Slashdot Mirror
Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating Tesla's Battery Technology? (bloomberg.com)
"Tesla's newest promises break the laws of batteries," writes Bloomberg. Long-time Slashdot reader rudy_wayne summarizes their report.
"Elon Musk knows how to make promises. Even by his own standards, the promises made last week while introducing two new Tesla vehicles...are monuments of envelope pushing. To deliver, according to close observers of battery technology, Tesla would have to far exceed what is currently thought possible." The Tesla Semi, which Musk claims can haul 80,000 pounds at highway speeds for 500 miles, then recharge 400 miles of range in 30 minutes, would require "a charging system that's 10 times more powerful than one of the fastest battery-charging networks on the road today -- Tesla's own Superchargers."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
The Tesla Roadster is promised to be the quickest production car ever built. But that achievement would mean squeezing into its tiny frame a battery twice as powerful as the largest battery currently available in any electric car. These claims are so far beyond current industry standards for electric vehicles that they would require either advances in battery technology or a new understanding of how batteries are put to use, said Sam Jaffe, battery analyst for Cairn Energy Research in Boulder, Colorado.
But Jaffe reaches an interesting conclusion. "I don't think they're lying. I just think they left something out of the public reveal that would have explained how these numbers work."
He has to do something to keep people investing in his company, and keep the stock price high. Looking at the fundamentals, it's a crazyy buy for the stock. Never turned a profit, losing billions per year, cash-on-hand to keep running until summer next year - and massive commitments for new products and deliveries they have to meet. Add in the track record of never coming close to those delivery numbers - and it's crazy anyone buys the stock. So Musk has to put on the PT Barnum act and drum up more support so they can turn to the last option they have to raise more capital - sell more stock.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Is Elon Musk Greatly Exaggerating
Yes.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
For trucks and buses that can follow the wires. They can be powered and "recharged" as they move, as well as following the wires automatically. Also, electrified freight rail. "Charging" vehicles while on the go is a solved problem and doesn't require production of large, environmentally-costly batteries.
With a title like that, you know the article is going to be good for a laugh. Sort of like people who say "physics says..." who wouldn't even recognize the formulae that apply to the problem in question if you wrote them out in front of them.
1) Passengers in the Roadster noted how high its floor is. Aka: it's a double-high pack. Tesla already makes 100kWh packs for the S and X that are single-high. They may need to extend a bit further forward and back because the Roadster is a bit smaller of a footprint (on S and X they only slightly overlap the wheelbase, and on Model 3 they're inside the wheelbase entirely), but there's nothing at all implausible about 200kWh in such a form factor.
2) The megacharger charge port has been filmed by KMan. It has 8 giant pins in what appear to be a 2x4 arrangement, with ground and control pins likely clustered in a side slot on the right. These pins are much larger than those on the supercharger port, and there's a lot more of them. Also note the 2x4 arrangement: there appear to be four separate battery packs, and there 4 separate drive units. It appears that bloody everything on this vehicle is redundant (one assumes that there's at least a charge balancing system between the packs).
3) The means to provide the power to the megachargers is very, very simple: they're battery buffered. Tesla has always been clear on this; they're not drawing that power straight from the grid. More to the point, Semi uses the same battery chemistry as Tesla's grid-battery buffers (NMC). It's an extremely durable chemistry.
4) The article is very reasonable in its assessment of the battery capacity on the 500mi semi - they say 600-1000kWh (I've been working on the assumption of 900kWh, but it could be a bit less). Their estimate on the price, however, assumes that batteries cost $100-$170/kWh retail. Yet the raw material costs for said cells is only about $50/kWh - and that's currently at "spiked" prices which can be expected to drop as the mining industry readjusts to the new demand curve (historic prices would be more like $35/kWh). The whole point of the Gigafactory was to make li-ion batteries - finally - get closer to the cost of the raw materials that go into them. These numbers simply suggest that the Gigafactory has done exactly what it was designed to do.
