Recently, Tesla quietly submitted a document to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the 10-K section densely tells a truth: Tesla China's revenue has grown by more than 100% for two consecutive years.
The most terrifying thing about Tesla is that when it is in the first position in the industry, it can grow at the fastest speed, not only falling behind you, but also falling farther and farther.
To achieve this, it is Tesla's perseverance in the study and polishing of technology in various related fields of electric vehicles.
In addition to visible achievements, there are also invisible patents.
No, Tesla quietly got three more.
Better glass cover
Outside the car, shiny glass affects the value of the most.
Inside the car, the clear and transparent glass determines the texture.
In order to make the car more beautiful and the screen clearer, all the car manufacturers are working hard to create a glass cover with less reflection and more light transmission, which requires precise control of the texture of the glass surface.
If you want to put a specific texture on the surface of glass, what method do you think of?
The current mainstream process is as follows, first heat the glass to the melted state, which is the elliptic object of code number 110 in the following figure, and then put into a specific mold to pressurize, so that the glass becomes the shape of the mold, in this process, the texture of the mold surface, that is, the content referred to in 104 in the following figure, will be pressed on the glass surface.
The mold of this method is generally made by sandblasting, electric spark, machining or laser etching, and there is a problem with the processed mold, that is, the accuracy is not high enough.
For example, laser etching is a processing method that uses laser pulses to engrave on the surface of a mold to form a mold pattern. A single pulsed laser will evaporate from the mold surface about 50 microns deep, about 40 microns square of material, and a continuous pulsed laser can carve a continuous pattern. For engravings below 50 microns, laser etching is powerless.
The surface texture of this level of accuracy cannot precisely control the optical properties of the glass, and the gloss of the glass surface will also be affected.
Tesla's patent has directly evolved to the hottest concept now - the use of 3D printing to make mold textures.
This makes it possible to achieve a highly controllable printing pattern in the size accuracy of less than 50 microns, which means that the transition between each texture will become more rounded, the optical characteristics will be more controllable, and the glass we see on Tesla in the future will achieve low reflection and high light transmittance.
Although Tesla specifically mentioned in the patent, the glass produced in this method will be used on rooftop solar panels.
But as the technology matures, it's only a matter of time before it appears on Tesla's vehicles.
More secure battery pack package
Tesla has always had the best battery performance in the industry.
There are many reasons for this result, sometimes from chemical achievements such as new batteries to physical efforts such as changing the form of the battery module package.
This time, Tesla has worked the packaging, involving several aspects such as the form of battery cell packaging, the form of battery connection and the design of exhaust structure.
1. Battery cell packaging method
When it comes to batteries, the most familiar form of battery packaging may be the AAA battery. Its positive and negative electrodes are distributed at both ends of the battery. The purpose of this design is to prevent short circuits in the battery.
But this design causes some inconvenience when the cells are assembled into battery packs.
As we all know, the rated voltage of a single-grain lithium battery cell is 3.7V, the full voltage is 4.2V, and to form a battery pack with a voltage of 350V and a capacity of tens or even hundreds of kWh, it is necessary to parallel and connect the cells with metal sheets and series, which are called "busbars".
The positive and negative poles are at both ends, and when the cells are connected in parallel, the busbars need to be welded at both ends of the cell.
Tesla calls the same set of parallel cells a "brick." Keep this concept in mind.
This is not too much trouble, but when connecting these bricks, the trouble comes: the positive pole of one brick needs to be connected to the negative pole of another brick to form a series connection.
To achieve this, it is necessary to place a brick positive pole upwards, and another brick that needs to be connected to it needs to be placed down, such as the following figure. In this way, the positive and negative poles of the two bricks are on the same plane, thus completing the series connection.
Tesla in this patent, Tesla showed a different battery cell package than above. As shown in the following figure, 106 is the positive pole of the cell, and the negative pole of the cell extends from the bottom 104 of the cell with a conductor all the way along the side wall of the battery to the positive pole, and finally wraps a part of the upper end of the cell 108, Tesla very vividly calls this part the "shoulder" of the battery.
