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> This is why Tesla is valued higher than GM, Daimler or pretty much any other car company. Tesla at it's heart is a battery company with products built around
by ckastner 8y ago
> This is why Tesla is valued higher than GM, Daimler or pretty much any other car company. Tesla at it's heart is a battery company with products built around that.
It was Samsung, not Tesla, who supplied the actual cells [1]: Tesla’s giant new Powerpack project in Australia will use battery cells made by Samsung
[1] https://electrek.co/2017/08/09/tesla-powerpack-project-australia-battery-cell-samsung/ https://electrek.co/2017/08/09/tesla-powerpack-project-austr...
- robotresearcher 8y agoBatteries are systems, not just cells.
- agumonkey 8y agoDo you know how long these cells can last in such a scenario ?
- acct1771 8y agoAs long as they save more than their cost during their lifetime, who cares?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- zachberger 8y agoThere are externalities to lithium ion battery production. Lithium is a finite resource and the environmental impact needs to be considered as well. Its shortsighted to only consider cost.
- atombender 8y agoLithium can be reclaimed from batteries. It's going to be a challenge for the industry [1], but it's also going to be very important. [1] https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-the-lithium-battery-recycling-challenge https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-the-lithium-battery-r...
- sxates 8y agoAll materials are finite resources.
- ggm 8y agoThere is significantly more extractable lithium than needed at any rational forseen rate of ramp-up. The impact of mining has to be borne by all real goods which depend on mines, not just this one. You are adopting implied reductionism around the "cost" side without having done the work (in my opinion) to justify that this concern outweighs the upside benefits of ceasing to use coal. PS a lot of the minable lithium which isn't in Chile, is in Australia. So, we have low-miles lithium! Erlich/Simons anyone?
- hfiuehgge 8y agoLithium is number 3 on the periodic table. Human ingenuity not going to stop finding extractible sources anytime soon.
- photojosh 8y agoThere's some interesting politics going on wrt lithium in Chile. Seems like the regulators don't want to increase output as lithium extraction uses a ton of water, and the Atacama is one of the driest places on Earth. Presumably that is why the same company is trying to kick off in Australia as well, even though we have higher regulatory and labour costs here. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-albemarle-exclusive-idUSKBN1O42N5 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-albemarle-exclusive...
- audunw 8y agoWhile this is true, these battery solutions tend to offset the much larger externalities of the fossil-fuel based technologies they help make redundant. The li-ion externalities is mostly incurred once when mining. Although it's still in it's infancy, recycling li-ion batteries is already possible, and supposedly profitable. Especially when you can get an enormous batch of cells of exactly the same model as you would with this project. The biggest problem in recycling li-ion batteries is that you may need different processes for different cells, so you need to sort them first.
- maratd 8y ago> The li-ion externalities is mostly incurred once when mining. I agree with your comment, but lithium is not mined. This is a common misconception and should be noted since we're chatting about externalities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Extraction
- mehwoot 8y agoActually, this has changed since the price of lithium increased 300% since 2014. Australia now has operating lithium mines, and there are mines in construction in portugal too. http://www.lithiummine.com/lithium-mining-in-australia http://www.lithiummine.com/lithium-mining-in-australia http://www.savannahresources.com/assets/mina-do-barroso/ http://www.savannahresources.com/assets/mina-do-barroso/
- Jeff_Brown 8y agoAs Li becomes more valuable, more methods of extraction will become worth it.
- marshray 8y agoLithium is one of the more common elements in the Earth's crust. More abundant than many familiar everyday materials like copper. Sure, extracting copper has costs too, but I don't see the same handwringing about that.
- kiriakasis 8y agoso is silicon, yet it is expensive.
- opencl 8y agoTesla provides a 10 year warranty for their stationary energy storage systems. I have seen a bunch of articles claiming that Tesla projects a ~15 year lifespan but have yet to find any actual statement from Tesla. Ultimately lithium ion lifespan is hugely dependent on temperature, depth of discharge, and number of charge cycles so there is potentially a lot of variance depending on use case and local climate.
- andys627 8y agoDid I read right that a $66m investment netted $40m this year?
- bmon 8y agoSouth Australia's energy grid is a very exceptional case, due to a very jarring transition to renewables. I would not expect the same level of returns in other areas.
- photojosh 8y agoIt's worth noting that the major recent failures of the grid across south-eastern Australia have been due to 1) tornados taking down the interconnector between Victoria and SA (a failure which the conservative government blamed on renewables), and 2) regular failures from the decrepit old coal power plants. While the transition to renewables has indeed been rapid and jarring, that's not what has caused problems.
- brownbat 8y agoI think bmon just meant that renewables have more daily peaks than coal or nuclear, so they create more opportunities for battery savings relative to traditional fast start generation. More peaks doesn't mean worse all things considered, it isn't a critique, it's just saying that battery viability is highly contingent on local power mix.
- ldp01 8y ago
- fencepost 8y agoI don't have any specific wear numbers, but a system like this is going to be designed for maximum lifespan not for limited cases where you want every possible drop of energy that can be put into or out of the battery. I suspect that the cells are never charged above about 75-80% of capacity and probably are never discharged below 20-30% of capacity. Avoiding both extremes should greatly extend the number of available cycles from hundreds to thousands or more.
- ksec 8y agoBut even 1000 cycles... assuming 0.5 cycles per day gives you ~6 years life span? Sounds a little too low.
- agumonkey 8y agoyeah indeed
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Retric 8y agoThe payback period is ~18 months so lasting less than 10 years is mostly irrelevant. On top of that these systems are still useful well below their original capacity, so they can rather than a sudden huge bill you simply add more capacity as the original battery’s degrade in a fairly predictable fashion. Over time you end up with a much smaller annual investment than your saving every year.
- agumonkey 8y agopayback is not the goal though, it's about avoiding sucking earth resources
- tankenmate 8y agoYou can always recycle the batteries and use it to create new batteries.
- nsb1 8y agoBattery University ( https://batteryuniversity.com/ https://batteryuniversity.com/ ) has a wealth of knowledge on this subject. LiIon cells are quite temperamental, especially when it comes to extreme climates as it turns out.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- spectrum1234 8y agoWhy don't Samsung and Panasonic compete in this battery/energy storage market? Serious question.
- mlindner 8y agoBut the cells were designed by Tesla.
- hyperpallium 8y agoAnd in Tesla's Gigafactory 1, it's Panasonic who make the batteries. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1 https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1 Someone else owning your key competitive advantage sounds like a vulnerability... OTOH you could similarly say the touchscreen was the key to the first iphone... invented, developed, manufactured and owned by someone else.
- tgtweak 8y agoI believe it (the Tesla battery plant) was built as a joint venture with Panasonic giving the IP and tooling and Tesla operating the plant. They're using a custom cell format also, away from the ubiquitous and standard 18650. LG, Panasonic and Samsung make almost all the lithium ion cells used today so it doesn't seem odd that Tesla would license one of their technologies to start. The r&d savings would be in the billions.
- jsight 8y agoThe 2170 (or 21700) batteries used in the Model 3 were not invented for the Model 3 originally. AFAIK, they predate the development of that vehicle.
- solarkraft 8y agoThey might not have invented the format, but they are fairly certainly using chemistry optimized for their cars. Not sure whether Panasonic does it for them but the way I hear them talk about it they seem to have quite a bit of R&D in house.
- fao_ 8y agoThe touchscreen was done elsewhere, by someone else. Seriously, it was presented as a product to several phone companies and did not draw them in. The key to the first IPhone was the interface and form factor.
- mcnichol 8y ago
- wklauss 8y agoImportant caveat: cells ≠ batteries