Musk gets shot to deliver on tantalizing ‘Battery Day’ hints

SAN FRANCISO — Tesla Inc. will supply a highly anticipated technology update on Tuesday when Elon Musk will take center stage at an event the CEO has dropped hints about for months — and which has served propel the company’s sky-large valuation.

The “Battery Day” presentation, which follows the yearly shareholders meeting, is predicted to showcase innovations designed to hold the company’s guide in electric powered autos as rivals flood the market with new battery-powered motor vehicles around the up coming couple of yrs.

If record is any guideline, Musk could discuss about need for Tesla’s motor vehicles at the shareholder meeting, or give updates about new factories in Berlin and Austin, Texas.

But the very first-ever Battery Day, wherever Tesla will stake out its technology road map, is of keen fascination to buyers. The tiniest improvement in batteries can have a huge impression, since they are an electric powered car’s most-high-priced component.

Will Musk and Main Technologies Officer Drew Baglino go super deep with a highly technological presentation on battery chemistry and advancements made since Tesla acquired Maxwell Technologies in 2019? Is Musk — who just previous calendar year vowed that 2020 would be the calendar year of the robotaxi — going to guarantee traveling autos? Or will he tout enhanced variety for Tesla’s current motor vehicles and pledge to incorporate a much more spending budget-helpful vehicle to Tesla’s lineup?

“A great deal of the stuff that Tesla has been doing the job on is about creating the battery production less costly, not a new recipe for a battery or a fully new groundbreaking construction,” explained Sam Jaffe, running director of Cairn Period in Boulder, Colorado. “But when they institute all of these improvements, they will be in a position to make a $25,000 vehicle.”

The shareholder meeting gets underway at 4:thirty p.m. EDT on Tuesday in Fremont, Calif. Musk likes to hold his admirers and rivals guessing, but here are seven educated guesses about what he may perhaps unveil.

1. Expense Parity?

About a ten years in the past, the U.S. Department of Power set a goal to provide the value of battery packs down to $a hundred per kilowatt-hour from an average of much more than $1,000. It predicted when this milestone is reached, electric powered autos will attain value parity with those people powered by internal combustion engines, reducing the EV quality for prospective buyers. Tesla is probable to announce its battery fees have dropped to a lot less than $a hundred per kilowatt-hour, in accordance to Venkat Viswanathan, a battery skilled at Carnegie Mellon College. Tesla’s value could fall additional to $80 per kilowatt-hour by 2025, explained James Frith, head of electrical power storage at BloombergNEF.

2. Vacation spot density

One explanation Tesla can make less costly batteries is since it packs much more electrical power in a lot less substance and quantity. This matters since the measurement of a car will not improve a great deal, but the amount of money of electrical power saved in its batteries goes up — permitting electric powered autos to go additional on a solitary charge. The large-conclusion Design S features a variety of about four hundred miles per charge, the longest of any vehicle now on the market. Currently, the most sophisticated batteries observed in a Tesla Design 3 have an electrical power density of about 250 watt-hrs per kilogram, in accordance to BloombergNEF’s Frith. By 2025, that could increase to as a great deal as four hundred watt-hrs per kg, he explained.

3. Electrode innovation

Batteries have three big components: two electrodes — anode and cathode — and an electrolyte that will help shuttle the charge concerning them. The materials utilized to make them ascertain how a great deal electrical power batteries shop and at what value.

Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Technologies provides it the capability to use dry-electrode technology, explained Colin Rusch, a senior analyst at Oppenheimer. That can enable reduce the amount of money of electrical power necessary for the production method. Even if Musk does not mention Maxwell by title, there’s a great probability Tesla has adopted dry-electrode technology in some variety.

