Apocalypse from the start of Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory: Make the most extreme subtraction and draw the biggest pie

On April 8, Beijing time, Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory officially started construction. At the opening ceremony, a regional (Rodeo rodeo) and product event called “Gigafactory Cyber ??Rodeo” was held. The unique queue, even without looking at the crazy output of female fans in the audience, can still imagine that this is another personal show of Musk.

However, Lao Ma, who used to dance on every happy occasion, has restrained himself in his hometown in the United States and started to look cool in a Texas-style Western cowboy suit. The Texas factory is under construction, and as usual it’s time for Tesla to show off its muscles: the new factory is also a new product, the delivery of a new version of Model Y made in Texas, the largest 4680 battery factory, the debut of the Cybertruck mass-produced car, and FSD Beta covering the entire country this year Robotaxi may be born in North America...

In addition to the display of existing results, it is just the old horse filling in the pits and continuing to paint the pie. This time at the 12,140-acre factory in Austin, Texas, the Cowboys are really busy, Tesla is still crazy, and the development of electric vehicles may have a new direction.

Producing a body-in-white in 45 seconds: It is not just another new factory for Tesla

Tesla treats the factory itself as a product. This super factory covers an area of ??12,140 acres, has a volume of approximately 9.57 million cubic meters, and a factory length of approximately 1,166 meters. It has become Tesla’s largest super factory in the world to date. Musk is afraid that you don’t know how awesome it is, and he even came up with the idea of ??erecting it to compare with the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. But "big" or "new" is not its biggest feature. Its implementation may be another industrial revolution in the automobile industry.

From the factory layout, the chip-intensive factory layout has broken away from the traditional automobile factory’s series form of stamping → welding → painting → final assembly. The front and rear floor plates of the body are integrated die-casting + CTC (that is, the battery core is directly Installed into the chassis) + 4680 battery cooperation directly leads to the parallel + modular route of automobile production, truly realizing that raw materials enter from the head and the car drives out from the rear.

From the obvious effect, this is a successful cost reduction and efficiency increase. The assembly path has been greatly shortened. Multiple welding parts were directly reduced to one integral part, which can be formed by 4 IDRA machines from Italy. The large-scale die-casting machine with a maximum pressure of 6,000 tons frees up the productivity of 4x2 (one in front and one in the back) x300 industrial robots, and the production time of a body-in-white is only 45 seconds. Improve efficiency, body structure performance and component consistency, while reducing manufacturing costs and equipment footprint, killing two birds with one stone.

If you look at Model Y alone, the Texas factory can produce 500,000 vehicles a year. If you include the Cybertruck, Roadster 2 and Semi that will be mass-produced in the future, the Texas factory’s The overall annual production capacity is expected to climb to 1 million vehicles, and insufficient production capacity will no longer be a problem for Tesla.

The deeper significance is that the establishment of the Texas factory allows us to see modular iteration, different platform integration and other new energy vehicle architectures that may be more suitable for rapid iteration in the future. It has revolutionized traditional automobile production. life. The best thing about Tesla is not the battery or body, but its strong engineering capabilities.

The complete Model Y: the combination of three building blocks, achieving the ultimate in subtraction

From the launch of the Berlin factory to the start of the Texas factory today, it took just 16 days and two Tesla's super factories have started construction one after another. The result for Model Y is: the complete new version of Model Y is officially put into production and delivered. Before the two factories were put into production, the rear body of the earliest Model Y model was made of dozens of parts through complex welding and riveting, which was time-consuming and cumbersome; the Shanghai factory produced the most new Model Y products. Only the rear floor of the car body was die-cast in one piece; the Berlin factory 16 days ago did the die-casting of the front and rear body pans in an integrated manner, and the new version made in Texas this time, the standard range four-wheel drive model, has the front and rear bottom panels of the body in one piece. Complete die-cast + CTC + 4680 battery.

The implementation of CTC is the key point of the Model Y made in Texas. Structural battery pack is the product of the implementation of CTC technology.

The entire assembly process was demonstrated on site for the first time, and the practice of directly integrating battery cells into the body chassis once again demonstrated another secret to improving production efficiency.

CTC, that is, the battery core is directly installed on the chassis (Cell to Chassis). Different from the traditional CTP (Cell to Pack, battery pack) mode, CTC omits the step of assembling the cells into a battery pack and directly installs the cells to the chassis. It is equivalent to a PACK in which the chassis itself is the battery. Without a layer of packaging, the structure of the entire battery pack + chassis becomes more compact. The stainless steel battery itself also becomes a structural stress-bearing part instead of just relying on the shell to bear force. At the same time, it also has a negative impact on the battery. The overall power density and energy density have been greatly improved.

