Tesla's Battery Supply Problem

This episode of real engineering is brought to you by the brilliant

problem

-solving website that teaches you how to think like an engineer Last month, Elon Musk and Draw Baglino took the stage to share the latest advances in Tesla

battery

technology with investors and technology enthusiasts from around the world. The world if we were to narrow the topic of this presentation down to a single

problem

that Tesla is trying to address in its

supply

chain. The logistics of this

battery

day had little focus on increasing energy density as gains in this department become increasingly difficult to come by and Tesla now faces a major problem in developing its batteries for succeed in its mission to accelerate the global transition from fossil fuel energy.

They need to scale their business quickly. In 2019, Tesla sold around 365,000 vehicles and in the last three years. have averaged around 90,000 vehicles per quarter, this can and should be considered a huge success, but in the grand scheme of things they are barely making a dent in the total vehicle market, which in 2019 amounted to 90 million vehicles despite its reputation, Tesla is a small fish in the automotive world and has a long way to go to match the world's largest automakers, such as Toyota and Volkswagen, which sold nearly 11 million vehicles each in 2019. This battery day presentation was a window into Tesla's woes in its quest to become As an automotive giant, this particular crash made very clear Tesla's ambition and challenge in transitioning the world's total vehicle market. to battery electric vehicles.

They estimated that 100x growth was needed, taking current battery production from 0.1 terawatt hours to 10 terawatt hours and similarly estimated that transitioning our total energy consumption would require another 10 terawatt hours of battery production. each year, an increase of 1600 times the current production for that sector. We need to transition away from fossil fuels quickly, but it won't be easy in today's video. I'm going to explain the challenge Tesla and all other battery manufacturers face in scaling and some of the improvements they are working on to reach their goals. The battery

supply

chain starts with mining. There are several different elements that we need to build a battery. and without them, the supply chain cannot begin.

There are a variety of battery chemicals that different manufacturers use for different applications. We'll briefly go over the most common ones to get a basic list of ingredients. First, let's quickly go over how. A Tesla battery works and how we can get a little creative to alleviate supply chain issues. A lithium-ion battery, like all batteries, contains a positive electrode, the cathode, and a negative electrode, the anode, separated by an electrolyte. These batteries are called lithium ion batteries. because they power devices by transporting positively charged ions in the form of lithium ions between the anode and cathode, creating an electrical potential between the two sides of the battery that forces electrons to travel through the device it is powering to equalize the electrical potential critically this process.

It is reversible for lithium-ion batteries, since the lithium ions are held loosely in spaces in the crystal structure of the anode and cathode. This is called intercalation, so when the opposite electrical potential is applied to the battery through the load, it will force the lithium ions to be transported back. the electrolytic bridge and are housed in the cathode once again, that is the core of what makes a battery. The anode and cathode materials provide small storage containers for lithium ions to park between charged and discharged states. Lithium is a constant feature of these batteries and is used because it is the third lightest element and the lightest metal, allowing its ions to provide fantastic energy-to-weight ratio characteristics for any battery.

This is our first raw material that we will need to build our battery; however, lithium alone does not determine energy capacity. of a battery that depends more on the weight and size of the storage containers in which the lithium ions are stored, for example, Tesla batteries mainly use graphite as an anode material. Graphite is a lightweight material; However, to store a single lithium ion, the graphite anode requires six carbon atoms, this gives a theoretical maximum battery capacity of 372 milliamp hours per gram, but we can do better if we make our anode from silicon, something that Tesla is actively researching, we need only one silicon atom to bond 4.4 lithium ions, so although one silicon atom is 2.3 times heavier than carbon, with the reduced number of atoms needed and space of added storage, it gives us 11.3 times the energy capacity with a theoretical maximum battery capacity of 4200 milliamp hours per gram, which means we need less silicon to make a battery with the same capacity, so improving the chemistry of our cells not only makes our battery lighter, but it also means we use less material in our batteries, easing the strain on our supply chain.

