At Current Rates, Tesla Could Soon Suck Up Worldwide Supply of Li-Ion Cells 351
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."
Re:18,650? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Perspective is important (Score:5, Informative)
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 [eetasia.com]
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# [indiatimes.com]
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.
Re:Statistical fallicies (Score:5, Informative)
The way capitalism works is demand first, then supply shows up. It can't even be done the other way around.
Sure it can. A process can generate a lot of some material which nobody currently needs. The manufacturer will then go and look for a market which can use this material and try to develop that market.
Re:Super capacitors (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
Re:On the plus side... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
There is a difference between a "battery" or "battery pack" and a "battery cell". One "battery" generally needs to have several "battery cells" inside. The voltage of the battery "cell" is determined by chemistry and can not be changed. To make higher voltages, you need to use more cells or a different chemistry. The simplest example is a 9V (PP3) battery. Alkaline chemistry gives a per-cell output of abour 1.5v, so to get 9v you need 6 cells. Usually this comes in the form of 6 AAAA batteries inside.
Re:Statistical fallicies (Score:2, Informative)
The way capitalism works is demand first, then supply shows up. It can't even be done the other way around. ... before it existed. ... before it actually existed.
Strange that every business does it the opposite way:
There was no demand for an iPhone
There was no demand for the Tesla
Re:On the plus side... (Score:2, Informative)
There is. [wikipedia.org] Google would have told you in 5 seconds or less.
Re:On the plus side... (Score:5, Informative)
While large format NiMH batteries are patent encumbered, large format Lithium batteries (the kind used in all EVs today except for Tesla) are not.
I believe that Toyota is the only manufacturer who currently uses large format NiMH batteries, but only in their hybrids. The referenced wikipedia article suggests Panasonic/Cobasys worked out an agreement as long as Toyota only used those NiMH batteries in hybrids and not in a plug-in vehicle.
Note that the large format NiMH battery patents are due to expire in 2014.
Not sure how much of this matters - Lithium batteries are superior to NiMH batteries now in just about every way.
Re:18,650? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Re:price competition via supply shortfall. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:On the plus side... (Score:4, Informative)
IAAEVE (I am an electric vehicle engineer) and I worked on Li cell, battery, and powertrain technology that was licensed to Tesla.
The real problem is that nobody's allowed to make big batteries for use in cars because the oil companies bought up all the patents
Please stop spreading this BS rumor--it's been floating around the "EV community" for long enough, and it's totally untrue.
Anyone can license those patents, and no, Chevron's not going to build you any unless you want a LOT of them, but it doesn't even matter: No one wants to build NiMH cars anyway, because we have much better cells (Li-ion) now. Even hybrids, which need power (more so than energy) and were the last NiMH holdouts have moved to Lithium.
This is the reason they have to use 8000 tiny little flashlight batteries in cars instead of a few dozen big ones.
This is wrong in so many ways it makes my head hurt. First, you're confusing radically-different cell chemistires (NiMH vs. Li-ion). Second, the "flashlight" cells are actually 18650 Li cells, a form factor often used in notebook computers. Lastly, Telsa uses 18650 cells because they are (by a large margin) the best available in terms of energy density [Wh/kg]. If you want heavier or more expensive cells, there are plenty to choose from.
Re:On the plus side... (Score:2, Informative)
You have a very strange interpretation of your own quoted material, and your choice of article is poor. This [wikipedia.org] is a much better choice. Cobasys is a whitewash front company partially owned by another whitewash front company. Cobasys was jointly owned by Ovonics, full name GM Ovonics (yes, General Motors), and Chevron, after Chevron bought Texaco, which bought out GM's share of Ovonics. Immediately after the purchases closed, the patent lawsuits were filed.
The terms prevented Matushita, Toyota, and PEVE from selling certain NiMH batteries for transportation applications in North America until the second half of 2007, and commercial quantities of certain NiMH batteries in North America until the second half of 2010.
I read the actual judgement in the Toyota case (the article erroneously implies there was only one lawsuit, when there were three separate suits). The text did eventually make it onto the internet, despite the gag order. It said what the quoted sentence said, only more so. Chevron, in the person of Cobasys, won a permanent (expiring) injunction against Toyota, preventing them from selling any vehicle whatsoever with NiMH batteries, and especially the RAV4 they had built and started manufacturing that specifically required the large capacity NiMH batteries. Patent + Evil Oil -> permanent injunction + gag order + $30 million fine. Production had nothing whatsoever to do with any of it.
Tesla's case proves that Elon Musk can read judgements, correctly identify a risk, and carefully choose a battery product that can't be banned without shutting down the entire laptop industry, thereby avoiding "piddly" lawsuits with words like "permanent injunction" in the judgement. Not to mention the $30 million fine (that the article calls a license fee, but it's hardly a license fee when Toyota was prevented from manufacturing or using the technology, by court order).
Tesla proved not one, but two things. That it was possible to design and build a desirable battery electric vehicle (which we already knew; there was a waiting list for Toyota's RAV4), and that it was possible to do so in such a way as to pull the teeth of an extremely hostile oil industry, thereby actually being able to sell the product he spent tens of millions of dollars designing and developing, not to mention manufacturing. Tesla may continue using battery cells designed with the laptop form factor in mind, simply because it has heat management benefits, but make no mistake--the original choice was made with full knowledge of the patent suits and their outcomes, with the intent of avoiding any similar action.