I should actually say chemistries...they are going to have two lines running in the gigafactory, one making high energy density NCA cells for cars and their backup power storage batteries, and an lower energy density NMC line for their daily cycle batteries.
Elon claim they both have the same calendar life, but the NMC cells are good for 5000 cycles. I really do hope they have licked the manganese dissolution problem that has plagued NMC. More importanty Telsa doesn't actually care what chem they use, if any better chem comes out they will simple update the line. I love these guys
More details (edited to concentrate on chemistry discussion):
Elon:
There is two applications which are quite different. One is backup power, or peak-up -- the equivalent, on a utility scale of like a peaker plant, which is a high-energy application. And there is the daily cycler application. There are different chemistries, depending upon what you have.
The backup power chemistry is quite similar to the car, which is a nickel cobalt aluminum or a cathode. The daily cycling control constituent is nickel manganese cobalt. It's quite a lot of manganese in there.
One is meant for, call it maybe 60 or 70 cycles per year. And the other one is meant for daily cycling -- daily deep cycling, so it's 365 cycles a year.
The daily cycler one, we expected to be able to daily cycle for something on the order of 15 years. Obviously warranty period would be a little bit less than that. We expected to be something that's in the 5000-cycle range capability.
Whereas the high-energy pack is more like around the maybe, depending on how it's used, anywhere from 1000 to 1500 cycles. That's -- they have comparable to calendar lives.
Now for the high-energy one, it's important to appreciate that this is actually -- has a lot of interest from utilities because utilities have to maintain these things called peaker plants, and when there is a sharp increase in usage. You can imagine the highest energy day in California on a hot summer day where there's a heat wave, the energy consumption there is very high compared to a pleasant spring night where nobody's air-conditioning or heating is on, or for very little and commerce is not happening and people are asleep and lights are off.
hat can be a huge delta. Depending upon the situation, it can be anywhere from a 5 to 10 times difference. Having a battery pack that can take out those very weird sharp peaks, like the heat wave day. You can either have a battery pack, which requires basically no maintenance and doesn't require fuel, and it's going to peak shave those troublesome days. Or you can have a power plant that requires fuel and maintenance and it's always got to be maintained and gets -- it takes time. You can't just start it up in three seconds; you've got to let it have a bit of notice.
The high-energy pack is actually very economically competitive in those sorts of situations. The high cycling pack is really great for if you've got some sort of wind or solar situation, that's where the high cycling one is really great on the utility scale.
I should say we expect most of our stationary storage sales to be at the utility or heavy industrial scale. It's probably, again just a guess because early days, 5 to 10 times more megawatt hours will be deployed at the utility and heavy industrial scale then at the consumer scale.
So, the Powerpack would be the one that is the heavy duty, the big production sales one, not so much the Powerwall. Powerwall is great, but it's, like I said, it's probably only 10% or 20% the size of the Powerpack demand.
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Jeffrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
They could still both be built in the Gigafactory. We have multiple lines operating in the Gigafactory. (to me this sounds like they already have pilot lines up and running and their stationary packs are the first to get the new cell format (postive and negative connection on same side of can) and module packaging (base plate heat sinking)) If one line is building nickel cobalt aluminum chemistry and another is building nickel manganese cobalt, that still works just fine. A lot of the cell assembly and then the processes that happen after that are almost identical.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
They look the same at the module impact level. You can't really tell just by looking at them. It's the internal chemical constituents.
If you think of the -- right down the palm, the cell is a chemical engineering problem. It's like a little can of chemicals. And then the module and pack problem is mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and software engineering problem.
If you have a small number of cells, then as an overall engineering problem, it's mostly about the cell. Once you have a lot of cells, than the intellectual property challenge -- the intellectual challenge becomes more at the mechanical, electrical and software level, which is where Tesla does quite well.
That's way don't really see -- nobody else has a pack like ours. The cells are relatively generic. The module and pack is not.
Jeffrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
We've looked at pretty much every chemistry couple that could possibly be relevant for this and are confident that what we are using is going to be the best. If there's something better, we can also adjust and change over time. There's a lot of flexibility.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
I'm not sure if the exact, the right analogy would be, if you look at a laptop, and you can say, a laptop's really just like a Intel CPU and some micro and DRAM chips. Big deal.
What is any computer company actually doing? They are doing a lot.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
I shouldn't say like we are wedded to a particular chemistry or anything like that. We just want to use the best chemistry. Whatever little can that contains the cathode and anode and separator and electrolyte, whatever the best constituents of that can are, that's what we'll want to use.
We'd love it if someone could come up with a better internal chemistry for the cell. It's worth noting, like, nobody has sent us anything, a sample cell that's better than the cell we're producing, or something that we will produce in the Gigafactory.
We'd love it if somebody would do that. They just haven't. So there's al these things which are big on promise and short on delivery when it comes to battery chemistry.
It's just a real hard problem. Hardly a week goes by that there's not some alleged breakthrough in batteries. What they'll do is they'll cite the power but not the energy, or they'll forget to mention that it only lasts for 50 cycles, or uses an incredibly exotic raw materials.
effrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
Or one component out of the battery pulled separately.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
Yes, exactly. It's not like the full picture. It's not like we don't want a better chemistry to exist than what we're using. We would love it if there was such a thing, and I'm sure there will be improvements over time. We'll implement them as soon as they are remotely production-ready.
