Tesla Investor Day will be discussing Master Plan Part 3, which is scaling the materials and construction of batteres to 20 Terawatt hours per year and an overall level of 300 TWh.
I have looked at battery materials for and addressing scarcity of materials batteries, magnesium, graphite etc…
CATL is scaling non-lithium batteries (CATL M3P and Sodium batteries).
Using sodium ion hybrid batteries will let sodium ion scale to about 20-30% of the market and save 10-20% of the lithium for the same number of overall vehicles. More importantly this strategy will enable CATL to scale rapidly to tens and hundreds of gigawatt hours per year in new sodium ion batteries and rapidly scale the learning curve of production.
CATL first-generation cells cost $77 per kWh. With volume production could drop to below $40 per kWh. The sodium battery cells can be manufactured using current cell production equipment, which will help keep costs down. A hybrid mix of $40 per kwh hour sodium ion batteries and $80 per kwh lithium iron phosphate batteries would be $60 per kWh for the overall pack. It will ensure the rapidly reaching capacity for fixed storage sodium ion battery applications.
* Energy density of up to 160 Wh/kg with up to 200 Wh/kg expected in a few years.
* Fast charging up to 80% SOC in 15 minutes at room temperature.
* Excellent thermal stability.
* Excellent low temperature performance — at -20°C, the sodium-ion battery has a capacity retention rate of more than 90%.
* System integration efficiency of 80% (weight or volume of cells versus weight or volume of battery pack).
The AB battery system solution can compensate for the current energy density shortage of the sodium-ion battery, and also expand its advantages of high power and performance in low temperatures. Thanks to this innovative structure system, application scenarios for the lithium-sodium battery system are expanded.
My analysis of megapack, cybertruck and semi truck scaling speed is key to using high levels of battery ramp.
I have mapped Semi Truck range and payload capabilities to Cybertruck. This is using an aerodynamic, cross section and other journal of energy formula. I think only some of these details will be in Investor day. Scaling needs to be truck factories (semi and Cyber) and megapack expansions and factories to go to one terawatt hour/year of batteries. Enough for 600-800k/year semi-mega. Separate one terawatt per year for 4 million cyber and mega-charging. I believe almost all 70+% market share of all work truck markets and large SUV markets and 50+% energy storage are there for Tesla to execute and take. 3 million per year semi and 10 million per year pickup truck-large SUV-work, light and medium trucks. 4-5 twh/year trucks and 3 twh/year packs and charging, packs and charging need solar. Displacing 20% of oil with 20% more electricity and storage (worldwide).
Investor Day should have a reveal of a redesign of the factory and vehicles for the Model 3 and Cybertruck. There will be discussion of the robotaxi, but I do not think there will be a reveal of an actual platform that is ready for delivery. They will make the Mexico Gigafactory official. Mexico should build batteries, other vehicles and trucks but in 2 years time when it is built. Mexico could have a faster ramp to have more megapacks and charging in a phase 1.
I would like Tesla to a more solid guide and detailed plan for Semi and Cybertruck ramping but I think Tesla would be reluctant to do that until after 50,000 Semi are delivered late in 2024 or early 2025 or after Cybertruck is past 300,000 units per year. However, the 20 TWh/year masterplan part 3 is basically over half trucks and megapacks.
Tesla could discuss using Tesla Semi technology in Boring Company machines.
SpaceX Starlink should be integrated with Tesla vehicles both for consumers and business applications.
Tesla is likely integrating generative AI (ChatGPT) technologies into FSD and Teslabot. Teslabot capabilities should be improving at a faster pace.
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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Tesla’s battery tech is losing edge over China’s company. This will put its plan to dominate energy storage market in serious trouble. In auto industry, big players and China’s companies are starting to get momentum so competition will be fierce and Tesla’s ambitious goals are very difficult to fulfil.
If Elon Musks enters gpt-race with Tesla, he could leverage Dojo to train the network. Let’s hope that he does enter and makes a non biased network that can be used by everybody.
The question is if Dojo can be more cost effective than Nvidia and Google systems to train this network. Both of the latter have been in the AI-HW space for a long time and they do have good engineers….
More than that, Google has been in the self driving system space before it was spun off into Waymo.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find state of the art DeepMind stuff in Waymo’s systems.