Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses

[Nine_block]

Quite an outstanding comment, I wonder how you come out with such detail information?

My otherwise source been basically watching Jordan Giesige on The Limiting Factor Youtube channel...

I was wondering if you may have any scepticism about the expected large volume production of the Rivian R2 using 4695 lithium-ion battery cells by opposition of the well established R1 using 2170 cells?

Thinking about Tesla previous attempt of using 4680 for the Model Y...

Honestly with his insight I was wondering if the user was Jordan!

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[henchman24]

Quite an outstanding comment, I wonder how you come out with such detail information?

My otherwise source been basically watching Jordan Giesige on The Limiting Factor Youtube channel...

I was wondering if you may have any scepticism about the expected large volume production of the Rivian R2 using 4695 lithium-ion battery cells by opposition of the well established R1 using 2170 cells?

Thinking about Tesla previous short attempt of using 4680 for the Model Y...

Podcasts, papers, teardown analysis... and simply knowing a lot of people in this field. I used to work in the energy development field and did a lot with grid battery storage, connections get made.

Before I get into it...TLDR... I wouldn't expect Rivian to have issues. Using commodity cells that don't push the boundaries.

I don't think the 4695 cell is going to be a significant hurdle. Making 46 series cells isn't all that much of a hurdle if you're not incorporating that much new tech. The cell the R2 will use is a wet cell with tabless design... and while there are different rumors between NCMA and NMC chemistry for Rivian (LG typically does NCMA), they are all in the roughly 80% nickel range. This will limit the overall capacity to around 27-28ah (hopefully a bit above 28), but it is a known chemistry with known production techniques. So the jelly roll is pretty tried and true, tabless has been figured out, and they aren't doing anything special with the can. It won't be without ramp issues, but most of the issues have been figured out on other 46 series cell lines. And you can buy commodity 4680/4695/46120 cells now that are similar to what R2 will use.

Tesla tried a bunch of new things on the early 4680 cells and some of that is coming through today... and that gen 1 4680 cell taught the industry a lot. Many of the basic parts (tabless, can construction, jelly roll) are very similar to the commodity 46 series cells now.

Today, we are at the spot 2170s were in 2020 (Tesla was behind the format change there too... really staring in 2015, but ramped with the 3 in 2017). The whole industry is starting to spin up 46 series cells. We're probably going to see 46 series cells in power tools by the end of this year. We already see them in portable power stations (mostly of the 46120 variety and rather poor density... 25-30ah).