The problem is that those 4.4 lithium ions that are housed in the silicon crystal lattice cause a volume expansion of 400 percent when charged from empty to full, this expansion creates tension within the battery that damages the anode material. It will eventually destroy your battery capacity over repeated cycles, making it a very difficult anode material to use, but Tesla is working on methods to fix this problem and claims they already have batteries on the way with small percentages of silicon in them. the anode, so let's add these two materials to our list of raw materials. Now let's move on to the cathode.

Here different manufacturers opt for different materials, some optimize the cost, such as manganese-filled batteries. the nissan leaf while sacrificing power density while others optimize power density like

tesla

which mainly use a nickel cobalt aluminum cathode called nca battery but also use different chemistry for their stationary power walls where the density Energy is not so important here. A nickel-cobalt-manganese cathode Tesla also uses LFP batteries supplied by its Chinese battery partner CatL in its Chinese Standard Model 3 range whose cathodes are made from iron and phosphate. If we plot the specific capacity and average discharge potential of each cathode material, we get a picture. of the performance of each type with typical

tesla

batteries, the nca are the clear winner and the lfp batteries have the worst performance, it would be great if all batteries could use this nca chemistry, but as we will see, some materials such as cobalt They do not have a solid supply and come with a large number of geopolitical obstacles that not only affect the supply of batteries but also their final cost.

It is advisable that Tesla is already diversifying the materials on its shopping list and reducing its dependence on any one material, which will help mitigate any potential bottlenecks if a material becomes difficult to obtain. stop by this is a decent shopping list of raw materials for possible batteries graphite silicon lithium nickel cobalt aluminum manganese iron and phosphate let's go shopping first I want to see the relative abundance of each of these elements on earth we are shopping in the earth's crust next After all, these figures show the percentage that each material represents in the Earth's crust.

Silicon dominates as the second most abundant element on Earth, making it even more attractive as an anode material. Aluminum and iron follow with manganese and phosphorus in the middle of the table with relatively high abundance. This is why manganese, iron and phosphate are attractive for cheaper batteries; However, if we look at the bottom of this list, we see our three problem materials: nickel, cobalt, and lithium. For the purposes of this video, we will focus on these three materials that this gives us. A look at the supply issues facing battery manufacturers, but make no mistake, this small percentage of the Earth's crust is still more than enough to meet our demands and relative abundance is not necessarily a sign of a strong supply chain. , since we are finding some materials. it is harder than others there is not a lot of lithium in a battery as Elon put it it is like salt in a salad on average there is about 70 grams of lithium per kilowatt hour, scaling up to the average 100 kilowatt hour tesla battery contains about 7 kilograms of lithium, a typical 100 kilowatt hour Tesla battery weighs about 600 kilograms, so in total the 7 kilograms constitute a small fraction of the total materials used; however, when scaling up to 10 terawatt hours, that is 100 million 100 kilowatt hour batteries. packages, things get out of control quickly, we would need 0.7 billion kilograms or 0.7 million metric tons of lithium each year, that's a lot of lithium, although it's only a small portion of the battery, so how much are we currently producing per year?

This is the breakdown. per nation according to the US geological survey with a total of 77,000 metric tons, about 4.8 percent of what it should be. However, it is important to note that global reserves amount to 17 million metric tons and this is maintained to avoid oversaturation of the market and sinking the price if demand increases sharply this reserve can compensate with enough quantity to satisfy 24 years of dreams of Tesla's 10 terawatt hour or even 12 years of his larger long-term 20 terawatt hour dream there are many deposits of lithium scattered around the world, billions of tons of lithium are present in our oceans, but we currently do not have a cost effective way to separate it.

Instead, we currently rely on thousands of years of geological processes to concentrate the seas into salt flats like those found high in the Andes in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. Here is lithium-rich water below the surface that is pumped to the surface and evaporates to collect the salts. There are also hard rock deposits in places like Australia, which is the current largest producer of lithium. We can also extract it from clay deposits. which Musk mentioned during Battery Day, where he told shareholders that Tesla had secured rights to 10,000 acres of lithium clay in Nevada, but that the process to extract lithium from the clay is unproven and these large reserves have historically prevented any serious investment in new mines, however it is clear that Tesla wants to vertically integrate its supply chain and reduce its dependence on third-party suppliers who can withhold supplies to keep prices higher.

