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BYD has reportedly received 10 GWh of orders from Tesla for LFP batteries
- infocollector 5y agoJust in case -> BYD Co. Ltd. is a Chinese manufacturing company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, founded by Wang Chuanfu in February 1995. Perhaps someone can comment on quality of these batteries compared to the current car batteries Tesla uses?
- ceejayoz 5y agoBYD is also a competitor in the electric vehicle space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Auto (They make great KN95 masks, incidentally.)
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 5y agoAny references what makes their KN95 great ?
- sudosysgen 5y agoI never tried their KN95s but their surgical masks are pretty great, the ear hook is thicker and softer with better elasticity and the nose metal band felt nice. I wouldn't go out of my way too much though.
- cowmix 5y agoBetter: * can charge to 100% all the time * no rare earth minerals * stable Worse: * not as energy dense * US doesn't make a lot of this type of battery
- CarVac 5y agoThe US doesn't make a lot of this type of battery because there is a consortium of patent-holders who charge enough to make LFP less economically viable that wasn't able to secure all the needed patents in China.
- whimsicalism 5y agoDidn't this also happen with airplanes in like the 1910s? Can't we fix it in a similar way?
- Robotbeat 5y agoClimate mitigation depends on patent reform, sounds like.
- sbierwagen 5y agoPatents have a 20 year lifetime. US5910382 and US6514640 have already expired. It might speed up climate mitigation, but it's not strictly required for it to happen.
- elihu 5y agoI think the main patents that haven't expired yet are about to expire in 2022.
- monkeybutton 5y agoWhy charge so much to license that no one will bother? Is it sunk cost thinking? Some money from licensing is better than nothing at all isn't it?
- space_rock 5y agoIt's amazing how broken of a system it is. The theory is ok but I today's world they don't work. Change the time scale to 10 years at least. Or require active use even better
- RNCTX 5y agoTo create monopoly, the answer is always to create a monopoly. All of this was set in our future when corporations were not prohibited from having patents.
- sudosysgen 5y agoSo Tesla's Li-ion batteries are going to have a significantly higher mass energy density - these are around 150Wh/kg vs 230Wh/kg that Tesla can currently muster. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that LiFePO4 handles 100% charges and 100% discharge, so in practice the protections on Li-ion means you can only really get 190Wh or so out of them every day, significantly narrowing the gap. However, these are going to be ~4x cheaper for the same capacity, and are much safer, so some weight might be gained, but they won't take more space, possibly less space because they are prismatic. To give you an estimate on the possible cost savings, BYD has it's own EVs, and the one they are releasing using these batteries costs 20 000$ before subsidies for 51kWh. LiFePO4 also has much higher durability - that means that you can get away with more efficient pack designs, and probably that they can handle much faster charging.
- r00fus 5y agoIron based batteries also remove cobalt and nickel requirements, making them less environmental and politically difficult. Anything to make EVs more mainstream has my interest.
- sudosysgen 5y agoAbsolutely, it's a big part of why they're cheaper. I just wish I could actually get them for reasonable prices in smaller quantities. I have to pay a 3-5x premium for LiFePO4 batteries. I'd love some at a reasonable premium for my ebike :)
- dylan604 5y agoeBike batteries are as unique as all of the power tool ones so that they are all different. what's your approach to housing and connecting your DIY battery for your make/model? i just recently became an eBike owner as well, and a second battery pack is 1/3 the price of the bike.
- sudosysgen 5y agoI built my own ebike. I can basically make the battery pack into any shape I want. Right now I run 14s10p 18650s - it cost me 200$ to make and it has as much capacity as 3000$ worth of Bosch powerpacks. Secondary battery packs are so expensive because of DRM and lack of interoperability. I could make for 100$ a battery pack that Bosch sells for 900$. You're really not paying for the cells. Power tool batteries aren't really unique either btw. The shape is slightly different but they're all just 2p-3p 18650s with basic slot connectors.
- gamblor956 5y agoFor point of comparison, LA had several EV buses built by BYD and literally none of them work anymore despite only being service for about a month or two. In fact, almost every US transit agency that has purchased a BYD EV has had issues with the vehicles, batteries, or both. So to answer your questions: the BYD batteries will be a lot lower quality than the batteries Tesla currently gets.
