Every day or two, we hear something about Tesla's batteries.
Panasonic, Ningde Era, LG New Energy, BYD... These global battery giants are "fascinated" by Tesla and want to refuse to return the favor.
Tesla is really "Aquaman" no doubt, and the ones who are stirred up are all the world's great beauties.
What is Tesla's real idea on the power battery?
In terms of batteries, Tesla's battery strategy is to take large demand as a chip, on the one hand, through self-production of 4680, gradually reduce costs; on the other hand, mobilize external supplier resources to meet the requirements of vehicle manufacturing in terms of price and production capacity. Tesla poses as a production agent, which is a game chip.
In the upstream of the battery, Tesla's strategy is to not only cover the battery research and development stage, but also include material research and development and resource procurement and material recycling, so that it has a strong supply and research and development capabilities.
Specifically, how did Tesla execute on this strategy?
01
The self-produced 4680 has reached 1 million pieces
Tesla announced on February 19 through its official social platform that it had produced its 1 millionth 4680 battery in January.
Tesla CEO Musk said on a conference call that the 4680 battery will be used for the first time in the first quarter of 2022 for the Model Y model.
The 4680 battery began to be studied in 2019, starting with the concept design proposed by Panasonic and the European Chemical Laboratory; from the previous understanding, the 4680 battery did not have a good connection with the process in the development process; according to the time plan advertised in Tesla Battery Day, it is to achieve large-scale mass production in 2022.
Due to the late time point of mass production, this makes Tesla currently continue to use the 2170 and Ningde era iron lithium solutions, and the overall battery update speed is slower than other car companies.
At this point in time, the signal — 4680 has produced 1 million — is for investors on the one hand and for their own battery suppliers on the other.
It is difficult to play price games with Tesla. After Tesla achieves self-supply, battery suppliers must be stable and suitable in the game process, in terms of energy and price.
Figure 1 Tesla's 1 million 4680 battery rolls off the production line
Data from 2020 shows that Panasonic produced 3 billion 2170 cells and 4 billion 1865 cells. If the 4680 is calculated according to the 1000 batteries of a single car, that is to say, Tesla's 10,000 vehicles need 10 million batteries, and 100,000 units need 100 million 4680 cells.
In other words, the current 1 million is just a signal flare.
Figure 2 Tesla's demand for cylindrical batteries
02
Tesla's battery demand
On Battery Day, Tesla proposed a target of 20 million vehicles by 2030, corresponding to the demand for 10TWh power batteries.
Of course, this is a cumulative concept. The expectation for 2022 is: 60,000 Units of Model S/X, with a demand of 6GWh for power batteries; 1.5 million units for Model 3 and Y, accumulating 105GWh.
The corresponding battery supply is: Tesla's self-produced 5-10GWh, Fordi 10GWh, LG Energy provides 15-20GWh, Ningde provides 30-40GWh on the basis of last year, plus Panasonic's basic disk is 40GWh.
Tesla's continued model development will also bring new demand.
At present, tesla Model 3 standard mileage version is equipped with 60kWh, high mileage version 80kWh, upgrade to 4680 can be increased to about 92-97kWh.
In particular, in 2023, there will be a low-priced version of the Model 2 to meet the needs of the lower market, and the delivery of CyberTruck will also begin in the North American market.
The cumulative demand of 10TWH is Tesla's bottom line, coupled with the self-produced 4680, Tesla can flexibly configure the battery procurement of high and low versions of each base.
Figure 3 Tesla's battery demand in 2022
03
Capacity allocation for Tesla's own batteries
Tesla's 4680 battery, the largest demand in North America, with Tesla's factory to produce 4680 has a total of 4 seats:
(1) Pilot factory in California ( also the development base of 4680 battery cells ): It is the beginning of Tesla's battery development and the first battery production line to try. The current production capacity is 1 million units per month, corresponding to 1,000 vehicles, which is about 0.1 GWh, and the goal is to increase to 10 GWh.
(2) Texas plant in the United States: equipment began to enter the production line, the construction capacity is relatively high, with the Texas automobile plant capacity of 600,000, it is expected to start trial production in Q2 2022. From the current quantity estimates, at least 50GWh of capacity is allocated. On the one hand, it is ready to supply the Model Y, and on the other hand, it also needs to be allocated to Cyber Truck.
(3) Berlin, Germany: This production line is from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor, planning to cooperate with the production capacity of the German automobile factory, estimated at 20-30Gwh, and actually began to gradually release production capacity after Q2-Q3 in 2022.
In this process, Tesla also needs external suppliers to provide different LFP and NCM/NCA production capacities to help the factory achieve the landing of models.
That is to say, Tesla's battery self-supply will climb the slope in a certain proportion.
Figure 4 Tesla's model and the corresponding factory's battery & production capacity
04
The configuration strategy for miles
In 2022, Tesla will accelerate the production of the 4680.
Tesla trial production of 4680, while urging Panasonic and LG to produce 4680 in Japan and South Korea, after the climb of the combination of large-scale replacement of 4680 + CTC program. With the acceleration of 2022, the target for 2023 is 100-200 GWh for self-production in the medium term.
Figure 5 Selection of different chemical systems
With so many preparations and choices, Tesla's battery strategy can be summarized as: under the endorsement of its own large demand, on the one hand, through its own investment to achieve 4680 mass production, and then gradually reduce the cost of the goal; on the other hand, mobilize external supplier resources, in order to achieve the goal of rapidly climbing model sales, it is necessary to meet the requirements of vehicle manufacturing in the two dimensions of procurement price and procurement capacity.
At present, the industry's battery leaders are facing the situation of upstream material price increases, and Tesla has posed this posture in order to obtain a better game situation.
05
Control of battery costs
For electric vehicles with large-capacity batteries, the cost of the battery system accounts for 40% of the total vehicle cost. In the value chain of batteries, 20% of the cost is cell production (the value of the battery cell factory, including production and quality costs), and 80% of the cost is battery materials.
If you want to reduce costs, Tesla must further enter the field of upstream battery materials, such as Tesla, which built a huge factory building in the Texas Super Factory park, and proposed to expand the factory, with the goal of producing battery cathodes.
Figure 6 Tesla builds a battery cathode production upstream layout
Tesla is currently doing what a battery company is doing - looking for Ganfeng Lithium and Ya'an Lithium to buy lithium hydroxide that is currently used, starting to buy spodumene concentrate in the second half of 2022, and locking in resource supply upstream for cobalt and nickel, and also starting to do a round of layout on negative products.
Figure 7 Tesla's upstream material layout
Tesla's upstream strategy for batteries can be summarized as follows: not only covers the battery research and development stage, but also includes material properties, chemical system development, formula research and development, performance and safety testing, failure analysis, etc.
In terms of cell trial production, we began to prepare to adjust the new production process, and directly cooperated with our own equipment suppliers to improve the entire 4680 production.
Then further upstream locking, in addition to the mining and purification of raw materials in the short term, the mass production of follow-up materials, cell development, cell mass production, battery module development and mass production, battery factory production, battery secondary use and decomposition, recycling of materials, etc., are Tesla's business scope.
06
summary
From the current situation, Tesla is the world's first vehicle company to successfully cut into the production of batteries, and has defined a new generation of 4680 standard batteries, using the large cylinder as the next generation of standard batteries to promote the development of this industry. I'm actually looking forward to the large-scale adoption of the 4680 battery by other automotive companies.
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