Tesla’s Improved New Hairpin Motors and CATL M3P Batteries

Ingineerix tears down Tesla’s newest Hairpin Motor and Inverter technology. It is the fourth generation engine. It has more power than the old winding motors and is easier to build with automation. It is the rear drive unit for the Model Y and Model 3.

They have a new hairpin design stator.

Everything about the new Tesla engine is more compact, lighter and more evolved.

The hairpin motor fill factor can be up to ~0.7 compared with 0.4-0.6 for conventional round wires. It will have better thermal performance and enable a highly automated manufacturing process

There is a 7 page paper on hairpin motor efficiency.

The new inverter is smaller and is seen when the casted cover is removed. They have a new inverter design. It’s much more compact and it’s more rectangular and less irregularly shaped. It’s got a cast-in-place high-voltage connector and data connector. A new Chiller assembly that’s got friction stir welded piece to put it together. The layout is the same but it’s just been optimized.

The big long tube is where the cartridge oil filter is.

It’s no longer a spin-on or user replaceable but it doesn’t really need to be replaced for the life of the car anyway. This isn’t like an internal combustion engine so that filter is just there to stop you know small wear debris and maybe manufacturing debris never needs to be changed

15% Better CATL M3P Batteries

CATL has started production of a new M3P battery with 15% more energy density than the iron LFP batteries. It has 210-255 Wh/kg energy density. The Tesla Model 3’s driving range could increase to 700 km (435 miles) with the same weight for its current battery pack. This increase comes in a battery pack similar in size to those CATL supplies to Tesla.

CATL make over one-third of worldwide battery supply and they are building a 70 GWh battery plant near Tesla’s Giga Shanghai in China.

The M3P battery improves LFP chemistry and replaces the iron with a proprietary mixture of magnesium, zinc, and aluminum.

The energy dense Qilin M3P batteries will initially debut on the recently announced ZEEKR 009 MPV, quickly followed by the ZEEKR 001 which promises over 620 miles (1,000 km) of all-electric range.

Tesla and Zeekr can also reduce the weight of batteries and offer similar range to old batteries but with less cost.

9 thoughts on “Tesla’s Improved New Hairpin Motors and CATL M3P Batteries”

  1. Looks like a radial rejig of Lynch’s DC motor (though repurposed for AC obviously) in its construction. VW are using them as well.

  2. Hairpin motors seem like a good improvement and interesting tech. I was expecting faster ramp up & progress with 4680 batteries.

  3. So, is the 4680 battery finished? According to the web it is nowhere as good as they thought it was going to be. It will be 3 years in september that they had battery day. They have had terrible problems mass producing it. I have heard they the 2nd phase of the 4680-the dry cell battery, which i presume will be ready to replace the current 4680 is ready to go. I presume it will be at least 20% better than the current 4680 battery.
    Does anybody out there know? Also ck out catl website and cnevpost which is the Chinese site on electric cars in China.

    • Tesla is improving the 4680 battery both in terms of specs and production. They should be at a reasonable scale by the end of the year and definitely in 2024. Each version should be 10-15% better.

  4. Incremental improvements, incremental innovation. Keeps people happy while waiting for the disruptive innovations to come. We need two orders of magnitude improvement in battery energy density if we are ever to contemplate meaningful electric powered flight. At current rates of incremental evolution, that might take another 100 years. Particularly as the low hanging fruit is picked first.

    • Two orders of magnitude would make them 3-5x more energy dense than liquid fuel. We most definitely dont need that. It also happens to be impossible. Getting to 1kWh per kg would be more than enough.

  5. Great to see the continuous improvement.

    “CATL has started production of a new M3P battery with 15% more energy density than the iron LFP batteries. It has 210 kWh/kg energy density.”

    Are you sure that this shouldn’t be 210 Wh/kg?

    • That does seem a bit more likely; Even Aluminum-air batteries top out at about 8 kWh/kg, I don’t see reaching 210 kWh/kg short of nuclear energy.

Comments are closed.