The implementation of CTC technology allows the three building blocks of the front body panel + CTC integrated battery pack chassis + rear body floor to form a complete lower chassis, from Volkswagen's PQ platform to the MQB platform. Toyota's TNGA architecture...the integration advantages brought by platform modularity are brought to the extreme here.

4680 battery mass production: officially moving to the center of the stage

Compared with several other Tesla super factories, the Texas factory currently undertakes irreplaceable and important work. The mass production and assembly of 4680 batteries. This factory that integrates battery production and assembly into vehicle manufacturing will become the single battery factory with the largest production capacity in the world in the next few years, making the long-awaited mass production of 4680 batteries a reality.

The mass production of 4680 is an important symbol of the revival of cylindrical batteries. The most dazzling term we have seen in electric passenger cars in the past few years is the innovation of CTP prismatic battery packs headed by the blade battery technology route. In comparison, cylindrical and soft-pack batteries are more like backward products. This time Tesla has once again single-handedly brought cylindrical batteries to the forefront of battery technology.

From 18650 to 2170 to today’s 4680, Tesla and Panasonic have been unswervingly developing cylindrical batteries. The battery energy density and battery life have increased simultaneously, but with the 4680, the advantages have increased non-linearly. The five major innovations in battery design, battery factory, cathode materials, anode materials, and vehicle battery integration have the effect of 1+1+1+1+1>5.

The first is the all-pole lug design. Based on the golden body of 46mm diameter, which meets the best balance point of improving battery life and reducing costs, the all-pole lug (which is what Tesla calls " "No pole tabs" (but actually side tabs) effectively reduce the lateral path of the current, greatly reducing the problems of internal damage and internal resistance heating of the battery. The internal resistance heating of the 4680 battery is only one-fifth of that of the 2170 battery.

Result-oriented, the 4680 battery increases battery life by 16%, reduces the cost by 14%, and the single-cell capacity is five times that of the 2170 battery. In addition, the 4680-shaped battery meets the conditions for both improved power density and energy density, and its high-power discharge and fast charging capabilities have been further improved. According to a research report by Insideevs, it takes 15 minutes for a 400V 4680 battery system to charge 70% of the power, and the charging efficiency will be even more promising after the introduction of 800V high-voltage fast charging in the future.

Second, the cathode material is highly nickel-decobalted. At present, the cathode material of 4680 is still NCM811, a formula we are familiar with, but in the future it will gradually develop towards NCM9/0.5/0.5 or even cobalt-free and quaternary batteries. Nickel has the highest energy density and the lowest cost. The prerequisite for gradually becoming cobalt-free is to improve battery stability. By then, battery costs will further drop and the factors that are stuck with raw materials will also be reduced.

Third, the negative electrode material is doped with silicon. This is one of the effective ways to increase battery energy density based on existing battery technology. At present, most batteries use graphite anodes, with actual specific capacity of about 330-370 mAh/g, with little room for improvement. However, the theoretical specific capacity of silicon-based batteries is 4200 mAh/g, which has significant advantages over graphite. This is why In recent years, the new battery technologies of manufacturers such as Aion and NIO have adopted silicon-doped technology.

The above three points are combined with the CTC battery integrated chassis and the efficient operation of the battery factory mentioned above. With five-digit integration, the energy density of 300Wh/kg has become a reality.

In terms of battery life, the four-wheel drive standard range version has an EPA range of 279 miles (449km). Compared with the single-motor standard range sold in the North American market earlier, which had an EPA range of 244 miles (393km), there is one more motor, and the range is significantly increased. The future performance on other models can be foreseen.

In terms of production capacity, Model? Y can achieve annual production capacity of 500,000 yuan with just one car. The factory production system, 4680 battery system, CTC system and other technologies are all complementary to each other. This is also the best practice of Musk's "first principles".

Cybertruck, Roadster 2, Semi, V1 Optimus, FSD Beta, Robotaxi: filling old pitfalls and creating new ones

The Texas factory that makes people see results must be mass-produced Model Y, most of the content is also centered around it. After all, it is the mainstay of Tesla's sales. But if you want to show off your coolness and muscles, it’s the guys who debuted a few years ago: Cybertruck, Roadster 2, and Semi. <