Tesla Update: Brace Yourself for B-Day

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

There’s a big to-do coming up in Tesla’s social calendar. Dubbed “Battery Day,” the occasion seems to have something to do with…well, you can probably read.

Battery Day, on which Tesla will presumably storm the beaches of electrification technology, is slated for September 15th — the same day as a postponed shareholder meeting.

On Monday, the electric automaker said in a regulatory filing that the shareholder meeting wouldn’t go ahead on July 7th, as originally planned. Battery Day is a similarly postponed affair, as Tesla had originally planned to announce some sort of range/capacity breakthrough back in May.

As CEO Elon Musk noted via Twitter, the Sept. 15 date is not set in stone. If it does come to pass, expect a plant tour.

Tentative date for Tesla Shareholder Meeting & Battery Day is Sept 15. Will include tour of cell production system.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2020

With the help of China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd, Tesla aims to jointly develop a battery capable of travelling one million miles before replacement. It put its intentions into words late last year; last month, news emerged of a plan to outfit the Model 3 sedan with a low-cost, long-life battery in Chinese-market models sometime late this year or early next.

Earlier this month, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology granted the automaker, which hosts an assembly plant in Shanghai, approval to build car with Lithium iron phosphate batteries — a recipe that omits the rare and controversially sourced cobalt found in typical lithium-ion batteries.

[Image: Tesla]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Indi500fan Indi500fan on Jun 22, 2020

    Musk has milked Panasonic to the max so it's time for a new squeeze....CATL.

  • Mcs Mcs on Jun 22, 2020

    "With the help of China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd, Tesla aims to jointly develop a battery capable of travelling one million miles before replacement." No, Tesla developed the technology without CATL and it's outlined in their patent filings from last year. It was developed by Tesla's Jeff Dahn and unveiled in September of last year. The patents they filed last year outlined the technology they used to create it. Dahn also published a white paper on the subject back in February. The important part of battery day is finding out when the new battery technologies are going to make it into production. Battery breakthoughs seem to happen on an hourly basis, but getting them into mass production is the tough part. For example, Toyota has made tremendous progress in producing a viable solid-state battery. How long until it makes mass production? Mid-decade according to Toyota engineering. I'd like to see the timeline when the new million-mile electrode coating technology, the "tabless" technology, and the Maxwell dry electrode technology make it into mass production. Numbers on gravimetric and volumetric density as well.

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    • Mcs Mcs on Jun 22, 2020

      @Art Vandelay "But if they are serious about the semi, which it seems they are, this sort of longevity is basically a requirement to make real inroads." Yeah, I agree. For the semi, they definitely need that sort of longevity. They're also moving into the power distribution business, so they'll need durability for that as well. I'm interested in battery day to see what will be available for my robotics designs. While I am an EV enthusiast, my biggest reason for keeping a close watch on battery technology is to have an idea as to what will be available to power the robots I design and AI systems they will need. It's like designing an EV, but way more motors and much less space with a much more complex autopilot system.

  • Drew8MR Drew8MR on Jun 22, 2020

    "Then there is my Fiesta ST. That car is proof internet forums are full of it. Thia is exactly the car people said “if they’d just build a car like this, I’d buy it.” Well they didn’t." My local Ford dealer stocked as few ST's as possible (which I guess was 2), and both of them were always fully loaded in the shit colors. Then, they made no effort to discount them until they were discontinued. And I already have a Franken7 and an Evo8, so I had a hard time justifying the purchase. But, it got me in the showroom, for what that's worth. First time for personal use since '04 when I bought the Evo. And I gotta admit, used ones scare me a little. Kinda like the fast Neons. Cool cheap car, but 1000% hooned.

  • Master Baiter Master Baiter on Jun 22, 2020

    Battery longevity is measured by testing a limited number of sample packs in a controlled lab environment, and then extrapolating the fade rate out in time. Any number of things can keep your pack from performing as well as the lab samples: Cherry-picked test samples, harsh environmental conditions such as vibration and thermal cycling, cell process defects, pack defects, etc. If Tesla would warrant this miracle pack for 30 years or 300,000 miles to 80% of original capacity, then I would be impressed.

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