The Tesla Cyber Cell Battery Is Here!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Tesla cyber Truck is arriving verysoon as the most unique electric vehicle to
hit the market so far, andto power the gigantic stainless steel machine will
be a very unique new battery thatTesla has named the cyber Cell. So
what sets this new battery apart fromthe rest and will it be enough to

(00:21):
follow through on Elon Musk's big claimsfor the cyber Truck. We know that
the cyber cell is a variation onTesla's existing forty six to eighty cell design.
We have kind of fallen into thisroutine of naming battery cells by their
dimensions. So this one is fortysix millimeters in diameter by eighty millimeters in
length, and that's compared to Tesla'smore commonly used twenty one to seventy cell

(00:44):
in the Model three and Model Y. If you can guess the dimensions of
that battery, then you've got thisdown and we're ready to move on now.
Unfortunately, just referring to a batterycell by its exterior dimensions doesn't actually
tell us anything about the performance characteristicsof said battery. This this is one
of those situations where it's what's onthe inside that matters. So the forty
six eighty as we know it sofar is a lithium ion battery with nickel,

(01:08):
cobalt and manganese cathode materials and agraphite anode material. This is different
from the forty six eighty that Elonpresented back at Battery Day in twenty twenty.
That particular design was for a nickelmanganese cathode with zero cobalt content and
an anode made with both graphite andsilicon material That particular battery cell has yet

(01:30):
to materialize, but it may stillin the future. The current iteration of
the forty six eighty, we cancall it Generation one, has only been
used in very limited volume for oneshort lived and obscure variation of the Tesla
model Why that was manufactured at gigatexisbut isn't available anymore. Luckily, we
got just enough of the Gen oneforty six eighty to understand the performance level

(01:55):
that Tesla has achieved so far.This gives us a baseline to compare the
new cyber cell against. One verysmart user on x dot com who goes
by Troy Testlike has worked out somecalculations on the energy performance of the forty
six eighty Gen one cell. Hismath works out that each forty six eighty
weighs in at three hundred and fiftyfive grams per cell, and the individual

(02:15):
cells can store eighty one point twowatt hours of energy. And if we
know both of those numbers, thenwe can work out the energy density of
the Gen one battery, which isthe most effective measurement of a battery's raw
potential. We have to consider thatthe efficiency of the entire vehicle system in
which the battery is used will havea significant impact on the real world performance.

(02:37):
So we're just looking at the cellin isolation right now. Keep that
in mind. So this math putsthe energy density of the Gen one forty
six eighty at two hundred and twentynine watt hours per kilogram of battery weight.
Now what does that mean. Well, let's bring in another baseline measurement.
The Panasonic made twenty one seventy cellfrom the model Wylong range has a
calculated energy density of two hundred andsixty two two watt hours per kilogram,

(03:00):
So that gives the new forty sixeighty cells thirteen percent less energy density than
the older and more commonly used Panasoniccell. We've also seen some fairly well
documented information from early adopters of theforty six eighty battery powered model. Why
that the new cars do tend tocharge a fair bit more slowly than a
regular model. Why the forty sixeighty battery packs aren't drawing the full two

(03:23):
hundred and fifty kiloo power output fromthe V three supercharger stalls, and they
very quickly throttle the charging power downto a relatively low level compared to the
twenty one to seventy equipped packs.Now, charging is subjective. There are
a lot of factors that will affectcharging speed, and this is something that
likely has more to do with softwarethan it does with hardware, so therefore

(03:46):
it can be improved over time withouthaving to buy a whole new car.
Either way, that's not a greatresult all around, but it's not exactly
terrible either. We are comparing abrand new battery design by a brand new
batterymaker against a tried and true designfrom one of the finest Japanese electronics manufacturers.
Now, this wouldn't be such abig deal if Elon Musk hadn't come

(04:10):
out and hyped the battery up threeyears ago with some sky high promises,
and then if afterwards a bunch ofYouTubers who don't really understand what we're talking
about piled in and massively over hypethe hype for another two years after that.
So it's largely our fault. Sorryabout that anyway, What does this
mean for the cyber truck. Well, basically, if you were to try