Sourcing materials locally will also reduce the environmental impact and price of shipping them from abroad, although there may be obstacles along the way. For now, lithium is not a big concern, the same cannot be said for cobalt. This table again from the US geological survey shows the global supply of cobalt and one country provided just over 70 percent of the world's total production in 2019. republic of the congo this has been a big controversy for technology companies who depend on cobalt for their batteries in 2019 a landmark court case was launched in washington dc against apple google dell microsoft and you guessed it tesla for the horrible mining practices in the drc their businesses fuel child labor and dangerous mining practices are common in what the industry falsely calls artisanal mining.

Tesla's main solution to this problem has been to reduce the amount of cobalt in its batteries. This is obviously a complicated geopolitical issue and I'm not entirely sure. how Tesla is supposed to intervene in another country's human rights issues and honestly this is beyond my knowledge so I'm not going to weigh in on a solution but it is a problem and this is why cobalt right now It is the largest supply. The bottleneck in the chain that worries companies like Tesla, a single supplier country with a history of instability and human rights violations, is a rusty link in the chain that is about to break.

It's difficult to find an exact answer to how much cobalt goes into a typical Tesla battery. But in its recent conflict minerals report, Tesla said its next-generation 2160 battery has less cobalt than the next-generation nickel-manganese-cobalt cathodes of its competitors' batteries with a ratio of 811 nickel-manganese-cobalt. cobalt which would be about 6.6 kilograms of cobalt per 77 kilowatts. 75 kilowatt hour battery, theThe best source I could find claims that the Model 3 has about 4.5 kilograms of cobalt in its 75 kilowatt hour battery. Scaling up to 10 terawatt hours would require 600 million kilograms or 600,000 metric tons per year, which far exceeds the current production of 140,000 metric tons, but in this case there is not much room to improve supply, since the DRC is the main source and there are around seven million metric tons of cobalt in reserve, but again half of this is in the hands of the DRC.

Only one other major untapped cobalt resource lies beneath the ocean, with an estimated 120 million metric tons, but I think we can all agree that dredging the seafloor is not the solution to climate change. We need to find an alternative to cobalt. Tesla is working to replace cobalt. completely with nickel, which is a little more than three times more common in the Earth's crust than cobalt and has a much stronger supply chain and is more evenly distributed across all continents; However, nickel makes up most of the weight of the Tesla cathode and nickel will be a bottleneck in the future.

Tesla batteries contain about 700 grams of nickel per kilowatt hour, so a 100 kilowatt hour battery would have 70 kilograms of nickel, significantly more than any of our previous materials, expanding this to 10 terawatt hours and we would need 7 billion kilograms or 7 million metric tons of nickel and that is with current chemistry, if Tesla were to completely replace cobalt , they would need even more today. Annual production is 2.7 billion kilograms or 2.7 million metric tons with 89 million metric tons in reserve, but it is a highly sought after material. It is mainly used in the steel industry as a vital alloy metal used for stainless steel.

Currently, the electric battery market only uses three percent of the annual nickel supply. Increasing the annual supply of nickel to 10 terawatt hours of production would dramatically change that percentage and nickel mining would have to increase rapidly to meet demand. Elon practically begged nickel producers to sign an exclusive contract with them for an environmentally friendly extraction method that addressed the problems they are having with their main suppliers in Indonesia, whose mining practices make people wonder. Whether battery electric vehicles are really good for the environment, as they are dumping mining waste into the deep sea, while another Russian nickel producer spilled 20,000 tonnes of diesel into a river in the Arctic Circle last year, so it is clear that nickel and cobalt are our two biggest bottlenecks in our supply chain in the initial stage, but we are currently in the early days of battery-powered vehicles and few of these Vehicles reach the end of their useful life every year, but that will soon change, the number of batteries available for recycling will soon explode, at which point a more cyclical supply chain will emerge through recycling and mining will become less critical to current supply chain, mostly lithium-ion. batteries are not recycled;

In fact, you probably have many useful lithium-ion batteries in old electronics in your drawer at home because there is no accessible way to recycle them today; that trend cannot continue in the case of battery packs for electric vehicles. market to survive and overcome these supply chain issues a cyclical supply chain needs to emerge there are multiple startups competing to be the world's first large scale lithium ion battery recycler one of them, Redwood Materials, It is headed by the former CEO and founding member of Tesla, but the supply chain is much longer than this, these raw materials are not magically assembled into battery form, so Tesla is working to eliminate bottlenecks.

