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At Current Rates, Tesla Could Soon Suck Up Worldwide Supply of Li-Ion Cells
cartechboy writes "Lets just say Elon Musk may need to go battery shopping, like, big-time. Here's some little-understood Tesla math that could turn the global market for cylindrical lithium-ion cells upside down by 2015. It turns out the massive Model S battery takes almost 2,000 times the number of cells a basic laptop does. Assume Tesla just doubles production from its current 21K cars/year to 40K cars/year. (Something it expects to do by 2015). At that point, Tesla would require the *entire* existing global capacity for 18650 commodity cells. That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada. What should Elon do? Better get on the horn to Panasonic and Samsung."
Our newfound infatuation with extremely flat laptops that have about as many user-servicable parts as 2001's Monolith means that demand for 18650 Li-ion cells in laptops should be plummeting! Problem solved.
Now we just need to go liberate whoever is living on top of our lithium, and we are good to go.
If we extrapolate this curve and assume everything else remains constant, DOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
But it gets the clicks, and that's all that matters on the tubes.
Take a look at this chart:
http://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-bcc9036c04a16179b3ecfd490333a32e
Interesting examination of it on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Dharmesh-Bhatt/Quora-gold/Batteries-are-following-Moores-law
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I seem to recall some old English dude saying stuff about supply and demand... But sarcasm aside, isn't it about time we had some tangible breakthroughs in battery tech?
weinersmith
Make more?
Crisis solved. I will even waive my customary consulting fee.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So if Tesla doubles production, it would consume the entire world's production of li-ion cells. So the measly 21k cars Tesla produces use half of the world's production already? Maybe I can't read and/or do math though.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
18650 is the name of the size of cell. See this table.
We start with some seriously breathless doom-and-gloom headlines and summary, then reading the articles we find this sort of thing:
The carmaker's rapid production scale-up has prompted Panasonic to expand capacity, by reopening previously idled plants, while simultaneously committing to build entirely new production lines.
So prices had been dropping, production had been cut, but now at least one cell maker has restarted idled lines. That doesn't exactly sound like a disaster in the making.
I am not a crackpot.
I wonder which has the better profit margin, electronic devices or Tesla? Presumably that decides how this plays out. The interesting thing is that it's going to become a barrier to entry for electric car makers. The one with the highest profit margin can set the price of the batteries above the profit margin of the competition when there is a supply shortfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Seriously, putting an r-squared value on the chart for apparently FOUR data points? Scientist card revoked.
http://troll.me?p=9286
18650 is the model
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
18650 is the Li-ion cell type not the quantity. It looks like a bulked up AA battery and is typically available in the range of 2.5 - 3.0 AHr at 3.7 volts.
Basically, they're on their way to consume the li-on's share of Li-Ion cells. Sounds about right!
Ezekiel 23:20
The lithium ion 18650 cylindrical cell production has been dropping as laptop demand has dropped and as laptops are moving to lithium polymer flat pack batteries.
Panasonic/Sanyo has had to close factories. Originally, Panasonic's plants that were acquired from Sanyo were supposed to be able to produce 300 million cells in their Suminoe plant in Osaka, Japan in just stage 1.
http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800603184_765245_NT_5f784554.HTM
That plant alone, running at full stage 1 capacity could produce enough batteries for 40,000 85kWh Model S's. The demand from Tesla is strong enough that they are expanding production again:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-21/news/41433228_1_lithium-ion-batteries-production-line#
However, it really isn't the Model S or Model X that will have the issue, or even the initial production of whatever Gen 3 car that is coming. The big issue is making enough batteries for millions of EVs, and that will take some planning for the necessary expansion.
[sigh...]
Super capacitors are awesome, and would dovetail very nicely with Tesla's high-capacity charging stations. But the simple fact is that they are still about an order of magnitude lower in energy density than Li-Ion. Sure, lots of people are looking to improve that, but it is doubtful that Musk is going to (or would even be able to) dump enough R&D money into the field to bring about an automotive "battery" using supercapacitors anytime soon. If he's going to put money into the field at all, it'll probably be to integrate a relatively small amount of supercapacitance into the conventional battery pack to improve the pulse power capability.
The Great Horse-Manure Crisis of 1894. Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure.
Summary sez that...
>no assumptions that the situation will ever change except that Tesla will use more batteries:
FTFS "That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada."
Increased demand will make it profitable for economies of scale in manufacturing to take place, and to make Li cells cheaper, as has happened since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And we'll have more of them.
FTFA:
Well, duh!
It's not like we're going to run out of Lithium, either. It's recyclable, first and foremost, and it's plentiful.
Clicking through to the article, it's not at all as sensationalist as the summary even though the article itself contains some BS. The summary says that we're going to suddenly run out because of the demand. No such thing is mentioned in the article itself.
Invest in battery manufacturers. That's the real take-away from this article. And the summary writer is a douchebag.
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BMO
There was a time when there was this thing called the iPod, and it had a small magnetic hard drive inside it. iPods were really big business - hundreds of millions were made. iPods practically cornered the market for 1.8" hard drives for a while. The world did not end.
More recently, Apple started producing iPods and, later on, entire freaking phones, tablets, and computers that did away with the spinning magnetic discs in favor of flash memory. Apple sold of lot of those, too, and for a long while has consumed a large fraction of the entire world output of flash memory. Lo and behold: world output increased to match demand.
If anything, these facile comparisons should give Elon Musk an idea: pre-purchase huge swaths of 18650s as a strategic move, just as Apple has done for flash memory and touchscreens over the years. Doing so would ensure the lowest possible price, a consistent supply chain, and make it harder for competitors to enter the market on equal terms.