(04:30):
and build a cyber truck with theexisting forty six eighty cells as a power
source, then you wouldn't get anywherenear the kind of performance that Tesla was
originally promising for the cyber truck,which was over three hundred miles of range
with the dual motor setup and overfive hundred miles with the trimotor variant.
The Gen one forty six eighty cellswould just be too big and heavy to

(04:51):
fit the necessary amount of energy intothe cyber truck chassis to achieve those numbers,
which brings us to earlier this year, Tesla's VP of Powertrain and Energy
Engineering, Drew Baglino, dropped aglimmer of hope for the cyber trucks,
saying to Tesla investors, quote,here in Texas, we are preparing to
launch our cyber truck cell which hasten percent higher energy density than current production,

(05:15):
and that was accomplished through process andmechanical design optimization. Okay, so
good news, but also weird news. Here's the deal. Ten percent more
energy is great, but that stillputs the cyber cell as a lower performing
battery as compared to the existing twentyone seventy Going back to our Troy test
like math chart, the cyber cellshould now be carrying eighty nine point four

(05:36):
watt hours of energy per cell,assuming the weight has remained the same or
similar. That gives us a projectedtwo hundred and fifty two watt hours per
kilogram. And remember that twenty oneto seventy panasonic cells are still up higher
at two hundred and sixty two watthours per kilogram. So the cyber CLL
is better than the Gen one fortysix eighty, yet still worse than the

(05:58):
regular Model Y battery. If wetry and apply that to a real world
scenario, say, for example,if a cyber truck was made with the
same one hundred kilowot our battery packcapacity of the Model X, then we
could expect the cyber truck to achievejust around two hundred and fifty miles of
range, and here is Troy's mathto support that claim. He says that
in order to achieve a range ofthree hundred and twenty five miles, which

(06:23):
would be in line with the performanceof other Tesla vehicles like the Model three
and Model Y, then cyber truckwould require a one hundred and thirty kilowot
hour battery pack. And this isworking on the optimistic assumption that cyber truck
will have a similar drag coefficient tothe existing Tesla lineup. If cyber truck
proves to be significantly less aerodynamic,then it's obviously going to need an even

(06:46):
bigger battery pack to achieve an acceptablelevel of performance. A realistic estimate might
be that a cyber truck using thecyber cell would need something like a one
hundred and sixty kilowat our battery justto support a range of over three hundred
miles as advertised for the dual motorvariant. And if we try and scale
that up to the claim of overfive hundred miles range in the top tier

(07:10):
cyber truck, then we've probably endedup with a battery that would be just
too large to fit in between thewheels, even on a pickup truck sized
frame. So again, that's nota terrible result, but it's not great
either. Typically, I would saythat range doesn't actually matter as much as
people think that it does. Butthe cyber truck isn't typical and it's not

(07:31):
going to be used for typical drivingtasks either. When you factory in activities
like towing and off roading and allof the other high demand functions that the
cyber truck is literally built to do, then you really do need a large
amount of range as baseline. I'dsay three hundred and fifty miles would be
a kind of minimum requirement for acyber truck that was actually going to be

(07:55):
used for truck stuff. Now,most people who drive trucks do not actually
do truck stuff with them. Theyjust drive to the grocery store and terrorize
pedestrians but couldn't back up a trailerto save their own lives. I feel
like a lot of these people reservedcyber trucks, so maybe this doesn't actually
matter either way. What does thismean for the cyber truck right now?

(08:16):
Well, it looks like Tesla willbe able to deliver on their promise of
a dual motor cyber truck with overthree hundred miles of range. That's probably
what they have been building for thepast couple of months and what will be
delivered to customers later this year.But in order to live up to Elon
Musk's promises of a three or evenfour motor cyber truck with over five hundred

(08:37):
miles of range, then we're goingto need yet another battery upgrade. The
Gen to cyber cell. Is thatsomething we should be counting on probably.
Let's go back to Drew's quote.He says that Tesla achieved the ten percent
energy increase through process and mechanical designoptimization. So what does that mean.