5) Their estimate of the weight of the battery pack is probably correct (around 5 tonnes). However, in addition to the weight savings from using electric drive units vs. a big diesel / transmission / pollution controls / etc, Tesla always builds light. Don't expect the primary structure to be made of mild steel on this one; expect UHS steel, with 4-5 times the tensile strength, for example. Guillen stated in Europe that it has the same payload capacity as a diesel semi (aka, the tractor is no heavier), and that's probably correct.
Or, to put it another way: none of the "experts" expected the Model 3 SR to come in at almost exactly the same weight as the BMW 330i, with the same performance, more standard features, and a cheaper price. It did. And the LR isn't much heavier than a 330i, and well faster (can't wait to see the specs on the performance package!)
6) Charge rates of 7 cents per kWh: First off, their estimate that charging should cost 40 cents per kWh is just absurd. Pure nonsense. Even Tesla's current generation of superchargers is half that ($0,20/kWh), and they have to pay demand charges. That said, 7 cents per kWh comes across as extremely ambitious... until you start looking into it. And then you realize how much of a game changer it is that Tesla is doing here.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
NMC li-ion, likely 2170 form factor, 4x packs. Hard to estimate the number of bricks (because we don't know the voltage) and thus the number of cells per brick.
The charge times are perfectly normal for Tesla cells. 30 minutes to 80% is the standard for supercharging as well. It's just more cells and more power.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
Meanwhile, spyshots and the VIN count on Model 3 show production greatly accelerating.
As for "exaggerating everything" - you mean like promising a battery within 100 days of signing a contract, and delivering it in 55? Promising the Model 3 with 215 mile range, then delivering it with 220, with an option for 310 - a number that's in turn downrated from EPA testing of 334 miles? What exaggerations about vehicle stats and pricing are you thinking of exactly?
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
...a standard car charging point isn't powerful enough to charge a semi in a reasonable time?
Instead of immediately accusing them of witchcraft, perhaps... they just figured out a way to bundle multiple 'standard' standard car-chargers in parallel, and use those to charge separate battery packs inside a semi, greatly reducing the total recharge time?
It's bigger on the inside.
Or in July stating they can do 20K in December, but then sliding the required rate to March 2018 at the earliest? Oh wait...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm betting the eight "pins" on the port aren't pins. They are sockets with two contact surfaces.
Eight 120 kWH batteries (five in the 300-mile version) made using the newer 2170 cells wouldn't be much of a stretch of the current technology. This would provide 960 kWH total which is within the range of estimated needs.
Tesla reuses the same AC/DC converter in their superchargers that they use in their vehicles. Current superchargers use 12 of these 11kW AC/DC modules to provide about 130kW (after losses).
If you go with the same theme but update it to use 12 of the 20kW AC/DC modules now used in the model S, the existing supercharger design could be trivially increased to about 216kW after losses.
Eight 216kW superchargers operating simultaneously could deliver 1,728kW - more than enough to provide a 400-mile charge in 30 minutes.
The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Has Elon Musk greatly exaggerated Tesla's battery technology in the past? From what I've read, Elon Musk has always ended up providing what he claimed albeit a bit behind schedule and over budget. However, once the baseline product is established it seems to improve over time. Jaffe's conclusion that this are factors he is unaware of is a logical one.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla, let alone decided to get involved in funding them.
That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, they've started down the path of H2 fuel cell cars, but also maintaining their Li battery development.
Fast forward to today, and everyone from BMW to Nissan sells electric and hybrid cars. And they all do it without Elon's grandstanding and drain on the tax purse.
Elon is a loud, obnoxious marketer, but if you pay attention, you'll see that many car manufacturers are doing more interesting things in this space than he is. It's just that they are based out of California so the press doesn't pay very much attention to them.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
No, idiot.
Wheel torque = engine torque multiplied by overall drive ratio (minus losses). Since the overall drive ratio is typically between 3 and 5 in top gear (and much higher in lower gears), wheel torques are going to be at least 3 times engine torque and possibly more than 20x engine torque (in low gear).
