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I don't get this article. The battery in a Tesla Model S is literally a huge array of Panasonic flashlight batteries. It is an off-the-shelf catalog item you

I don't get this article. The battery in a Tesla Model S is literally a huge array of Panasonic flashlight batteries. It is an off-the-shelf catalog item you can order from Panasonic. Admittedly, you should probably have prior arrangements before ordering millions. The central insight of the Tesla founders was that people really will pay $85000 for an electric car. The other auto makers didn't believe that.

gsnedders 12y ago
And there's some deal with Panasonic for the Gigafactory as well — it sounds very much like it'll be manufacturing stuff that's basically Panasonic IP to start with.
r00fus 12y ago
You say electric car like it's some souped up Prius (I own a Prius). The Tesla Model-S is an amazing vehicle that's not only electric but amazing to look at and drive. As an aspirational status symbol it's got a hell of a lot of cachet 3 years after it's introduction. That's a feat of product marketing and engineering.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Absolutely an achievement of marketing worthy of the best marketeers in history. But the article is wrong on it's face when it states "the Battery Tech they Developed While Building EVs" because Tesla has not developed any battery technology of any kind, ever.
pdonis 12y ago
> The battery in a Tesla Model S is literally a huge array of Panasonic flashlight batteries. It is an off-the-shelf catalog item you can order from Panasonic. Um, no. Viewing the battery of a Tesla Model S as just a big flashlight battery misses the whole point of what Tesla is doing. A flashlight battery does one thing: it discharges energy until it's empty. Even an ordinary rechargeable household battery only does two things: it recharges, and then it discharges. The battery in a Tesla Model S, OTOH, is continuously computing whether to charge or discharge, how much to charge or discharge, what its current state of charge is, how to manage charging and discharging to maximize its life, etc. And it has to do this in a constantly changing environment--a car that is traveling at varying speeds over varying types of roads. (Doing it for a home battery is actually easier, in a way, because there is less variability in the load.) This sort of technology is absolutely critical if batteries are going to become significant in our energy budget on a large scale. The energy storage medium of the battery is only a tiny piece of the whole picture.
- vonklaus 12y ago
  > The battery in a Tesla Model S, OTOH, is continuously computing whether to charge or discharge Is it? I would imagine the software does that. The battery really is a large array of commodity batteries made by panosonic. Tesla is doing the gigafactory for vertical integration and to bolster it's own supply. Obviously, they have done a lot of innovation around the pack in terms of heat distribution and cell construction, as well as the management system. The innovation is really about the macro-cell construction and the software to manage the array. On a micro-level it is just a bunch of commodity batteries wites into small cells, that make up a large cell array.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > Is it? I would imagine the software does that. It is. JB Straubel (Tesla's CTO) has done all of the hard work with regards to their energy management system. Sure, babying the pack with a liquid medium for thermal transfer helps (compared to the inferior air cooling on the Nissan Leaf battery pack), but the foundation for both the performance and longevity of the Roadster and the Model S battery packs is Straubel's remarkable work.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    > I would imagine the software does that. Obviously the lithium-ion cells themselves aren't doing the computation; software is. But the software should be considered part of the "battery" as a system. Without the software the lithium-ion cells are useless for this application, and indeed for any application more dynamic than a flashlight. So the software development that Tesla has done is essential for making batteries viable in the sorts of applications that people want to use them for to help solve our energy problems.
    - waterfowl 12y ago
      would "realtime battery management software company" be a better fit?
      - 12y ago
rail2rail 12y ago
Sure. Similarly Google is just a bunch of commodity off-the-shelf hard drives.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  If some talking head wrote a blog called "Google is a hard drive company" that would be a worthy retort.
  - josefresco 12y ago
    Joking aside, one could probably write that article and make a good case based on the same logic.
  - eru 12y ago
    They are very good at building cheap servers, and running them cheaply.
mikeash 12y ago
The cells used in Tesla's battery pack are a standard form factor, but they are not standard off-the-shelf parts. If you read up on the battery pack you'll find that it uses 18650 cells, and you'll find that you can buy commodity 18650 cells from all sorts of places. But 18650 is just the shape, not the contents. Tesla's 18650s do come from Panasonic, but they're not off-the-shelf items. They have a custom chemistry and they also don't include the standard battery protection circuits found in almost all such batteries (because Tesla provides that circuitry externally).