- balia 5y agoIs arbitrarily pointing out “fyi this is a CHINESE business” the new “fyi this is a JEWISH business”?
- CamperBob2 5y agoThat interpretation might be a bit inflammatory. But at a minimum, it's certainly the new "fyi this is a JAPANESE business." How'd that work out for the generation of manufacturers that used it as a veiled insult?
- DavidPiper 5y agoAs a young(ish) person, I've definitely heard "fyi this is a CHINESE business", but haven't really heard "fyi this is a JEWISH business" or "fyi this is a JAPANESE business". Are there communicable/generalised messages or stereotypes people are trying to invoke with this sort of thing, or have they always just been intended as slander?
- tuatoru 5y agoI can't speak to "Jewish", but I can to "Japanese". It relates to Japan's industrial rise after WWII. In the 1950s, "Japanese" was synonymous with "shoddy and cheap". The stereotypical import from Japan was an HB pencil. In the 1980s, "Japanese" became synonymous with "cheap and reliable" -- think Toyota vs General Motors. American manufacturers responded with racism rather than fixing their problems. There was hysteria in the mainstream media that Japan was going to overtake the US to become the biggest economy in the world. People who see the world in zero-sum terms made idiots of themselves.* In the 2010s, "Japanese" seems to have become synonymous with "advanced and very high quality". "Japanese capacitors" on computer motherboards, for instance. And now that the Chinese are here, we've always been best buddies with Japan. To some extent this same sequence is happening with South Korea and Taiwan, and possibly Israel. * There's a famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" which goes some way to describing this zero-sum, win-or-lose thinking in politicians. The first few paragraphs read like they could have been written this year. https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-am...
- sbierwagen 5y agoTesla cars manufactured in China use Chinese LFP batteries: https://jetcharge.com.au/blog/tesla-model-3-australia-made-in-china-differences https://jetcharge.com.au/blog/tesla-model-3-australia-made-i... This story is about Tesla maybe switching from one Chinese vendor to another.
- smackeyacky 5y agoI can't comment on the batteries, but Shenzhen 4 years ago was full of BYD taxis. They seemed pretty good compared to the ancient diesel VW Passats that were the alternative.
- zamalek 5y agoI am a very minor investor. They quite recently pioneered some very slick flat batteries. The volume/joule is better (not sure about joule/kg), and the batteries could become structural. I find them speculatively interesting.
- ysleepy 5y agoTidbit: Flixbus, the origins of FlixMobility which bought Greyhound tried the BYD C9 bus on the Mannheim - Frankfurt route in 2018-2019. They stopped because of re-occurring partially multi-day outages due to battery issues, which were LiFePo. The press coverage is vague, but explicit in mentioning battery issues. I assume that tesla did their due diligence and BYD fixed the issues by now.
- panick21 5y agoA lot of issues like that are with the battery packs, not the cells. Tesla buy cells and makes their own packs.
- anonymousiam 5y agoTesla said that they will use LFP batteries from now on in all "standard range" cars. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-switching-to-lfp-batteries-in-all-standard-range-cars.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/20/tesla-switching-to-lfp-batte... As I understand it, the "standard range" cars are no different from the long range cars, other than a software flag that allows a greater battery discharge. So this will complicate the Tesla fast battery swap stations if they ever actually build any of those. https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.tesla.com/videos/battery-swap-event https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-battery-swapping-plan-isnt-working-out-2015-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/teslas-battery-swapping-plan...
- ericmay 5y ago> So this will complicate the Tesla fast battery swap stations if they ever actually build any of those. I don’t think they’ll ever build those. Huge infrastructure requirement, gigantic overhead, most people don’t take long-distance trips often and when they do a 20 minute supercharge is good enough for people to not really demand a battery swap station. You also can expand the footprint of “cords” much faster and much farther. Not to mention battery swap stations probably wouldn’t be designed to service other cars, unlike future charging stalls.
- iknowstuff 5y agoTesla has no plans to develop battery swap stations. They abandoned them back in 2015 or so. Standard range cars have fewer cells than long range cars, so it's not just software, they physically output less power.
