European Battery Conference

welcome to electrified it's your host dylan loomis i have the full elon interview for you from the european battery conference i'm only going to chime in one time to clarify something that he said but in tomorrow's episode we'll get into things in a little bit more detail but for today just enjoy the interview and i'll talk to you guys soon hope you enjoy and uh it's an honor to talk to everyone so the as far as range is concerned we i think have shown that the range can be very long in fact we we could make it even longer than it is today um but our longer strange vehicles have um a range uh over 600 kilometers um and uh and there's there's more we could we could actually do more than that and you'll see actually some uh improved versions of our vehicles

come out with uh over 600 kilometers range starting to approach 700 kilometers and we even have some under development long term that can do a thousand kilometers so the uh what we see is really the fundamental uh impediment to progress with batteries is the cost so um if you've got if you've got range if you've got rapid recharge um and um and then all those can be achieved and a high calendar and high cycle life um so your batteries can last like 15 years which we believe ours currently can then the what it comes down to most of all is uh improving the cost so that the affordability of batteries is of of the battery required cars and electric vehicles um is improved and so that everyone can afford to buy an electric car that's that's really what we

see as the the fundamental thing that needs to be improved um now along the way there will also be uh improvements in energy density which really translates to improvements in range so in pursuit of lower cost uh batteries you you actually end up try a lot of cases with improved energy density which also gets more range so um the long-term goal would be to try to get to um a class per kilowatt hour of perhaps around um uh 50 cents or 45 cents at the cell level for a long range battery cell um and in order to get there there are a lot of innovations that are necessary so he did say 50 to 55 cents per kilowatt hour at the cell level i'm not sure if this was a mistake but if it was i don't know what he would have meant so let me know what you guys think

about that comment both in the cell design and in the design of the um the factory that produces them so in fact there's quite a bit more work in the in building the machine that builds the machine uh then in the the cell itself so it one needs to design the cell in the right way um and then uh very with the very difficult part and i can't emphasize this enough a very difficult part is then scaling up that production and achieving ex extremely high reliability and safety with the cells so we tell us we've put a lot of effort into this over many years um mostly internally but they've also been some key acquisitions that have been instrumental in achieving a low cost per kilowatt hour um and that's uh that's what we intend to build at the prospective gigafactory

in berlin vandenberg area just ask you uh in terms of scaling up uh what you see as the biggest hurdles to mass production i think um there is the very uh element of scale itself um in that do we it's important to achieve economies of scale to make the batteries affordable so things have to be done at extremely high volume so that means a very big factory and not just one that is big but also one where the um the cycle time through the factories is very low so your fast cycle time with a big factory is what yields a high output in order to achieve a fast cycle time um and uh and at high precision you need to develop advanced machinery for every aspect of the production system so this is really everything from how these the cell can is made up to the how

the uh the electrode precursors the cathode and the anode precursors are made so then making the anode and cathode materials to applying them uh to the the the conductive conductor um and for this we have for example the a very special process called the dry electrode deposition um which is much better for the environment it's basically a line going to put on that to apply the electrode to the conductive ribbon in a way that does not require solvent um and or or require bait to to them the normal way these things start you you you create a slurry of the electric materials and then uh you put the this wet slurry on and with a lot of solvent and that solvent is uh baked away by the ovens uh and and this this is this is obviously self-optimal from an environmental

standpoint because you've um so you have the gases coming from this from the solvent that you have to then get rid of um but with dry electrode processing you do not need the uh the solvent you don't need the drying ovens um and you can apply it directly um this this maybe sounds simple but it's really very difficult um and in fact a lot of the specialized equipment we use for this comes from um germany and elsewhere in europe but it does it doesn't exist it's being made it's it's really under design and and and you know we're we've made them made it now at kind of a um a benchtop level and we're aiming soon to have it done at a pilot plant level um and then the intent for berlin brandenburg would be to have it done at at scale um at scale at scale in