gsnedders 12y ago

And there's some deal with Panasonic for the Gigafactory as well — it sounds very much like it'll be manufacturing stuff that's basically Panasonic IP to start with.

r00fus 12y ago

You say electric car like it's some souped up Prius (I own a Prius). The Tesla Model-S is an amazing vehicle that's not only electric but amazing to look at and drive. As an aspirational status symbol it's got a hell of a lot of cachet 3 years after it's introduction. That's a feat of product marketing and engineering.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Absolutely an achievement of marketing worthy of the best marketeers in history. But the article is wrong on it's face when it states "the Battery Tech they Developed While Building EVs" because Tesla has not developed any battery technology of any kind, ever.

pdonis 12y ago

> The battery in a Tesla Model S is literally a huge array of Panasonic flashlight batteries. It is an off-the-shelf catalog item you can order from Panasonic. Um, no. Viewing the battery of a Tesla Model S as just a big flashlight battery misses the whole point of what Tesla is doing. A flashlight battery does one thing: it discharges energy until it's empty. Even an ordinary rechargeable household battery only does two things: it recharges, and then it discharges. The battery in a Tesla Model S, OTOH, is continuously computing whether to charge or discharge, how much to charge or discharge, what its current state of charge is, how to manage charging and discharging to maximize its life, etc. And it has to do this in a constantly changing environment--a car that is traveling at varying speeds over varying types of roads. (Doing it for a home battery is actually easier, in a way, because there is less variability in the load.) This sort of technology is absolutely critical if batteries are going to become significant in our energy budget on a large scale. The energy storage medium of the battery is only a tiny piece of the whole picture.

vonklaus 12y ago
> The battery in a Tesla Model S, OTOH, is continuously computing whether to charge or discharge Is it? I would imagine the software does that. The battery really is a large array of commodity batteries made by panosonic. Tesla is doing the gigafactory for vertical integration and to bolster it's own supply. Obviously, they have done a lot of innovation around the pack in terms of heat distribution and cell construction, as well as the management system. The innovation is really about the macro-cell construction and the software to manage the array. On a micro-level it is just a bunch of commodity batteries wites into small cells, that make up a large cell array.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > Is it? I would imagine the software does that. It is. JB Straubel (Tesla's CTO) has done all of the hard work with regards to their energy management system. Sure, babying the pack with a liquid medium for thermal transfer helps (compared to the inferior air cooling on the Nissan Leaf battery pack), but the foundation for both the performance and longevity of the Roadster and the Model S battery packs is Straubel's remarkable work.
- pdonis 12y ago
  > I would imagine the software does that. Obviously the lithium-ion cells themselves aren't doing the computation; software is. But the software should be considered part of the "battery" as a system. Without the software the lithium-ion cells are useless for this application, and indeed for any application more dynamic than a flashlight. So the software development that Tesla has done is essential for making batteries viable in the sorts of applications that people want to use them for to help solve our energy problems.
  - waterfowl 12y ago
    would "realtime battery management software company" be a better fit?
    - 12y ago

rail2rail 12y ago

Sure. Similarly Google is just a bunch of commodity off-the-shelf hard drives.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
If some talking head wrote a blog called "Google is a hard drive company" that would be a worthy retort.
- josefresco 12y ago
  Joking aside, one could probably write that article and make a good case based on the same logic.
- eru 12y ago
  They are very good at building cheap servers, and running them cheaply.

mikeash 12y ago

The cells used in Tesla's battery pack are a standard form factor, but they are not standard off-the-shelf parts. If you read up on the battery pack you'll find that it uses 18650 cells, and you'll find that you can buy commodity 18650 cells from all sorts of places. But 18650 is just the shape, not the contents. Tesla's 18650s do come from Panasonic, but they're not off-the-shelf items. They have a custom chemistry and they also don't include the standard battery protection circuits found in almost all such batteries (because Tesla provides that circuitry externally).