- pmorici 5y ago"So this will complicate the Tesla fast battery swap stations if they ever actually build any of those." They aren't planning do battery swapping. None of their recent designs have any provisions for it. That was something they considered early on and then abandon once they advanced their fast charging technology.
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- consumer451 5y agoModern IP rights combined with the IP wild-west that we have allowed in China are about backfire on western industry so hard. See section 3 here: https://roskill.com/news/batteries-the-true-drivers-behind-lfp-demand-new-safety-standards-costs-ip-rights-esg-simplified-battery-pack-designs/ https://roskill.com/news/batteries-the-true-drivers-behind-l... We chose to give China a 10 year head start on LFP at scale.
- sudosysgen 5y agoFWIW Sony sued BYD for patent infringement in Japanese courts and lost. Sanyo sued BYD in US courts and settled mostly on the side of BYD. BYD also managed to invalidate a Panasonic patents. It seems to me that China bet on LFP, the West bet on Li-ion, and China's bet is pretty successful. You'd be right to say that patents limited LFP in the West, but generally Japanese/Korean firms seemed relatively uninterested in the tech. LFP was very much under-developped until recently and there was a lot of path-dependence and a lot of bets on Li-ion outside of China.
- xxs 5y agoLiFePO4 has lower energy density and it's way more durable. Both properties go against the throw-away culture. (Hand held) Tool industry thrives on selling battery packs - every single brand has its own battery lock-in to boot as well. Phones often get disposed once their battery capacity diminishes.
- jacquesm 5y agoHigh time for some regulation here, if we can standardize charger plugs then we can standardize battery packs, the amount of waste on account of all this purposeful incompatibility is staggering. All it would take is an agreed upon form factor, charger and available voltages (say: 18, 36, 48 or the nearest equivalent) and we'd save many, many tons of hard to recycle materials every year. Bonus points if there would be a mandatory way to replace the individual cells so that only they and not the pack would have to be replaced when and if the cells wear out.
- grecy 5y agoElon has said multiple times Tesla will buy all the batteries from all the suppliers they possibly can AND make their own as fast as possible AND increase existing contracts with Panasonic AND seek out as many new suppliers as physically possible. Takeaway: Tesla want more batteries.
- mountainriver 5y agoThat’s because Elon is genuinely trying to solve our energy problem, although people love to hate on him
- RNCTX 5y agoBecause he's not, he's just trading energy credits.
- tuatoru 5y agoWhatever his companies are doing or whatever else you don't like about him, he is a brilliant political engineer. Before Musk bought Tesla, policy-makers in the US and Europe were all "electric vehicles are a nice idea, but simply impractical and unfeasible. So our vehicle manufacturers tell us". In the short span of ten years, electric vehicles have become mandatory in many Western countries, starting sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, and they are headed that way in many more. And that is down to Musk. Whatever his--many and grievous--personal faults may be, and whatever else he does short of mass murder, he deserves our gratitude for this alone.
- panick21 5y agoThe whole point of energy credits is that slow moving large companies who use bad old technology give money to fast moving young technology who use modern green technologies. That is exactly what has happened and was a success as a business was created that no longer relies on credits and it has clearly accelerated the advent of EVs. Not sure what your issue is with that.
- paxys 5y agoEveryone wants more batteries. Batteries are going to be the new semiconductors over the next few decades.
- Proven 5y agoIf the cars caught fire and burned when the batteries were made in the USA...
- NotSammyHagar 5y agoHow many cars would this power: about 100k-200k cars. 10,000 megawatt hours. A single car today has ~50-100 kwh. An S 85D from 5 years ago used 85kwh, a 3 uses less than that today. How many cars is this? 10,000 mwh / 0.1 mwh = 100k cars worth of batteries. Tesla is already at 1 million cars per year run rate, at least 1/3 are from China, so 300k are using LiFePO4 (I think all their Chinese-produced cars use lifepo4). That is a lot of batteries but not that many cars on top of what they already build.
- panick21 5y agoI assume this is mostly so they can have a relationship with another supplier and in future get offers from both BYD and CATL for more supply.