That makes it much more comparable, and not an exaggeration.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't totally disagree with this, but in fairness you should know the Japanese government very heavily subsidized research at both Toyota and Honda into hybrid engines.
With that said, it was clearly n wise economic exercise.
They're going to be giant truck stops, covered, with solar panels and wind turbines. The same batteries buffer the power generation as buffer the high speed charging, so two for one.
They can just run all the charging, and lease out the retail part to the current truck stop service companies.
Did you know he even hired some real engineers for the project?!
"The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla"
Fuck, how did you manage to stuff so much wrong info into so few words? The Prius first went on sale in Japan in 1997 and internationally in 2000; Eberhard & Tarpenning founded Tesla in July 2003 with Musk becoming Chairman in April 2004 & helping to securing financing while also investing millions of his own money.
"That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture"
Sure but that Prius tech did fuck all to get anyone excited about EVs or to goad the industry to get off their asses & build electric vehicles that people covet. Those lines are only profitable because Toyota already have profitable cars to offset the losses of the early years. It took them 5 years to get to ~120k sold in the USA which Tesla surpassed in roughly the same amount of time - for a car that cost THREE to FIVE times as much.
Hell, the electric underpinnings barely changed for 10 years, the battery remained the same size & power for about as long and it took a dozen years for them to figure out a larger battery and that it might be a good idea to attach a power cord.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
"It's a new company, with new capital investment, if Tesla declared any profits and paid taxes on them, the accountants in charge deserve to be beaten to death with the tax code books. People who buy Tesla stock need to know fundamentals because it is a new company"
The problem is they're burning huge amount of cash relative to sales and in one of the most cash-intensive & regulated businesses in the world. The bleeding can't go on much longer and their liabilities are adding up quickly. Not making money is fine; but if they're not close to break-even by the end of 2018, after a full year of Model 3 production, then Musk has some explaining to do.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
We were talking about claims of vehicle stats and pricing.
No, that is what you want to discuss. The original claim was:
Elon Musk exaggerates everything in his advantage. It would be highly unusual if he didn't exaggerate a claim in an announcement made to destract from the problems with the Tesla 3.
You responded with media copy details crafted ex post facto.
See there is this shell game going on to misdirect investors and you have become so accustomed to that norm you have started participating yourself!
Name another car maker who is conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in.
The first Toyota Prius model starting being sold in 2003 - long before Musk had even heard of Tesla, let alone decided to get involved in funding them.
A huuuge red herring on your part. It seems that you couldn't plug a Prius in and recharge it before 2010, so Priuses before that had to choke citizens with their generator exhaust before that year.
Toyota is driving innovation - worried about Li battery storage density, charge rates, and lifetime, they've started down the path of H2 fuel cell cars, but also maintaining their Li battery development.
So they still keep getting distracted by building a separate infrastructure for small-scale hydrogen consumers? Then they don't really seem to be conscious enough to care about creating healthy environment for humans to live in, again.
Ezekiel 23:20
Well, they did have a working prototype doing max acceleration 0-70 mph runs all night long without recharging. The numbers they quoted appeared to be real numbers for that prototype.
Unlike Porsche and others who display a stationary model and claim that it will be able to almost match the performance of current production Teslas, some day, when they actually manage to make it work.
I think Tesla did figure out something new, aren't quite able to mass produce it yet, but already did make it in very small volume and are now testing it. They may not make the 2020 deadline (it's still Tesla, after all) but I doubt it will be much later than that. They are getting a lot better at actually producing things, delays on Model 3 are only a couple of months and that's after accelerating the development by a whole year. I expect them to deliver the first token roadsters in december 2020 and start producing them for real in the second half of 2021.
"They've already had to deal with this very problem before."
