Welcome back everyone, I'm Jordan Geisigee and this is The Limiting Factor. In Tesla's Q2 2024 earnings call, they indicated that they may have finally solved the dry electrode coating process for the cathode of their 4680 battery cells. Now that that information is public, Joe Techmyer has released an image that shows a damaged cathode roller for Tesla's dry coating process. This photo may provide some clues as to what's been causing delays for Tesla in the past three years since they first mentioned issues with the cathode coating process. So today I'll walk you through all the battery related comments on the earnings call as well as do some analysis on the photo of the cathode roller.
Before we begin, a special thanks to my Patreon supporters, YouTube members and Twitter subscribers as well as Rebellionair.com. They specialize in helping investors manage concentrated positions. Rebellionair can help with covered calls, risk management and creating a money master plan from your financial first principles. The first comment about the 4680 was from Lars Moravie who said, quote, 4680 production ramped strongly in Q2 delivering 51% more sales than Q1 while reducing cogs significantly. We currently produce more than 1400 Cybertrucks of 4680 cells a week. We'll continue to ramp upward as we drive costs down further toward the cost parity target we set for the end of the year. End quote.
The key takeaway here is that Tesla's 4680 cells are now at a run rate of about 9 gigawatt hours per year, which is based on a pack size of 123 kilowatt hours of usable energy capacity in each Cybertruck. But that 9 gigawatt hour figure of course comes with some caveats. First, we don't know how many production lines are involved in making those battery cells, which could have a big impact on unit cost. Second, all the information we have so far indicates that all of the cathode material for those battery cells comes from external suppliers, which means a big cost premium.
Despite those costs, Tesla expects their in-house 4680 cells to reach cost parity with cells from external suppliers by the end of the year. That expectation appears to be independent of progress with the dry-coated cathode. Why do I say that? First, because although Tesla's paying a premium for wet-coated cathode material sourced from external suppliers, the rest of the cell is made in-house, which means that for most of the battery cell, around two-thirds or so, they're saving on production and logistics costs and profit margins paid to third-party suppliers.
Second, because Lars' next comment was, quote, we've built our first validation Cybertruck with a dry cathode process made on mass production equipment, which is a huge technical milestone and we're super proud of that. We're on track for production launch with the dry cathode in Q4, and this will enable self-cost to be significantly below available alternatives, which was the original goal of the 4680 program. End quote. As a side note, if you're curious about the validation Cybertruck Lars is talking about, we actually have a photo of it, which is on screen.
其次,因为 Lars 接下来的评论是:“我们已经用大规模生产设备制造了首辆使用干电极工艺的验证版 Cybertruck,这是一个巨大的技术里程碑,我们对此非常自豪。我们在第四季度使用干电极工艺进行生产启动的计划进展顺利,这将使我们的成本显著低于现有的替代方案,这也是 4680 计划的初衷。” 顺便提一下,如果你对 Lars 提到的验证版 Cybertruck 感兴趣,我们实际上有它的照片,正在屏幕上显示。
As for cost, if the production launch of the 4680 is in Q4, it's unlikely those battery cells will hit high production volumes in that quarter, and because low volumes mean high costs, I don't think that the 4680 cells using a dry coating process for both electrodes will contribute to cost savings in the 4680 by the end of the year. In the longer term, yes, but not in the same quarter production starts, which reinforces my view that Tesla should be on track to hit their cost targets even without the dry cathode 4680 cells by the end of the year. Either way, the main headline here is that nearly four years after battery day, we're finally seeing dry cathode 4680 cells in the final stages of validation in a production vehicle.
On that note, let's take a closer look at Lars' comment about Cybertruck validation and mass production equipment. In the past, Tesla was able to produce dry-coated cathode on their pilot scale equipment at their Kato Road facility. Then issues started arising when they tried to move to larger commercial scale equipment at Austin. Now that they're able to produce fully validated cells on that equipment, the next step is to test those cells in a battery pack and vehicle to ensure that they continue to perform as expected. That's because assembling the cells into the pack can damage the cells, and because unexpected issues can arise in real-world usage that don't show up in the lab. Furthermore, besides internal validation, Tesla also likely needs test data and specs for EPA or other regulatory documentation before the pack goes into mass production.
I'm assuming the validation pack that's being tested in the Cybertruck would provide that. If you know something about pack validation, let us know in the comments below. As a side note, this new Cybertruck battery pack could have lower, higher, or similar energy capacity than the existing Cybertruck battery pack. My bet would be on similar or lower energy capacity than the existing Cybertruck battery pack. That's because I expect Tesla will try to de-risk the production ramp of the dry cathode 4680.
