- rohit2412 9y ago
  That is even more unbelievable. What are they implying, nobody else will manufacture batteries? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-about-to-bury-elon-musk-in-batteries https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-...
  - r00fus 9y ago
    It's more of a cost per kWh or total volume advantage they were hoping to secure, I think.
  - elihu 9y ago
    If Tesla has an adequate supply of cells for their needs (due to contracts with Panasonic and their own factory), but other car manufacturers have to compete with each other on the open market for a supply of cells that is inadequate for high-volume production, then that's a big advantage for Tesla in the short/medium term. They can focus 100% on electric, whereas the major manufacturers will have to stick mostly with gas and hybrids for the majority of their revenue. If China were to produce many times more cells than Tesla, we could still have a major battery shortage for most of the world's auto manufacturers.
  - VintageCool 9y ago
    According to an Economist article from Aug 12 2017, the Chinese companies currently in a margin-sacrificing battle to outscale each other. Increasing volume allows them to drive down per-unit costs, so everyone is expanding their production and exceeding the demand for customers. I would be very hesitant to bet on an American company beating the Chinese companies on price and scale for battery production. > But getting prices down this way has not just produced cheaper, better batteries. It has also resulted in significant overcapacity. Cairn ERA estimates that last year the manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries exceeded demand by about a third. Both it and BNEF say that the battery manufacturers are either losing money or making only wafer-thin profits on every electric-vehicle battery they produce. Despite the seeming glut, though, they all have plans to expand, in part to drive prices even lower. Mr Jaffe explains their thinking as that of the “traditional Asian conglomerate model”: sacrificing margins for market share. This may be a sound strategy given the ever-greater hopes for electric vehicles in the near future. But at the moment it is also one that looks rather unnerving. Although Mr Jaffe believes that increased demand for both electric vehicles and stationary storage will justify the rush to expand, he accepts that, for now, “It feels like a gold rush—but there’s no gold.” https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21726069-no-need-subsidies-higher-volumes-and-better-chemistry-are-causing-costs-plummet-after https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21726069-no-need-sub...
VikingCoder 9y ago
My brain: "They're not lead batteries." "Oh, their LEAD in batteries! Stupid homonyms!"
- tempestn 9y ago
  Homographs actually. Homonyms are two words that are spelled differently but sound the same.
  - ghusbands 9y ago
    If you're going to correct someone, get it right. Homographs have the same spelling but different meaning. Homophones have the same sound but different meaning. Historically, a homonym was both a homograph and a homophone. Nowadays, homonym can be used to mean either homograph or homophone. So homonym was correct for modern usage.
    - tempestn 9y ago
      Looks like you're right. I've never seen that usage before, but according to dictionary.com's third definition, that is "loosely" correct. An example of language evolving I guess! http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homonym http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homonym
mtgx 9y ago
1) Tesla likely secured a good deal for Panasonic batteries, as I think some of them were co-designed, like the latest bigger 207000 battery cell. From what I've seen in past articles, Tesla always had the cheapest battery packs per kWh. 2) Tesla also likely has a significant advantage in battery pack architecture, from safety (they offered to teach Boeing how to design battery packs so their EV planes don't catch fire a couple of years back), to withstand more extreme weather conditions (hot or cold), to having an industry-leading battery degradation performance. I think I've seen reports of Tesla batteries only losing 4-5% of charge capacity after 100,000 miles.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > I think I've seen reports of Tesla batteries only losing 4-5% of charge capacity after 100,000 miles. That one is easy to do with overprovisioning - similar to SSDs and I believe even HDDs do this to account for inevitable degradations during operation.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  Tesla was always an oddity in using such small cells (18650s) in the first place. A Model S has thousands of cells; a Renault Zoe, say, has 192. The 20700 is rather similar to the existing, and fairly old, 26650. Tesla may well have interesting battery technology, but it’s not the cells; they’re nothing very special.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    IMO it's a deliberate choice - 18650s have a much higher surface-to-mass ratio, so are much easier to cool. For a car like the Model S, thermal management of the battery pack is one of the key limits on performance.
    - lafar6502 9y ago
      Yep the universe conspires to prove something... even that ordinary battery turns info a pinnacle od battery-goodness when Tesla touches it
jdietrich 9y ago
18650 cells are a commodity component. Combining thousands of them into an effective battery pack is a very complex engineering task. Tesla have filed hundreds of patents relating to pack design and battery management. They have several just relating to "thermal runaway mitigation", which is a fancy euphemism for "stopping the battery pack from catching fire". It's not sexy, but it's crucial stuff. https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc
- KGIII 9y ago
  You're free to use their patents, there is no charge.
  - ccozan 9y ago
    Can you please provide a reference of this? Sounds very heroic of Tesla/Musk.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you Sibling post also has the link but I don't want you to miss it.
  - surement 9y ago
    For anyone wondering: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
  - martin_bech 9y ago
    There is actually a charge, you are also giving up the right to enforce you own patents on Tesla I believe.