In manufacturing, also according to their slides, with current manufacturing techniques, Tesla will need to build around 67 gigafactories to reach That 10 terawatt hour milestone with at least a trillion dollars in investment required building factories and raising the capital to do it. This is also a bottleneck to reach their goals sooner, they need to increase the throughput of their current factories, which means less. Factories are needed and at the same time increase the capital they are raising to build new factories. With this in mind, let's look at how Tesla is working to lessen the effects of these manufacturing bottlenecks.

One of the most interesting design innovations they showed off during battery day was the tablets' battery design. which will dramatically increase the performance of your factory. Batteries have two current collectors, a copper sheet for the anode and an aluminum sheet for the cathode. They can be rolled as part of the battery jelly roll assembly, but the machine has to stop periodically to solder something called a tab. To each collector, these tabs are then connected to the positive and negative terminals of the battery to transport the electrons out of the battery and into the circuit. Having to stop the rolling process to weld these tabs is like forcing cars to stop at a toll.

A highway slows down the number of vehicles passing per minute and causes a traffic bottleneck. The battery on this new tablet has the tab rolled up with the current collectors and then folded into this beautiful spiral origami shape at the top and bottom to connect to the batteries. terminals, this process eliminates this tollbooth effect in the factory that slows down performance. If this new battery manufacturing technique speeds up production by just 2, that means they need 1.3 fewer factories to achieve their goal, so it's clear that Tesla is prioritizing rapid growth as they enter a new stage. of its evolution as a company where its scale is beginning to pose new engineering challenges;

However, in the grand scheme of things, Tesla batteries cannot and will not solve this energy transition problem alone. Lithium-ion batteries are well suited for transportation. sector, but while Tesla focused on that 20 terawatt hour mark in its presentation, I did my simple calculations based on the transport part of its goals at 10 terawatt hours, today lithium ion batteries are used in energy storage for the grid simply because they are currently the best suited for the task for their price, but they have some drawbacks: they have limited life cycles, they are not suitable for long-term storage and last year a large Lithium-ion batteries exploded in Arizona, causing many to reconsider lithium as a safe option at this scale, not to mention there is little need for high energy density batteries for the grid, we won't be moving them anywhere.

Smaller home electric walls are one thing, but larger, large-scale batteries, like this Tesla battery farm in Australia, are a waste of lithium and nickel, those materials will be needed by the transportation sector as Countries around the world are rushing to increase the percentages of renewables they are missing in critical energy storage facilities to stabilize their grid and are desperately looking towards lithium-ion batteries, cheaper grid storage. Technologies are needed now and lithium-ion batteries are simply not the long-term answer. Fortunately, Tesla does not have to carry the weight of global climate change alone on its shoulders. We are together in this fight.

There are a wide range of potentially cheaper technologies. Grid-scale energy storage methods are being developed right now and I believe that in the next five years many will reach a point where they can be commercialized and compete with lithium-ion batteries and their cost. I recently spoke with Professor Donald Sottoway, professor of materials. chemistry in mit founder of ambry, a liquid metal battery company and one of my academic heroes, about his views on the future of grid storage and the potential of liquid metal batteries. Segments from this interview will appear in an upcoming video about energy storage in liquid metal batteries for The grid is a young, developing field that needs more mines working in it.

It will be one of the defining technologies of this decade that future generations will likely take for granted, but people like us will look back in admiration at the men and women helping save our planet. You could be one of those people if you choose to enter this field, but you will need a good understanding of mathematics, physics, and computer science to begin your career. Brillante is the perfect place to hone your skills with ease. Pursue selected courses that will take you from knowing nothing to having a complete understanding of the building blocks of an engineering career.

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