That means swapping out the wet-coated cathode for dry and avoiding any other major chemistry changes like increased silicon content in the anode. A battery pack with the same or lower energy capacity also works on a product level because if the energy density of the new, dry cathode battery packs are the same, then Tesla can use the packs interchangeably with the current battery packs. And if they decide to make a lower energy capacity battery pack with fewer cells, they could start offering a shorter range version of the Cybertruck. With that said, the demand for the dual and trimotor versions of the Cybertruck seems to be strong, so I'd be surprised if they offer a shorter range version by late this year or early next year.
That means for me, a battery pack with the same or similar energy density is the most likely option. If Tesla wanted to introduce a battery pack with higher energy capacity, it would require risky chemistry and design changes to increase the energy density of the 4680 cell, and or it would require an upgraded pack design, which would still be a stretch but more likely. These changes or upgrades would need to be significant enough to justify a new trim level. Just a guess, but I would expect a Cybertruck with a new, longer range battery pack would need to offer at least 10-15% more range than the current Cybertruck for people to pay a premium for the vehicle.
That could happen, and if it does, I'd be blown away, but I'm tempering my expectations. That's because the most important goal for Tesla to achieve with the new Cybertruck battery pack is increased production volumes to drive down costs. And so I expect that's what Tesla's focus will be. Let's move on to the last comment from Tesla on the 4680, and then close things out by doing some analysis on the photo of the cathode roller. The stock analyst Colin Rush asked, quote, on rollout of the 4680 process technology and the roll-to-roll process, there's some news around your equipment suppliers. Can you talk about how far along you were and potentially qualifying an incremental supplier around some of those critical process technology steps? End quote.
Lars responded, quote, you're probably referring to the lawsuit that we have with one of our suppliers. Look, I don't think this is going to affect our ability to roll out 4680. We have a very strong IP position in the technology, and the majority of the equipment that we use is in-house design, and some of it is in-house build. And so we can take our IP stack and have someone else build it if we need to. So that's not really a concern right now. End quote. In my view, and I could be wrong, there appeared to be some crossed wires here between Colin Rush and Lars.
Lars 回应说:“你可能指的是我们与某个供应商之间的诉讼。看,我认为这不会影响我们推出 4680 的能力。我们在这项技术上拥有很强的知识产权地位,大部分设备都是内部设计的,有些甚至是内部制造的。因此,我们可以利用我们的知识产权堆栈,必要时找其他人来制造。所以这目前并不是什么值得担心的问题。” 在我看来,尽管我可能有误解,Colin Rush 和 Lars 之间似乎存在一些沟通不畅的问题。
I think Colin was asking about a report out of Korea, where a company called PNT claimed that Tesla needed a supplier that could deliver larger volumes of production equipment to expand 4680 production. And PNT would be that supplier. That's because Tesla's current supplier, Sauer S.S.G. of Germany, couldn't provide enough equipment. In response, Lars brought up a lawsuit Tesla recently filed against Matthews International for Trade Secret Theft. I agree with Lars here, which is that lawsuit won't likely be a showstopper for expanding 4680 production.
If you'd like to know why, watch my video on Tesla and patents. Either way, it didn't appear to me that Lars addressed Colin's question about qualifying incremental machine supply. Lars Comet did, however, at least explain how Tesla can so easily switch suppliers to get the equipment they need. Whether that be PNT of Korea or Sauer S.S.G. of Germany, they own most of the IP rights needed to produce that equipment. Moving along, before we do analysis of the damaged cathode roller, let's do a quick refresher on what we've heard from Tesla and other sources about the challenges of dry-coding the cathode.
The first time we heard about cathode coating issues was from Tesla in 2021, where Elon said that the cathode rollers were denting. The second time was of course in this earnings call, where they indicated that the cathode coating now appears to be solved and they're preparing to scale it. That is, Tesla's been tight-lipped on the topic. Outside of Tesla, in the past two months, there were three reports that implicitly or explicitly indicated that Tesla had solved the dry-coding for the cathode. The first was the report on PNT, which said that Tesla needed a supplier that could provide higher volumes of equipment and that PNT was preparing to increase shipments to Tesla. That of course suggested that Tesla is preparing to scale their 4680 production plans faster than in the past, which hinted that Tesla had solved the dry-coding challenges.
That report also said that a different strategy was required for the cathode and anode. Reading between the lines, that suggested that Tesla and their suppliers knew what was required to produce both the cathode and anode. The second report was from the information, which said that Tesla is preparing to validate its engineering approach for high-volume manufacturing of the 4680. That involved finally implementing the dry-coded cathode and scaling up a fix to an issue where the jelly roll or roll of electrode material would collapse into the core of the cell. The third report from late post out of China was the most useful. The article stated that the dry-coded cathode machines kept breaking because the cathode material is harder than the anode material. Each time that happened, there was 45 days of downtime.