After this operation, the positive and negative poles of the battery are on the same plane, and the positive and negative electrodes are separated by an insulating ring 112.
2. Battery cell connection mode
Since the positive and negative poles of the battery are on a plane, when stringing and paralleling these cells, the cells can be placed in one direction in one direction, and there is no longer a need to put the positive and backward toss.
Parallel connection between cells is thus made easier. As shown in the figure below, the cells are connected in parallel by using two busbars that cross each other. The positive electrode of the battery cell is connected to the positive busbar 602 via a 604 connection wire, and the negative electrode of the battery cell is connected to the negative busbar 600 by connecting wire 606.
When the negative busbar of the previous brike is used as the positive busbar of the next brick, a series is formed between the two bricks.
As shown in the following figure, the cells in each dotted box form a brick, and the negative busbar of the right brick is used as the positive busbar of the left brick, connecting the positive poles of all the cells on the left brick, and the two bricks naturally form a series relationship.
Next, this relationship is replicated and extended to form a connection diagram for the entire battery pack.
This design can reduce costs and improve efficiency for battery pack production.
3. Exhaust structure
When a single cell fails, it is sprayed outward with a high temperature gas, which is often corrosive. High temperature corrosive gases accumulate in the battery pack, which is likely to cause other originally working cells to fail, so that the problem of only one cell will develop into the failure of the entire battery pack.
In order to solve this kind of problem, Tesla mentioned in this patent a design of exhaust structures that can discharge gases from battery cell failures and direct these gases to locations that do not affect other cells.
This design is arranged on the top cover of the battery pack. The cover plate covers the top of all the cells, and Tesla has designed several fragile low-strength areas on the top plate, which can be regular hexagons or other shapes, and their thickness will be much thinner than other normal cover areas of the cover. When the battery cell fails to discharge the gas outwards, the pressure inside the battery pack increases, and these low-strength areas will create cracks, allowing the gas to be discharged.
In short, the battery pack with this design should not have the phenomenon of battery pack bulging.
To summarize, the patent will improve the productivity and safety of battery packs.
A more calm charge gun
With the development of fast charging technology, the voltage and current of electric vehicle charging today are getting larger and larger. For users, charging faster and faster is naturally a good thing. For charging devices, greater power means a greater thermal burden.
For example, charging cables, although the core of the wire is a metal conductor, there are still tiny resistors. According to the resistance heating power formula learned in junior high school, the resistance heating is proportional to the square of the current flowing through the resistance.
In human parlance, the greater the current, the more severe the heat.
The solution to this problem is to use a liquid-cooled cable. When Tesla introduced the V3 supercharging pile, it used a new liquid-cooled cable with a more compact and light structure than the V2 supercharging.
Now, Tesla's patent extends liquid-cooled technology to charging guns.
As mentioned in the patent, as shown in the figure below, outside the two main cable interfaces of the charging gun, the 404 and 406 on the figure, sleeves 410 and 412 will be installed, respectively, and then the two sleeves will be wrapped with a hollow manifold 414.
By mounting the above parts together, a cavity is formed between the sleeve and the manifold.
The manifold is provided with an inlet and outlet, and the coolant can circulate in this cavity to dissipate heat from the charging gun.
It's worth noting that the patent was filed in July 2021, and the V3 supercharge has been deployed for more than a year, and we have reason to believe that the MegaCharger charging system that has just begun to be delivered to serve Semi trucks, and the V4 supercharging that is rumored to come with Cybertruck, will bring us more pleasure in terms of speed and experience.
Obviously, with the heating up of the global electric vehicle competition pattern, as well as Tesla's new factories, new product delivery is imminent, Tesla's wheels will soon enter a new round of technology-driven cycle cycle, in the time period that can be met, Tesla is about to surface the technical patents, will be more and more.
The bolder guess is that with the increase of players in the track and the increasing investment in technology research and development, Tesla's attitude towards patents will also move from initial development to protection, and the patent war may be on the verge of breaking out.
Get your wallet ready.
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