(08:58):
Well, we can take a lookat this diagram that was published in a
Tesla patent application. It shows twodifferent constructions of a battery cell terminal.
If we assume that we are lookingat Gen one forty six eighty on the
left and Gen two or cyber cellon the right, then we can see
the GENT two construction of the batteryterminal is much more compact. Now,

(09:18):
I'm not an engineer, but Ithink we can safely deduce that the GENT
two design change would simply fit allof that same stuff into a smaller physical
space, and by doing that they'vefreed up more volume for the jelly roll,
which is a fun name for theactive battery material. We can probably
safely assume that there is about tenpercent more jelly role in the cyber cell

(09:39):
than the original forty six eighty,which would explain the ten percent increase in
energy capacity. I think that qualifiesas a mechanical design optimization, and this
is good news because it shows thatTesla has managed to improve the performance of
their cell without actually improving on thechemistry, and we know that they're definite

(10:00):
is still room for improvement on thechemistry side of the forty six eighty.
Going back again to the cell designthat was proposed at Battery Day, Elon
and Drew made a big deal aboutthe silicon content of the battery anode,
and we know that our current benchmarkcell, the Panasonic twenty one seventy,
uses a combination of silicon and graphiteas its anode material, but the Gen

(10:22):
one forty six eighty was found tohave a pure graphite anode with no silicon
at all. Now, this likelyhas to do with the dry battery electrode
process that Tesla is using to manufacturethe forty six eighty. We covered that
in a recent Battery Day video.You can check it out later for more
details. Adding silicon to a batteryanode is known to increase the energy density

(10:45):
of the cell, so we cansay for sure that if Tesla can add
silicon to their battery chemistry, theycan still increase the energy density of the
cybercell, maybe by another ten percent, maybe by more, I don't know,
but this does show evidence that Teslais nowhere near the limits of their
new battery cell format. In fact, they're likely just getting started, and

(11:05):
we can see that illustrated in arecent post from Tesla on x dot com
that celebrates the twenty millionth forty sixeighty cell produced at Giga Texas. And
as far as we know, theGigatexas line is exclusively producing the cybersell variation
of that battery. So what doesthat mean. Well, we know that
forty six eighty production at Giga Texasbegan sometime right around the start of this

(11:28):
year, and we know that onJune sixteenth, Tesla announced the ten millionth
cell produced at Giga Texas, soit took roughly from January to June to
build the first ten million batteries.Then it took from June to October to
build these second ten million batteries,So that shows an increase in production volume
over time, not a massive one, but an increase for sure, And

(11:50):
we can definitely assume that the rampup is still very much in progress and
the thirty millionth cell could very likelyarrive by the end of this year and
one more time, falling back onTroy's math because he's very good at it
and I'm not. If we lookat June versus October production, Tesla built
ten million battery cells in one hundredand seventeen days, which is eighty five

(12:13):
four hundred and seventy cells per day. That's a lot of batteries, but
on the scale of electric vehicle manufacturing, it's actually not a particularly high yield.
So if we go by our previousassumptions about the cyber truck battery pack
size, then Tesla would be averagingenough cells to build about four hundred and
fifty cyber trucks per week on thelow end, and maybe six hundred and

(12:33):
fifty per week on the high end, which again sounds like a lot of
vehicles, but if you annualize thatrun rate, it only works out to
around thirty four thousand trucks per year, and at that rate, it would
take the better part of a centuryto fill every existing cyber truck per order.
So what have we learned? Well, things seem to be going just
fine for cyber truck production at GigaTexas. They are definitely on track to

(12:56):
deliver on the mid tier cyber truckthat was promised so many years ago.
But there definitely is still room forimprovement, that is for sure, and
it's still reasonable to say that Teslawill have the capability to rise to meet
even the highest expectations for the Cyberchuck, but it's going to take some time
and a lot of work along theway. And this is a company that

(13:20):
is no stranger to doing hard things, so the future remains bright.