azernik 9y ago

The narrative I've heard is that the secret sauce is the battery-pack that combines the cells, controls temperature, balances loads, etc. Not sure if this is an accurate narrative.

rohit2412 9y ago
That can only explain the performance or the ludicrous mode, if really. I thought Tesla was always marketing that their selling point is cheaper batteries, which cant be a USP, as Panasonic can always manufacture the same for GM/Ford etc.
- bradlys 9y ago
  How can it explain the performance or the ludicrous mode? Ludicrous mode being a software update could easily be that you already have the performance innately but they cap your output at 85%. Same as any game where you have to pay to get the extra features/items (DLC) but every other player in the game already has the item when you're around them. All the players get it, it's just a flip of a bit to enable the item for you. Just costs $10k in this case...
  - calvinbhai 9y ago
    There a lot more electronic / electric circuit magic in there with the battery for it to achieve the ludicrous mode ability. Initially when I heard that, I thought Tesla was bluffing. But the Ludicrous mode with P100D performance, and the fact that no other electric car maker is able to match that, leads me to believe that they are not bluffing.
    - giobox 9y ago
      > ...the fact that no other electric car maker is able to match that... The 100,000 dollar plus luxury electric saloon market isn't exactly overflowing with competition yet, so I'm not sure this really proves anything. Given time and a stronger focus on electric models, I have few doubts the usual German contenders will build electric cars every bit as quick. The "legacy" car manufacturers have been slow to wake to Tesla's successes in some regards, but that looks set to change rapidly over the next decade.
    - lafar6502 9y ago
      Maybe nobody else thought ridiculous mode is worth the money. What magic exactly do you need to discharge 100 kWh in 10 minutes?
      - calvinbhai 9y ago
        I dont know. If I knew, I'd be working for Tesla, or working on a startup that'd compete with Tesla, similar to how the head of battery engineering at Tesla did. :)
  - itengelhardt 9y ago
    Initially ludicrous mode was not just a software update. You could get it on your (already delivered) MS P90D, but had to bring it into service. They changed a fuse and activated ludicrous mode in software. Of course, today all Tesla P100D get built with that fuse already in place - so it's "just a software upgrade" today. There's quite a bit of electrical magic going on for a fuse to be able to handle insane current bursts while retaining a good response time in case of a catastrophic fault.
    - amluto 9y ago
      IIUC the fuse is an electrically triggered explosive device. Badass, huh? What's going on is that the current drawn while flooring a ludicrous vehicle is a largish fraction of the current that should cause an instantaneous fuse blow. A fuse that melts at a given temperature and heats up as I^2 R wasn't going to cut it. In the electrical distribution industry, you'd get a fancy circuit breaker with an electrical trip device and call it a day. This has two issues for Tesla. First, your average electrical trip device uses a current transformer, and those don't work for DC. Second, DC current is considerably harder to interrupt than AC, and the current the fuse needs to carry is in the kA range (I have no idea what the short circuit current is), so a circuit breaker would be rather large. Hence a fuse, with a little explosive inside, with an active circuit, presumably using a Hall effect sensor, the voltage drop across the fuse, or maybe just a reed switch. (Hmm. It's nice when fuses and such don't need external power. I wonder if there's sufficient voltage drop across the fuse during a fault to power the circuit that blows the fuse? I bet there is. It could even be a very simple circuit like a Zener diode in series with a resistive heater that sets off the explosive.)
      - tyingq 9y ago
        Explosives in high current fuses is interesting, but not new or specific to Tesla. https://youtu.be/yTdngnsyNSE https://youtu.be/yTdngnsyNSE
        amluto 9y ago
        I think that's the other way around. The fuses in that video trigger a tiny exclusive as a side effect of blowing. IIUC Tesla'a fuse blows because an explosive is triggered.

r00fus 9y ago

It was that since they secured rights to a key resource for it's products. It's essentially the Apple move - by outmaneuvering competitors on key resources it allows higher margin or products that others can't even create.

