Tesla Model Y
Some of you may have heard that there is something different about the Tesla Model Y which is being built right now at the brand new Gigafactory in Austin Texas and some of you may already know what the difference really is, electric vehicles. The next major step in technology is currently rolling out on the Tesla assembly line.
Unlike every other company on earth Tesla isn’t reserving its latest and greatest technology for the top-tier luxury and performance cars they’re throwing at everything they’ve got into building mid-level crossover SUVs. It is commendable and it is something that people should be aware of.
Why the Texas-made Model Y is the best electric vehicle ever made a bold claim, we’ll see if we can back it up The number one biggest difference between the Tesla Model Y made at the plant.
Terry batteries are the heart of an electric car, they play a vital role in every major function of the vehicle, from charging speed limits, crash protection, even the way the car handles batteries to how they are implemented. And the Texas-influenced Model Y is the first Tesla vehicle to come equipped with its brand new battery format called the 4680.
It just refers to the shape of the cell. It’s a cylinder with a diameter of 46 millimeters and a length of 80 millimeters. Nothing fancy. There’s the battery that Tesla uses in a California-built model y, the 2170 has the same naming format, only Describes a diameter of 21 millimeters and a length of 70 millimeters.
So the newer the battery is bigger does not mean it is better because in most cases when you make the cell bigger you can also increase the amount of resistance the electrons will have to face as they move positively through the cell Let’s try to go from the negative terminal.
We know that a cylindrical battery is actually a tight roll of material inside a tubular package, so the longer the roll, the longer the path of resistance and the lower the power output of the battery, in the case of the Tesla 4680 cell. Will blow in the face by the way. Conventional battery conventions have five times more volume than the 2170 cell.
As well as producing six times as much power so we can call that reason number one, Texas Model Y batteries hold more power and as time goes on Tool Man Teller will happily remind us that more power is always better.
Tesla Model Y
The short answer is with the internal design of the cell, like with people it matters when it comes to batteries Tesla uses a manufacturing technique they call tablets. In a regular battery design you have one at the positive terminal. There will be a tab on the TAB and the negative terminal and all the energy will flow between those two points of contact inside the T.
The Tesla 4680 cell consists of a network of tiny copper shingles that provide thousands of points for electrons to move through, so imagine an island that has just two bridges connecting it to the mainland versus an island with no connection to the mainland. There are a thousand bridges, the more traffic will flow more quickly.
With a thousand bridges to and from the island, which brings us to reason number two for faster charging, not only is there an opportunity to get more power flowing through these new cells, but now there’s also an opportunity to get more power into the cells. Flows through and is going to come from your Super Charging sessions, which matters for existing stations.
Less energy will be lost or wasted for inefficiency during the charging process and this opens up an opportunity for Tesla to bring in even more output chargers. Which can match the capabilities of the 4680 cells, so the new maximum capacity of the V4 supercharger, whichever is 300 or 325 kWh or perhaps more, will only be able to run at full capacity in vehicles with 4680 cells.
So we have more power and more efficiency at the cell level of the battery, doing the same job as one large cell and five smaller cells and that extends to the full scale of the battery pack because the cells themselves are much larger and These are solid steel casing.
They may actually begin to become a load-bearing support within the structure of the battery pack and even become part of the structure of the vehicle frame. To make an electric car battery pack, you have to load all your cells into one module.
Which if you look at it it’s just a box and it’s mostly made of plastic and then those modules are assembled into a pack which is just one big box that holds them all.
The little boxes and of course have all the extra components to connect the flow of electricity between the modules and dissipate heat and all that sort of stuff, so inside a typical EV battery pack there would be a lot of things beyond the actual.
Cells but inside this new type of battery pack again only texas made model y it has all cells and no filler components, there are no modules inside 4680 battery pack, cells go straight, little heatsink material in the middle But nothing else because we have these big strong cylindrical battery cells.
We sandwich them between big plates of steel, we actually get an incredibly rigid structure made mostly of batteries like imagine you went into your kitchen and started gluing all your soup cans done.
On one baking sheet and then affixed another baking sheet on top, you’ll end up with an incredibly solid item and two ruined baking sheets. Don’t really try, but you my dr if hopefully the battery sandwich structure In fact the center of the entire model is strong enough to be the frame.
So benefit number four of a structural battery pack less wasted or free space inside the pack means more room for active battery material and that means more energy stored inside the potential pack and that means more for your vehicle Ranges such as 20 to 30 percent more real-world ranges in which everything is put together.
Obviously we like it but there are other advantages. Super rigid frame means less flex during a difficult cornering or emergency maneuver and it means more control over the vehicle which also means more force in the event of a collision, you obviously Want a crumple zone.
At a certain point you also want the car to be strong and not let anything get into the cabin area. And you can also see that the cells in the 4680 anatomical pack are concentrated more towards the center of the vehicle, with the existing one at the center of the vehicle all covered in plastic modules.