and of itself comes with a lot of design challenges um that have it's a lot of r d that's gonna be done just to solve okay i lied two chime ins i just want you to know i think one of the bigger risks or challenges for tesla for the next two to three years will be making the 4680 cells at scale as elon says throughout this interview there's still a lot of work to be done it's not a guarantee and a lot of these processes are still being developed at the pilot level so going from bench to pilot and then to mass scale production is a big deal and as he says it takes a ton of work so that is one of the bigger risks for tesla not for 2021 because they have their battery supply for 2021 but for 2022 and beyond they need to get these 4680 cells scaled quickly

so that is one of their biggest challenges imo talk to us a bit if you would uh in general about your plans for the battery cell plant within the gigafactory uh berlin brandenburg as you know people here very excited about this so what more can you tell us sure um so the the we want to go from where we have a sort of small pilot plant which is basically proof of concept uh in california to um uh something that that will actually be i think possibly the largest uh battery cell plant in the world i i i think it will be the largest um it would be capable of over a hundred gigawatt hours per year of production and then possibly over time going to to 200 or gigawatt hours a year pretty confident at that point it would be the largest battery cell plant in the

world um and uh as i said a lot of processes where we have to quite radically improve the the cycle time and where we have to redesign machinery for continuous flow operation um uh i i've said this publicly on many many occasions that the designing the uh the prototype of really of any advanced technology um is i think relatively easy uh and then scaling up to high volume production is is very hard um and in fact there's an old saying it's like it's one percent inspiration and 99 perspiration it says it might be 99.

9 in the case of about battery cells you'll see a lot of announcements of this cell breakthrough that cell breakthrough um this technology breakthrough and say okay well why can't they just make a lot of them it's because the the scaling up of the production process is much harder than bringing something out on a lab bench so great um in fact it might be helpful to provide everyone with just just a walk through of the tesla um pilot plant and if you see how intense it is even at the very small pilot plant level you can imagine how much more it would be at something that is perhaps a hundred times more throughput thanks it's intense uh yeah thank you so much for the inspiration perspiration uh ratio there i'll be taking that into some of our future uh

discussions here at the conference when we talk about uh technology and breakthroughs let me ask you this because we've been hearing all morning from the speakers on policy issues that they see sustainability as absolutely key to the european comparative advantage in this area so you mentioned some sustainability considerations around solvents and slurry and so on could you say a little bit more about your view on the environmental impact of battery production and what you're doing at tesla to take it uh toward a more sustainable direction yeah absolutely um as you had i think the the dry electrode uh production process is uh in and of itself quite a game changer is a fun fundamental improvement compared to using solvent and then having to dry off the

solvent and deal with uh the the the off gassing from the solvent that's for sure is a big one there are um some um proprietary methods by which the the cathode is produced in the in the first place where we avoid um a lot of the steps that are environment that are difficult to deal with environmentally um and one of the things we're doing is we are um reducing the for example the cobalt content um so that avoids like a cobalt mining issue so it would be a pure nickel or almost pure nickel anode and then eliminating like a bunch of the steps of processing of the clinical electrode which then obviously is good for the environment um we're moving to a high silicon um anode but it's a silicon anode that where the silicon does not require a lot of it's not

energy intense to create the silicon it's using silicon that is comparable to solar uh sort of solar panels sort of voltaics photovoltaics um we also come up with a means of creating lithium hydroxide uh without use of sulfuric acid so it actually uses uh sodium chloride essentially table salt to um extract the lithium from uh lithium clay deposits um and uh and then that table salt is able to be uh reused so there's there's really a whole series of steps that are employed to ensure that the uh environmental impact of the cell production is um is very clean um and that you could be living right next to the battery cell plant and you wouldn't even have detectable amounts of any toxins uh in in the air so if you had like an air tester you wouldn't you would

