Text/Shore Qing
On March 22, Tesla Berlin Gigafactory officially opened, and Musk danced again at the event site, saying: "Tesla Berlin Gigafactory will be a 'jewel' in Germany, Europe, and even the world."
In addition to delivering 30 of the first Model Y models to users on the spot, Musk mentioned in his speech that "Tesla is developing a new battery."
As we all know, although lithium iron phosphate batteries and ternary lithium batteries are prevalent, we have not stopped the pace of exploration to more elemental fields, silicon, nickel, cobalt and other metal elements are constantly tried by car companies to apply to power batteries, and Tesla has chosen to continue research and development in the direction of manganese batteries.
As early as 2020, Musk expressed interest in manganese at Tesla Battery Day, and in recent days, when asked about "graphene batteries", Musk also said that due to the complexity of making graphene, he was skeptical about it, and said that "I see the chemical potential of manganese-based cathode batteries."
"It's relatively simple to do cathodes with two-thirds of nickel and one-third of manganese, which will allow us to generate more than 50 percent more battery capacity with the same amount of nickel."
All along, the research and development and exploration of battery raw materials by various car companies has never stopped, and Tesla has continued to work battery research and development. There are two main reasons for this: First, look for higher density material elements to improve battery performance.
Automobile electrification is the general trend of the future, in the face of tens of thousands of tons of raw material demand, people should explore a variety of battery types, it is best to use common, ordinary materials to meet the needs of large-scale production of power batteries.
Especially in today's shortage of raw materials and the increase in the price of upstream suppliers, CATL has begun to prepare its own mining plants, which shows the importance of raw materials. Finding more and suitable elements to be applied to power batteries can not only ensure production capacity and reduce battery costs, but also a kind of protection for ecological balance at the moment of resource shortage, which has far-reaching significance for long-term development.
At present, there are also many domestic companies began to study manganese iron lithium batteries, compared to lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium two types, manganese iron lithium batteries undoubtedly mean lower costs, first of all, the cost of raw materials is much lower, followed by lithium manganese oxide battery voltage is higher, reaching 3.9V, and high voltage means that the battery PACK can use fewer cells, lithium manganese battery pack can reduce costs again through the number of cells, at this point is obviously better than ternary lithium or lithium iron phosphate batteries.
However, the energy density of lithium manganese oxide batteries is much less than that of the other two, and the maximum energy density of lithium iron phosphate batteries has reached 165mAh/g. The theoretical maximum energy density of lithium manganese oxide is about 144mAh/g, and the existing maximum capacity is 114~117mAh/g, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in energy density.
But in another form, manganese has played a good role. Multiple research groups have published papers on high-manganese batteries, arguing that high-manganese batteries may have a higher energy density than lithium iron phosphate batteries, but may be cheaper than high-nickel batteries.
It is reported that Tesla has used manganese in some battery chemicals, but the proportion of the overall composition is not large, and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) has also been used in the previous energy storage system Powerwall, which contains a lot of manganese.
Write at the end:
Musk can make this statement at the Berlin Gigafactory, presumably there have been many results in the study of manganese elements into power batteries, and a more diversified battery type will mean that there are more choices, and consumers can choose their own solutions in high performance/low cost.
If the manganese battery really has a big success day, the technology can be promoted, no doubt this is a good news for the entire new energy automobile industry, for Musk's high talk, we may wish to wait and see.