Munro Associates analyzes Tesla 4680 battery pack. The Tesla 4680 battery pack uses only 16 threaded fasteners in the entire pack that were not penthouse area (the front part of the pack).
Threaded fasteners is something that wears out increases costs. Tesla has designed with snap fit that last forever. It takes more time and is more difficult to the design. Tesla also has designed where there is only one way to put these parts together.
The battery trays inside the structural pack and the electrical connections to each battery also had superior engineering.
Munro will be performing a complete cost and engineering analysis. They will also compare the new 4680 Tesla Model Y with a recosted and reanalyzed old Model Y. They will be able to compare costs between 4680 and regular 2170 battery versions. They will also be able to compare to costs of the pouch batteries.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Cooling? I’ve no mention of battery cooling yet. I take they still use that zigzag square tubing for cooling lines?
You mean the wavy vertical blade cooling channels between the staggered cell lines?
Yeah, fantastic from a car perspective, and I don’t blame them for that, but sucks from a secondary use perspective, like my robotics hobby. The Nissan Leaf batteries I use in that might not be quite so well adapted to auto use, but as a result they’re widely used in all sorts of aftermarket hobby applications that require large battery capacities.
The reason I bring this up is that I think maybe Musk doesn’t appreciate that the engineering culture he relies on in all his endeavors is getting a bit sickly in America as a result of a decline in products you can take apart and repurpose. All these bespoke products with no user serviceable components are starving teens of the sort of hands on experience that makes for great engineers.
Are the guys he sends to Mars going to be able to order just the part they need from McMaster, with next day delivery? No, they’ll need to disassemble stuff and repurpose it, they’ll need to be able to build stuff out of junk. They’ll need to be hands on engineers, not guys who’ve lived their lives with clean fingernails.
Where’s he going to get them in a world where you can’t take a wrecked car apart and reuse the pieces?