The simple solution was to replace the equipment, but that required capital out way so Tesla was trying workarounds. However, they finally decided to upgrade the equipment and source it from new suppliers to solve the dry-coding problem for the cathode. The article suggested that Tesla was looking to source equipment from companies in Japan. That conflicts with PNT's claim about being the new supplier. With that said, it's possible and even likely that several suppliers could be involved in manufacturing Tesla's dry-electrode-coding equipment. With all that in mind, in terms of the technical challenges with the dry-coded cathode, Tesla's advice from earnings calls and external reports only really told us two things. First, the cathode rollers were being dented by the cathode material, and second, that Tesla was trying workarounds, but those workarounds didn't work so they decided to invest in new equipment.
That finally brings us to this image of the damaged cathode roller, which may provide us with some more detailed hints as to what was occurring. First, what do I mean by cathode roller? On screen is a zoomed out image of one of Tesla's cathode rollers. Again, thanks to Joe Tegmeyer. My understanding is that for Tesla's dry-coding process, several sets of rollers are used. The first set of rollers, which Tesla's patents call a roll mill, are used to compress the dough-like dry-electrode material into a freestanding film. Then, there's a second set of calendaring rollers to compress the material to the correct porosity and energy density. I'd actually consider the roll mill a type of calendaring as well, but Tesla may have just called it a roll mill to help differentiate it from the calendaring rollers.
For the image of the damaged cathode roller, I suspect that the roller we're looking at here is the roller for the roll mill. That's because the roll mill would have to rapidly squeeze and evenly distribute large volumes of material to form the freestanding film, which means extreme stress that could dent the rollers or cause the delamination seen here. That's as opposed to calendaring, where the material is already fairly uniform, so the compression stresses wouldn't be as great. Next, let's take a look at the material science and engineering of the roller itself. For this part of the video, I'd like to thank Martin Goddard-Barm, who specializes in electrode coating at Yagenberg Converting Solutions, and Francisco and Carnesau of Northfold, who provided a number of insights on what we could be seeing in the image. Typically, calendaring rollers are a drum rather than solid all the way through. The drum is made of thermally hardened stainless steel. The thermal hardening is necessary to deal with the huge pressures involved in compressing the electrode material. But thermally hardened stainless steel is then chrome plated.
The chrome plating provides a smooth and even finish on the roller surface, which of course, in turn, creates a similar finish on the active electrode material that it's used to compress. That smooth and even finish is important, because even tiny variations of about 1-2 microns in the active electrode material can reduce battery life and have big impacts on energy density. For reference, one micron is about 1-5th the diameter of a red blood cell. When we look at the image of Tesla's cathode roller, we can see the typical chrome finish and the stainless steel drum underneath. Notably, the drum doesn't have the typical glossy metallic sheen of stainless steel. It has more of a whitish matte finish that looks almost like a ceramic. I spoke with Martin about this, and he suggested that the whitish matte finish may be because the stainless steel went through an extra hardening step, nitriding, where the metal is infused with nitrogen.
Interestingly, the nitriding may have reduced the adhesion of the chrome plating to the stainless steel drum, which may have contributed to the delamination of the chrome plating. That is, my speculation is that Tesla attempted to solve the denting issue by hardening up the drum with nitriding, which may have created a new issue in the form of delamination. As Francisco points out, the delamination may have also had a cascade effect, where the delaminated chrome gouged the rollers and or caused the rollers to collide. That's because these rollers are likely producing electrode film at over 100 meters per minute, so any foreign material that gets bound in or on the roller would likely have a catastrophic impact on the rollers in a matter of seconds. As I note, delamination is always a risk with calendaring rollers due to the forces involved, but the risk of delamination, like the denting issue, is likely higher with Tesla's dry electrode coating process because they're trying to rapidly compress and evenly distribute huge volumes of dry material. The question is, if Tesla's now solved the denting and delamination issues with new production equipment, how was that solved? That's the billion dollar question, and as Martin points out, it's probably the secret sauce of whichever companies solved the dry cathode coating problem.
In summary, Tesla's 4680 production is ramping aggressively, and now at a run rate of 9 gigawatt hours per year, and that's with wet coated cathode material from external suppliers. Now, after four years of development, Tesla appears poised to roll out 4680 cells that are fully produced in-house with dry electrodes. That'll open the door to higher production volumes, faster scaling, and significantly reduce the production cost of their battery cells and packs. In the meantime, due to the fact that Tesla's still dependent on wet coated cathode material until at least the end of this year, I expect Tesla will only increase the production rate of the 4680 lines just enough to keep ahead of the Cybertruck ramp. As a final note, the 4680 cell I received from Monroe & Associates is currently undergoing testing at UC San Diego, and I'll share those results as soon as they're available. If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting the channel by using the links in the description. Also consider following me on X. I often use X as a testbed for sharing ideas, and X subscribers like my Patreon supporters generally get access to my videos a week early. On that note, a special thanks to my YouTube members, X subscribers, and all the other patrons listed in the credits. I appreciate all of your support, and thanks for tuning in.