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Elon claim they both have the same calendar life, but the NMC cells are good for 5000 cycles. I really do hope they have licked the manganese dissolution problem that has plagued NMC. More importanty Telsa doesn't actually care what chem they use, if any better chem comes out they will simple update the line. I love these guys
More details (edited to concentrate on chemistry discussion):
Elon:
There is two applications which are quite different. One is backup power, or peak-up -- the equivalent, on a utility scale of like a peaker plant, which is a high-energy application. And there is the daily cycler application. There are different chemistries, depending upon what you have.
The backup power chemistry is quite similar to the car, which is a nickel cobalt aluminum or a cathode. The daily cycling control constituent is nickel manganese cobalt. It's quite a lot of manganese in there.
One is meant for, call it maybe 60 or 70 cycles per year. And the other one is meant for daily cycling -- daily deep cycling, so it's 365 cycles a year.
The daily cycler one, we expected to be able to daily cycle for something on the order of 15 years. Obviously warranty period would be a little bit less than that. We expected to be something that's in the 5000-cycle range capability.
Whereas the high-energy pack is more like around the maybe, depending on how it's used, anywhere from 1000 to 1500 cycles. That's -- they have comparable to calendar lives.
Now for the high-energy one, it's important to appreciate that this is actually -- has a lot of interest from utilities because utilities have to maintain these things called peaker plants, and when there is a sharp increase in usage. You can imagine the highest energy day in California on a hot summer day where there's a heat wave, the energy consumption there is very high compared to a pleasant spring night where nobody's air-conditioning or heating is on, or for very little and commerce is not happening and people are asleep and lights are off.
hat can be a huge delta. Depending upon the situation, it can be anywhere from a 5 to 10 times difference. Having a battery pack that can take out those very weird sharp peaks, like the heat wave day. You can either have a battery pack, which requires basically no maintenance and doesn't require fuel, and it's going to peak shave those troublesome days. Or you can have a power plant that requires fuel and maintenance and it's always got to be maintained and gets -- it takes time. You can't just start it up in three seconds; you've got to let it have a bit of notice.
The high-energy pack is actually very economically competitive in those sorts of situations. The high cycling pack is really great for if you've got some sort of wind or solar situation, that's where the high cycling one is really great on the utility scale.
I should say we expect most of our stationary storage sales to be at the utility or heavy industrial scale. It's probably, again just a guess because early days, 5 to 10 times more megawatt hours will be deployed at the utility and heavy industrial scale then at the consumer scale.
So, the Powerpack would be the one that is the heavy duty, the big production sales one, not so much the Powerwall. Powerwall is great, but it's, like I said, it's probably only 10% or 20% the size of the Powerpack demand.
-------------
Jeffrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
They could still both be built in the Gigafactory. We have multiple lines operating in the Gigafactory. (to me this sounds like they already have pilot lines up and running and their stationary packs are the first to get the new cell format (postive and negative connection on same side of can) and module packaging (base plate heat sinking)) If one line is building nickel cobalt aluminum chemistry and another is building nickel manganese cobalt, that still works just fine. A lot of the cell assembly and then the processes that happen after that are almost identical.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
They look the same at the module impact level. You can't really tell just by looking at them. It's the internal chemical constituents.
If you think of the -- right down the palm, the cell is a chemical engineering problem. It's like a little can of chemicals. And then the module and pack problem is mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and software engineering problem.
If you have a small number of cells, then as an overall engineering problem, it's mostly about the cell. Once you have a lot of cells, than the intellectual property challenge -- the intellectual challenge becomes more at the mechanical, electrical and software level, which is where Tesla does quite well.
That's way don't really see -- nobody else has a pack like ours. The cells are relatively generic. The module and pack is not.
Jeffrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
We've looked at pretty much every chemistry couple that could possibly be relevant for this and are confident that what we are using is going to be the best. If there's something better, we can also adjust and change over time. There's a lot of flexibility.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
I'm not sure if the exact, the right analogy would be, if you look at a laptop, and you can say, a laptop's really just like a Intel CPU and some micro and DRAM chips. Big deal.
What is any computer company actually doing? They are doing a lot.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
I shouldn't say like we are wedded to a particular chemistry or anything like that. We just want to use the best chemistry. Whatever little can that contains the cathode and anode and separator and electrolyte, whatever the best constituents of that can are, that's what we'll want to use.
We'd love it if someone could come up with a better internal chemistry for the cell. It's worth noting, like, nobody has sent us anything, a sample cell that's better than the cell we're producing, or something that we will produce in the Gigafactory.
We'd love it if somebody would do that. They just haven't. So there's al these things which are big on promise and short on delivery when it comes to battery chemistry.
It's just a real hard problem. Hardly a week goes by that there's not some alleged breakthrough in batteries. What they'll do is they'll cite the power but not the energy, or they'll forget to mention that it only lasts for 50 cycles, or uses an incredibly exotic raw materials.
effrey Brian Straubel (CTO):
Or one component out of the battery pulled separately.
Elon Musk (Chairman & CEO):
Yes, exactly. It's not like the full picture. It's not like we don't want a better chemistry to exist than what we're using. We would love it if there was such a thing, and I'm sure there will be improvements over time. We'll implement them as soon as they are remotely production-ready.
----