Here’s an clarification of ‘wet’ vs. dry electrodes: To completely ready the components of a battery, electrical power-storing chemicals are mixed in a solvent. That method will help the mixture to have a pancake-mixture style regularity, which can then be coated on aluminum or copper sheets. As soon as the coating is done, the sheets are passed by way of scorching ovens to dry out the solvent before the electrodes can be packed into a battery. Dry-electrode technology does absent with the use of solvents altogether by adding so-called binder chemicals, which when heated become sticky sufficient to hold the powdered mixture tightly onto the metallic sheeting. The upshot is that dry-electrode technology can enable reduce the amount of money of electrical power necessary for the production method and lessen the use of products and room on the manufacturing unit ground — all ways to shave fees.

In 2019, Tesla also acquired Hibar Devices Ltd., a Canadian products maker. There’s a tiny probability Musk may perhaps announce that Tesla is creating its individual batteries, in accordance to analyst Jeff Osborne of Cowen & Co., in addition to working with batteries from Panasonic Corp., Present-day Amperex Technologies Ltd. and LG Chem Ltd. When receiving into production is capital intense and hence risky, it could pay out dividends in the extensive time period.

4. Cobalt-totally free?

Tesla is on a mission to lessen the use of cobalt in its batteries, and Musk may possibly have information to share about development on that entrance. The explanation: Cobalt is high-priced, and most of it comes from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo that are acknowledged to hire children and disregard environmental norms. Panasonic, which provides NCA (nickel cobalt aluminum) cells to Tesla, has explained it programs to commercialize a cobalt-totally free variation in two to three yrs. Meanwhile, CATL provides Tesla with reduce-value lithium-ion-phosphate batteries that don’t consist of any cobalt but are a lot less electrical power-dense than NCA batteries. Musk has explained Tesla also is looking for less costly and greener provides of nickel.

five. Spiked with silicon

Musk has explained in the past that Tesla “dopes” anodes that consist of graphite with a little bit of silicon. This will help since silicon has a a great deal larger affinity for lithium, so the much more silicon there is in the anode, the larger the electrical power density of the battery. It is achievable Musk will announce Tesla has observed a way to improve the amount of money of silicon loading in graphite anodes, Frith explained, but the CEO probably will not announce Tesla has all-silicon anodes, which are nevertheless a few yrs absent from commercial use in EVs.

6. Million-mile battery

Tesla may perhaps observe CATL in saying it now offers a million-mile battery, or 1 with as numerous as 20,000 charge-discharge cycles. Currently Tesla has a 150,000-mile or 8-calendar year warranty, whichever comes very first. A million-mile battery probably will not increase the warranty seven-fold, since other components of the vehicle probably will wear out faster. But it could allow Tesla to make fleet motor vehicles, this sort of as the extensive-promised autonomous taxis, that rack up mileage a great deal much more speedily than privately owned autos. Cowen’s Osborne also explained this could allow Tesla autos to link with the electric powered grid and supply expert services to utilities, this sort of as absorbing excessive renewable electrical power or lowering calls for on transmission infrastructure.

7. Partnership change?

Tesla’s most longstanding partner on batteries has been Panasonic. The two corporations jointly work the massive battery plant outdoors of Reno, Nev.: Panasonic makes the cells, and Tesla strings 1000’s of cells into the massive battery packs for every single vehicle. But Musk has hardly ever been keen about based on 1 provider, and Tesla does have smaller-scale agreements with CATL in China’s Fujian province and LG Chem in Seoul. As Tesla builds extra crops in Berlin and Austin, Texas, who will offer the batteries for them? Tesla also sells stationary batteries, which it phone calls the Megapack, to utility corporations that want battery storage for the electric powered grid.

Will 1 provider emerge as dominant for Tesla’s car organization, even though a further focuses on the utility market?

“We be expecting an update on its associations with mobile associates like Panasonic and CATL,” explained Rusch of Oppenheimer. “Given the scale of the option in equally car and stationary electricity, we be expecting TSLA to proceed doing the job closely with a few battery suppliers to scale manufacturing with essential steps remaining in TSLA facilities.”