Ahem, no. Keep the charge time the same and multiply the amount of power by 10 or 20. They've had to deal with maybe 5-10% of the problem. Maybe their previous solutions scale. Maybe they don't.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
That's kind of surprising, really. Most diesel trucks have two tanks with separate fillers, precisely because there's no other way to get enough fuel into them quickly enough. Having a power port on each side would reduce the amount of current draw through that cable, which would probably simplify... well, everything.
Maybe they'll do that five years from now when they decide to add a long-haul version. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That Prius electric technology is so successful it is now integrated into many of Toyota's lines. More importantly, those lines are actually profitable, and aren't over priced, overly limited vehicles, that suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture.
I know the "Musk is only successful because of subsidies" meme is popular around here but you know that Prius buyers took advantage of tax credits too, right? It's not like Tesla is the only company to "suck up govt tax payer money to manufacture". Toyota gladly accepts subsidies just like all the other car manufacturers. The only place Tesla is unique is that their entire line is eligible for the tax credit instead of a subset like the other manufacturers.
Enigma
Or they could put both ports on the same side of the truck, for convenience; and having done that they could bind the two cables together so they both plug in at once; and having done that they could just make look like a single, larger cable, with a single, larger port, and here we are.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Had both a power cord *AND* an electric only operation mode.
Both those features were removed for USDM models because the Japanese (rightly!) thought Americans were idiots and did their part to idiotproof the vehicles in order to ensure people didn't constantly run the batteries down too low, and because the charger required a dedicated breaker to avoid tripping. I forget it if was 110 or 220 and what current, but it WAS an available option/standard for JDM vehicles.
1) Li-ion batteries don't "explode". If you screw up, they can catch fire, but that's not the same thing.
2) Tesla battery packs have individual cells physically isolated and surrounded by non-flammable coolant.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
EVs are cleaner than fossil fuel vehicles even in parts of the grid where coal dominates.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
In the past 8 years Tesla gross revenue has increased by a factor of 400. This is not a software business they can just make new cars appear out of thin air with a license key. They have to add factory space, but tools, hire tons of people and of course, buy a lot more parts and raw materials to make more cars.
Expanding a business like Tesla is a HUGELY capital intensive prospect. It's going to be a money loser until they grow to a size where growth starts to flatten out and scale starts to dominate. Don't confuse losses due to capital investment in facilities with per-unit manufacturing losses. At some point, they will reach a tipping point and their capital requirements will flatten out and their profits will be so big they'll make a grown man cry.
The trick is to stay in business long enough to reach that tipping point. And for that aspect of the business, having a front man like musk who can dazzle the masses like PT Barnum is a very good thing indeed. I predict in 10 years time the idea that "Tesla will never turn a profit" will be laughable.
Your argument is tantamount to saying basically "Why bother shitting in the toilet? It doesn't change the amount of shit. We might as well just shit on the living room couch, on dinner table, and in fact wherever we happen to be at that moment. We might as well just shit everywhere because that's easier."
I'm not sure you realize that if our climate predictions are even just remotely close to being correct, yesterday was already too late for manufacturers to ditch fossil fuels altogether. Your model could work...in a world where we have extra half a century to do something with it. We don't. There's nothing sustainable about what we're doing right now. Of course, that's not just the problem of the car industry, there's food production, construction, etc., but still.
Ezekiel 23:20
I've been waiting 5+ months for Tesla to fulfill an order for a Powerwall2. No ETA on the delivery. Plenty of excuses that don't really explain why. So there is a lot of Hype from Tesla/Musk but can they really deliver? Forget about battery technology of the future if they can't meet the demands of today.
Yeah, it's pretty insane. Our Thanksgiving dinner of technologists, financiers, accountants, and lawyers figured he has a 1%-2% chance of success without giant government subsidies. We also estimated it wasn't a good idea to short the stock: there's too much idiot money out there.
He keeps missing his own production targets, he has big negative cashflow, his tooling plan for mass market cars is bizarre to the point of crazy.
He should just call his next car the "DeLorean, Mark II." It's cool, fast, uses high technology, and defies the laws of physics.