not notice anything literally and it's it's notable that uh our pilot plant as the um you know sort of basic proof of concept is located in the san francisco bay area which is renowned for extreme environmental requirements so if there was anything that was bad it's really not possible to do it in the san francisco bay area that will be very good news uh to those who enjoy the beautiful forest uh around the gigafactory uh facility so uh just a couple more short questions if i may uh one of them uh regards uh a long discussion about whether we will ever see electric uh trucks as being truly viable and you started out in your remarks talking about range uh so what's your response to the pessimists who say not gonna happen well i think this is really just

a fundamental um calculation of you say like what's the energy density of the uh of the battery of the cell and then of the battery pack and then of the integrated battery pack and truck uh chassis um so it's a total mass of the uh of the semi truck before you know before including the trailer or anything and and can you get that mass down to something which is comparable to existing uh diesel trucks i think the answer is absolutely yes and we've demonstrated that with prototype trucks and so getting a range of let's say uh 500 kilometers is i think quite easy i like trivial to be frank for a semi truck um and this is assuming a truck that's pulling a load of something on the order of uh 40 times 40 metric tons um so um just a heavy truck uh and then

you can take the range if you if you want for long range trucking uh up to we think uh easily 800 kilometers and we see a path over time to get to a thousand kilometer range uh with a heavy-duty track this is like i said truck uh on the order of 40 metric ton uh total mass um uh and uh we think this is going to be extremely competitive and compelling to uh the trucking companies um and we actually have a few prototype semi trucks that are in operation have been in operation for over a year um so you know some keys to that are having like i said a high um energy density cell and then integrating that cell into the pack with a minimum of extra of extra mass and then using as having a structural battery pack where the cells and the battery pack actually

form part of the core structure and this is also something that we um talked about at battery day and that we will be of course implementing with the semi truck and the net result is uh you're able to carry uh the basically the same cargo as a regular diesel truck like this we think maybe there's a um a one-ton penalty maybe but at this point we think possibly you can even have less than a one ton uh pillared reduction but and it could long term i think be zero payload reduction or four electric trucks so sort of a you know in terms of like put numbers on this that are specific uh you know something like um uh around a 300 um uh 300 watt hours per kilogram something like that uh at the cell level uh is enough to to get to these the high ranges that i

talked about sort of the 800 kilometer range very interesting thank you so one last question pertaining uh to something uh that you have uh said uh publicly that both gigafactory berlin and gigafactory shanghai will be making original vehicles can you just say a few words uh about that give us a little more detail sure um yes absolutely so um you know i think there's there's just a lot of talent um talented designers uh engineers um in europe of course and uh it would i think for a lot of the best people they really want to work somewhere where they're doing original design work they don't want to just be you know doing say the european version of something that was designed in california so i think it's important for in order to attract the best talent

um to to do original design um and i think uh you know possibly uh in europe it would make sense to do um i guess a compact car so perhaps a hatchback or something like that and um something that like well what do most people want um and uh in a given region um or was a very popular approach to take um you know in the u.

s the cars tend to be bigger for personal taste reasons um and in europe the tends to be smaller um and uh i mean if you're trying if you're trying to to park in a dense urban environment having a car that is um that actually fits puts in a parking space easily is important um i was driving a model x around berlin and we had quite a bit of trouble finding a parking space that we could fix so um i think but you know that would probably be a good candidate for original design um but i'm sure there'll be others as well but that that might be the wise place to start um and it helps us also say okay we need a car that people can afford uh that fits their lifestyle and everything and so probably something like that would make sense um yeah i'm excited about

doing some original design in europe and many people here excited as well so we will be following with great curiosity and interest uh the further developments elon musk thank you so much for joining us when i when i calculated the time in california and uh you know figured out what hour you must have gotten up at i thought uh you know has he actually succeeded in bending time or is it really two in the morning so we really appreciate uh your sharing your insights with us and now i wish you a very good night and much success in future uh thank you guys good to talk to everyone thank you thanks bye bye