Um, like Boeing does on the 787?
There is some logic to the Tesla design. Or Musk stumbled upon the right way to do things accidentally. 18650 cells, being smaller, have fewer thermal issues than larger cells. More surface area per unit volume makes them easier to cool.
Have gnu, will travel.
Lithium doesn't come from rare earth ores. It's in fact almost on the opposite end of the periodic table, being the first metal (after hydrogen and helium).
It's mainly found in Bolivia, which is a bit of a problem: Bolivia would like to have a domestic battery industry (higher revenue), instead of exporting raw lithium. The problem? A 20th century socialist for president, who is quite successfully scaring away international investment. As a result, the main exporter is Chile, which has smaller deposits.
In reality, bolivian government is not allowing transnational companies get the lithium for pennies, as they do in other countries who were servile to transnational power, or as happened in Bolivia before.
They are investing heavily (Bolivia is still poor, but its economy is growing steadily, while other countries were affected by the world crisis) in their own R&D, and they consider that no matter how long it takes for them to get everything going on, it's better than the alternative that letting trasnational companies get the lionshare of the profits.
Think about it, 2 alternatives for Bolivia.
A) Zero pennies now, for getting big profits in the future by controlling its own Lithium production.
B) Small profits now, letting the corporations get the lionshare forever.
They chose A, wisely IMO. In fact, that example should be followed by more poor countries, isn't this a good way to stop corporations greed to keep them in poverty while they earn huge profits on the resources of the country?
Elon is a successful businessman specifically because he's selling the idea that if you buy his $70k car, you're doing your part to help move humanity towards a more sustainable future. It's exactly the same reason some people with extra money to burn buy organic foods. The reason he doesn't get attacked more often on Slashdot, is because people here really want to believe the line of shit about his company producing an affordable car at some indeterminate point in the future, when economy of scale makes it feasible.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Futures might work - again, if you trust the government. I don't think Bolivia would expect to get to battery production in the foreseeable future: this obviously requires the kind of huge scale precision operation perfected by the Far east producers such as Panasonic. If it were simple enough, there would be factories all over the world. But I think it is too complex for a third world country. The fact is, it requires billions, and years, just to extract the ore,
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If there's one thing business is exceedingly good at, it's ramping up production when a big customer says they want to buy lots of your product. All Tesla has to do is sign a contract guaranteeing a minimum buy.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Handbook of Lithium and Natural Calcium: "Lithium is a comparatively rare element, although it is found in many rocks and some brines, but always in very low concentrations. There are a fairly large number of both lithium mineral and brine deposits but only comparatively few of them are of actual or potential commercial value. Many are very small, others are too low in grade."
Places lithium is being mined have on the order 20-100 ppm by weight of lithium in the rocks being mined, and the few highly productive places currently producing it are extracting it from salt flat brine instead.
I've read there is up to 28 million tonnes (depending on who you ask) of lithium available for commercially viable mining, and the total quantity of lithium on the planet being something like 3 million billion tons (only a fraction is actually accessible, of course). Lithium is about as plentiful as nickel.
If we go with a conservative 8 grams of Li per 100 Watt-Hours of battery capacity, that 28 million tonnes translates to 355,000,000 megawatt-hours of storage - Enough for nearly six billion 60kWh Tesla vehicles. That's roughly five times as many vehicles that are thought to be on the road on the entire plant today.
Granted that only a portion of our lithium production goes to batteries, but even if we consider those other uses there is nothing like a shortage of Lithium on the horizon. The bottleneck is entirely production related.
Plus, unlike oil, lithium is not consumed when used and can be recycled.
=Smidge=
Instead of pie-in-the-sky ideas like Hyperloop, Elon should invest his billions into coming out with a new generation of batteries that:
a) don't rob the world of a specific limited resource to produce, need to make it from carbon, period, we have more than enough, use up what we have dumped into the atmosphere as a start.
b) has a much higher energy density than found in today's batteries, extends range and delivery of power comparable to combustion engines.
c) are quicker to charge, ideally 5 minutes for a long enough charge that matters
d) are significantly cheaper to produce, we don't want $20k batteries that have a limited lifetime.
You call Hyperloop "pie-in-the-sky," and then you demand all this from batteries? What do you expect him to be, a wizard? Do you think throwing money at the problem will just magically make all this happen?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Ya. Just in case it isn't obvious, 18650 means 18mm Diameter, 65mm length, and 0 at the end indicates a cylindrical cell. AA batteries are 14500 sized, and CR123's are 16340s.
I use 18650s and 26650s in all my flashlights. Lithium is cheap, bright, and long lasting compared to AA NiMH. Love em!
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
A) Zero pennies now, for getting big profits in the future by controlling its own Lithium production.
B) Small profits now, letting the corporations get the lionshare forever.
Or maybe C) Zero pennies ever, if some other battery tech replaces Li-ion before they get spun up.
The smart move would be to sell lithium now for its raw material value while setting up battery production for the future. Don't leave money on the table now while preparing to step up the food chain.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
All Elon has done is put a battery into a nice attractive container and sells it as a high-end luxury car.
Toyota paid $100 million to have Telsa build drive-trains for them for use in the RAV4 EV. Doesn't sound to me like what you claim is all that Elon has done.. sounds to me like there is a commercial demand for the Tesla drive-train, and that Patents that Telsa owns on their own drive-train prevent others from producing a competitive product.
"His name was James Damore."
Batteries don't use up their working materials, speaking generally.
http://michaelsmith.id.au