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Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

reuters.com

131–140 of 172 posts

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#131
post #69

Somewhat off-topic, but maybe someone knows. There's one thing that worries me about EVs: local pollution. So, ICE cars release CO2 + they release local pollutants (NO, CO, etc), particulate matter, that kind of thing. EVs obviously don't directly release CO2 nor do they release those local pollutants. However, EVs are on average much heavier (probably 200-400kgs heavier), which means that they probably need bigger t…

[deleted]

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#132
post #91
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual arrangement of cylindrical cells is staggered: https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/XkV66/s1/tesla-model-y-468...

Why not use two size tiers of cylindrical cells, smaller ones to fill in the gaps? With only one size the empty space ratio is the same.

It definitely isn’t the same. The square packing in the first picture uses pi/4 ~ 79% of the space; the second uses pi/(2*sqrt(3)) ~ 91% of the space.

They don’t bother with smaller secondary batteries because the extra manufacturing cost and operational complexity isn’t worth it for a 5%-10% bump in volumetric energy density.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#133
post #69

Somewhat off-topic, but maybe someone knows. There's one thing that worries me about EVs: local pollution. So, ICE cars release CO2 + they release local pollutants (NO, CO, etc), particulate matter, that kind of thing. EVs obviously don't directly release CO2 nor do they release those local pollutants. However, EVs are on average much heavier (probably 200-400kgs heavier), which means that they probably need bigger t…

I don't have a specific study but regenerative breaking as used in commercial EVs would mean less particulate from breakpads etc. not more.

Good point about break pads, I completely forgot about those.

The thing is, that's another aspect where I'd naively assume tires are a much larger factor. I'm probably wrong, though.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is reasonable and I'm not sure why it was heavily downvoted, tire wear and road wear depends polynomially on the vehicle weight (I remembered it's the cube, I tried Googling but Google has turned completely fucking useless for anything serious) edit: it's the 4th power for road damage (!): https://www.denenapoints.com/relationship-vehicle-weight-roa...

Tire wear you can just directly calculate from the useful lives of tires on a given car. Search around on Tesla owners' forums to see at what mileage people are replacing their tires. Then you just back it out from diameter x width x tread depth. Teslas come out poorly on this because they are a performance-focussed car with large, soft tires. Some other electrics like the BMW i3 have tiny rock-hard tires that practi…

> Teslas come out poorly on this because they are a performance-focussed car with large, soft tires.

Even the Model 3? That's more of an economy car, I'd expect it to have practical tires.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#135
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tire wear you can just directly calculate from the useful lives of tires on a given car. Search around on Tesla owners' forums to see at what mileage people are replacing their tires. Then you just back it out from diameter x width x tread depth. Teslas come out poorly on this because they are a performance-focussed car with large, soft tires. Some other electrics like the BMW i3 have tiny rock-hard tires that practi…

> Teslas come out poorly on this because they are a performance-focussed car with large, soft tires. Even the Model 3? That's more of an economy car, I'd expect it to have practical tires.

It depends on the wheel package.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#136
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right time to buy a new car is when your current car doesn't meet your needs. You got your money's worth. Don't feel bad about buying a new one; unless "your needs" are being as frugal as possible.

Why shouldn't you feel bad about buying a new car? Surely the environmental impact of creating such a large piece of machinery must be very significant? I don't care what people do with their money, but let's try to be frugal with our environment.

I replaced all my lights with LED's. The intention being that while my old lights continue to work, replacing them now will be better for the environment than waiting for them to die.

Without an ability to do a full analysis of all the variables, I made my best guess. I hope it would be the same for a car.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#137
post #69

Somewhat off-topic, but maybe someone knows. There's one thing that worries me about EVs: local pollution. So, ICE cars release CO2 + they release local pollutants (NO, CO, etc), particulate matter, that kind of thing. EVs obviously don't directly release CO2 nor do they release those local pollutants. However, EVs are on average much heavier (probably 200-400kgs heavier), which means that they probably need bigger t…

The question is reasonable and I'm not sure why it was heavily downvoted, tire wear and road wear depends polynomially on the vehicle weight (I remembered it's the cube, I tried Googling but Google has turned completely fucking useless for anything serious) edit: it's the 4th power for road damage (!): https://www.denenapoints.com/relationship-vehicle-weight-roa...

It's downvoted by EV fanboys because EVs must be pushed into the mainstream at all costs. I'm not kidding.

To EV fanboys: issues should be discussed, not hidden away because they're not nice or not solved yet.

I think EVs are a great idea, they're great for the environment and personally, I was hoping they'd also be great for air quality. But it seems the air quality part will not happen for quite a long time, until batteries become much lighter, unfortunately.

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#138
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teslas come out poorly on this because they are a performance-focussed car with large, soft tires. Even the Model 3? That's more of an economy car, I'd expect it to have practical tires.

It depends on the wheel package.

Interesting. So, in practice, people who care about the environment should probably get the base packages, which most likely have firmer tires?

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#139
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but statistically the average HN user with a beat up car won't be a McDonald's employee buying the only car they can afford, but more likely someone working in tech that's aiming for FIRE or whatever they're calling it and saving a ton of money. Highly unlikely the average HNer can't come up with $1000 for an emergency (nota bene: for sure some can't, that why I didn't say "every HNer").

Phew, as long as we're only having to worry about HNers. That's gotta be what, a whole 1% of the driving population? Seriously, why is an HNer filter being applied?

Dunno, I felt like it.

Can't we be lackadaisical anymore? :-p

Re: Panasonic to begin mass producing new 4680 Tesla battery by March 2024

#140
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They currently use some of both NiMh and Li-ion. Toyota is notoriously conservative when choosing technologies. My guess is they still use a lot of NiMH because they have proven long-term reliability, more forgiving characteristics in harsh use, and they already have a lot of existing tooling to support them. If there any single car that has made the general public comfortable with very expensive batteries in their c…

All those things are true when comparing NiMH to NiCd but definitely not compared to lithium batteries. There's not a single metric for which you can't find a superior suitable lithium chemistry. Except for one: $Cost Just Toyota doing Toyota things. Also I would strongly disagree on the Prius comment. A lot of "HV battery fault" cars out there back in the day, refurbing them was a pretty good business for a while. T…

Cost, as you mentioned, is one reason. However they also fare better at extended temperature ranges and under long periods of self discharge. They are, generally speaking, more forgiving of a battery chemistry.

Your quote about rollout of the Prius is exactly my point. That opinion was widespread when the Prius was introduced. The reliability of the Prius since then has changed public opinion greatly.

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