rohit2412 9y ago
That is even more unbelievable. What are they implying, nobody else will manufacture batteries? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-about-to-bury-elon-musk-in-batteries https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-28/china-is-...
- r00fus 9y ago
  It's more of a cost per kWh or total volume advantage they were hoping to secure, I think.
- elihu 9y ago
  If Tesla has an adequate supply of cells for their needs (due to contracts with Panasonic and their own factory), but other car manufacturers have to compete with each other on the open market for a supply of cells that is inadequate for high-volume production, then that's a big advantage for Tesla in the short/medium term. They can focus 100% on electric, whereas the major manufacturers will have to stick mostly with gas and hybrids for the majority of their revenue. If China were to produce many times more cells than Tesla, we could still have a major battery shortage for most of the world's auto manufacturers.
- VintageCool 9y ago
  According to an Economist article from Aug 12 2017, the Chinese companies currently in a margin-sacrificing battle to outscale each other. Increasing volume allows them to drive down per-unit costs, so everyone is expanding their production and exceeding the demand for customers. I would be very hesitant to bet on an American company beating the Chinese companies on price and scale for battery production. > But getting prices down this way has not just produced cheaper, better batteries. It has also resulted in significant overcapacity. Cairn ERA estimates that last year the manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries exceeded demand by about a third. Both it and BNEF say that the battery manufacturers are either losing money or making only wafer-thin profits on every electric-vehicle battery they produce. Despite the seeming glut, though, they all have plans to expand, in part to drive prices even lower. Mr Jaffe explains their thinking as that of the “traditional Asian conglomerate model”: sacrificing margins for market share. This may be a sound strategy given the ever-greater hopes for electric vehicles in the near future. But at the moment it is also one that looks rather unnerving. Although Mr Jaffe believes that increased demand for both electric vehicles and stationary storage will justify the rush to expand, he accepts that, for now, “It feels like a gold rush—but there’s no gold.” https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21726069-no-need-subsidies-higher-volumes-and-better-chemistry-are-causing-costs-plummet-after https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21726069-no-need-sub...

VikingCoder 9y ago

My brain: "They're not lead batteries." "Oh, their LEAD in batteries! Stupid homonyms!"

tempestn 9y ago
Homographs actually. Homonyms are two words that are spelled differently but sound the same.
- ghusbands 9y ago
  If you're going to correct someone, get it right. Homographs have the same spelling but different meaning. Homophones have the same sound but different meaning. Historically, a homonym was both a homograph and a homophone. Nowadays, homonym can be used to mean either homograph or homophone. So homonym was correct for modern usage.
  - tempestn 9y ago
    Looks like you're right. I've never seen that usage before, but according to dictionary.com's third definition, that is "loosely" correct. An example of language evolving I guess! http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homonym http://www.dictionary.com/browse/homonym

mtgx 9y ago

1) Tesla likely secured a good deal for Panasonic batteries, as I think some of them were co-designed, like the latest bigger 207000 battery cell. From what I've seen in past articles, Tesla always had the cheapest battery packs per kWh. 2) Tesla also likely has a significant advantage in battery pack architecture, from safety (they offered to teach Boeing how to design battery packs so their EV planes don't catch fire a couple of years back), to withstand more extreme weather conditions (hot or cold), to having an industry-leading battery degradation performance. I think I've seen reports of Tesla batteries only losing 4-5% of charge capacity after 100,000 miles.

mschuster91 9y ago
> I think I've seen reports of Tesla batteries only losing 4-5% of charge capacity after 100,000 miles. That one is easy to do with overprovisioning - similar to SSDs and I believe even HDDs do this to account for inevitable degradations during operation.
rsynnott 9y ago
Tesla was always an oddity in using such small cells (18650s) in the first place. A Model S has thousands of cells; a Renault Zoe, say, has 192. The 20700 is rather similar to the existing, and fairly old, 26650. Tesla may well have interesting battery technology, but it’s not the cells; they’re nothing very special.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  IMO it's a deliberate choice - 18650s have a much higher surface-to-mass ratio, so are much easier to cool. For a car like the Model S, thermal management of the battery pack is one of the key limits on performance.
  - lafar6502 9y ago
    Yep the universe conspires to prove something... even that ordinary battery turns info a pinnacle od battery-goodness when Tesla touches it

jdietrich 9y ago

18650 cells are a commodity component. Combining thousands of them into an effective battery pack is a very complex engineering task. Tesla have filed hundreds of patents relating to pack design and battery management. They have several just relating to "thermal runaway mitigation", which is a fancy euphemism for "stopping the battery pack from catching fire". It's not sexy, but it's crucial stuff. https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc https://patents.google.com/?assignee=Tesla+Inc

KGIII 9y ago
You're free to use their patents, there is no charge.
- ccozan 9y ago
  Can you please provide a reference of this? Sounds very heroic of Tesla/Musk.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you Sibling post also has the link but I don't want you to miss it.
- surement 9y ago
  For anyone wondering: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- martin_bech 9y ago
  There is actually a charge, you are also giving up the right to enforce you own patents on Tesla I believe.