On March 22, local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk (Elon Musk) predicted that next year (electric car) battery production will face "challenges", and batteries will become a "limitation" hindering Tesla's development within 2-3 years. factor". At the same time, Musk said that Tesla will expand into other markets, adding new models after meeting existing market demand.
At the groundbreaking ceremony of Tesla's Berlin plant, Musk delivered the first 30 Model Y models built at the Berlin plant to users. After two years and a cost of 5 billion euros, the Berlin plant was officially put into operation, which is a further expansion of Tesla's global production capacity and relieved the delivery pressure to a certain extent.
The Berlin Gigafactory will focus on electric vehicle production lines, supplemented by battery production, with an expected annual production capacity of up to 500,000 vehicles. Tesla’s Berlin plant will have a production capacity of about 54,000 cars in 2022, 280,000 cars in 2023, and eventually 500,000 cars a year by 2025, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. With the opening of the Berlin plant, Tesla's total global production capacity will reach 2.7 million vehicles.
Musk dances at the Berlin factory Although the good news of the new factory opening made Musk dance with excitement at the groundbreaking ceremony, when addressing employees, Musk still expressed concern about the problems Tesla is facing and believes that the industry needs to More focus on the battery supply chain.
Musk said the challenges in the coming years will be related to battery production and its supply chain, including raw material sourcing. "Last year, there were a lot of challenges in the chip supply chain, there is still a shortage of chips this year, and I think next year there may be challenges in battery production."
“In the next two to three years, the concern will be about the megawatt hours (MWh) of battery production, the supply chain, and the speed at which battery materials are mined and refined. In a way, the focus is on how much Tesla can produce per year. A terawatt-hour (TWh, 1 terawatt-hour = 1 billion kWh) battery." Musk said, "We roughly calculated that it would take about 300 terawatt-hours to transform the world into a sustainable energy economy, which means a huge amount of 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) = 1,000 kilowatt-hour (kWh) batteries.”
The battery is the core component of an electric vehicle, accounting for more than 40% of the total vehicle cost. With the outbreak of the new energy industry in recent years, the price of battery raw materials has continued to rise, making Tesla's business strategy of reducing costs and prices unsustainable.
On Battery Day in 2020, Musk said that developing an affordable mass-market electric vehicle "was a dream of the company from its inception." However, since the third quarter of 2021, Tesla has raised prices several times. In the past week or so, Tesla has announced three consecutive price increases. The single price increase of four models including Model 3 and Model Y ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. The Model Y long-range version, which has the highest cumulative increase, has risen The price is more than 30,000 yuan.
At present, the price of Tesla's cheapest model, the Model 3 rear-drive version, has risen to $47,000 in the United States and is approaching 300,000 yuan in China, and its price appeal is gradually declining. According to Bernstein analyst Tony Sacconaghi, Tesla will not be able to grow its sales more than 50% a year without launching a $25,000 vehicle.
Tesla’s 2021 financial report disclosed in January showed that Tesla’s global vehicle delivery in 2021 will be 936,000, an increase of 87% year-on-year. In February, Musk said Tesla's vehicle deliveries will continue to grow by more than 50% in 2022, meaning Tesla will deliver more than 1.4 million vehicles this year. Earlier, Musk had also set a target of 20 million annual deliveries by 2030.
In its 2021 earnings report, Tesla said it believes it can further address cost issues through manufacturing innovation and well-planned products and factories. Manufacturing innovations include projects such as large castings, structural battery packs, and 4680 batteries.
Tesla's 4680 battery Musk believes that the 4680 battery is a "huge breakthrough" in technology that will make it possible for Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car.
In September 2020, Tesla released the 4680 new cylindrical battery. The battery consists of 950 cells and has an energy density of about 300kWh/kg. Compared with the Panasonic 2170 battery Tesla previously used, the 4680 battery is larger in size, has a 5x increase in capacity, and a 6x increase in output power. It is expected to increase the driving range of the vehicle by 16% and reduce the cost by 14%.
In January of this year, Tesla’s pilot plant in Fremont, California produced the millionth 4680 battery, marking the official entry of the 4680 battery into mass production. Meanwhile, the first Model Y models with 4680 batteries are expected to begin deliveries by the end of the quarter.
In addition to the car production line, the Tesla Berlin factory, which was put into production this time, also has a 4680 battery pack production base. The design capacity of the first phase is 50GWh per year, and it may be officially put into production in the second quarter to the third quarter of this year. At present, the Model Y delivered by the Berlin factory is still equipped with 2170 batteries supplied by the Shanghai factory.
At the groundbreaking ceremony for the Berlin plant, Musk said he saw the potential of manganese-based cathodes in battery chemistry. On Tesla Battery Day in 2020, Musk once said that "it is relatively simple to use two-thirds nickel and one-third manganese as a cathode, which will allow us to use the same amount of nickel to make more yields more than 50% of the battery capacity."
At the same time, he also said that Tesla is trying to make batteries with more materials. For the foreseeable future, Tesla, like the rest of the industry, will focus on nickel-based chemicals for long-range vehicles, and iron phosphate for short-range vehicles.
Last month, Musk re-emphasized the importance of nickel. He believes that despite being called lithium-ion batteries, lithium only makes up about 2 percent of the battery. Technically, it should be called a "nickel-graphite" battery, because the important component in the entire battery is nickel. On Tesla's latest quarterly conference call, Musk said: "Please ask all miners to mine more nickel in a way that is good for the environment, and maintain an efficient supply, and Tesla will supply a large long-term order. "
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