Is Elon Musk’s 4680 Cell DOA?

Craig: elon musk is coming out with a new battery, the four six eight o, and the world's biggest battery maker says it's gonna fail.

Jon: yeah. this is crazy. so it's already out, i think. i think it's already in the cybertruck, and he's claiming it that the four six eighty claimed to have four times greater energy capacity than previous designs. and they've reached a production milestone of a hundred million units. but, robin zhang has publicly criticized elon musk's commitment to the four six eighty cylindrical cell technology, saying it'll never be successful. and they engage in a substantial discussion apparently, about battery technology with which apparently left musk momentarily speechless. and then just saying bluntly stated he doesn't know how to produce a battery. so, we've got this guy who's in ev technology, who's got, i don't know how many different vehicles with batteries in it, but yet doesn't understand battery technology. what do you think, craig?

Craig: well, i think, elon musk is not a scientist. i think elon musk is a genius marketer. he knows how to, get incentives from the government, which is, you know, what has caused, tesla to do so well. he gets so much, several thousand dollars from the government every time a car sells. mhmm.

Jon: and, and

Craig: he knows how to make those rebates and stuff. i think it it's possible. i don't know enough about this technology, but we're getting into it here. he probably didn't know anything about auto manufacturing when he started. so this is not a surprise saying, like, well, if you haven't, you know, built batteries for a long period of time, you probably don't know anything about building batteries. but that doesn't mean the people who actually physically built the battery and did the work, because he's not sitting at his desk designing it. he's not actually tony stark designing the arc reactor. he's he's got a whole team of, scientists doing all this stuff. so yeah. i would think that most of them knew what they're doing. what is the key issue, that they're saying, because i didn't

Jon: yeah.

Craig: quite get that, is the problem with these batteries. why won't, is it not gonna last longer than two years?

Jon: there's a few things. so, there's the dry electrode manufacturing issues. so the dry coating process for electrode, which is meant to reduce cost and improve efficiency, has proven difficult to scale up. so there's problems with achieving the precision in the coating thickness with deviations needing to be less than point one millimeters, which is crazy. there's structural integrity concerns. so there are reports of a i don't know what this means. a thorny technical problem causing batteries to collapse on themselves during use. so the winding process for creating the cells can cause misalignment between the electrode layers of different thickness. and that all comes down to production scaling difficulty. so, tesla has struggled to manufacture the cells at the scale and speed originally projected, and current production volumes are reportedly only enough for about a thousand cybertrucks per week, which is far below initial target. don't even get me started on this cyber truck that looks like a playstation two vehicle. but then there's cost reduction challenges. again, there's performance issues. so there's unspecified reports of charging performance problems. so, there's a there's quite a few challenges. tesla's actively working to overcome them. but, again, tesla has set ambitious deadlines, and musk has always set ambitious deadlines and goals. right?

Craig: well, he's always. he's trying to go to mars. he's trying to do and i think it's one of those things. even i suggest this to people all the time because you gotta set your goals farther than what you think you can achieve.

Jon: it

Craig: it always is the way. like, you know, for example, just a a small thing. i wanna go to the gym five days a week. okay. but if you only make it three days a week, then you're doing what the average person is doing, and you're doing alright. not the average person, but, you know, the average gym goer. so that's why i say you shoot for the stars, and if you hit the moon, then you're, like, doing okay. like, this is great. you don't beat yourself up for not making unrealistic goals. just look at because you made those realistic unrealistic goals and you went for it, how much farther along you are as a result. and elon musk is a big believer in all that. just look at all the crazy stuff he's done. so, you know, i take it back a little bit. elon musk gigafactories have been creating those batteries for a long time in home batteries and that kind of stuff for their, is it the i don't know what they call it. the wall of battery, for your home where it's, can store from solar powerwall? the power is it called the powerwall? it could be. it could be. i keep thinking tesla wall, but in fact, it's not that. so it's just a question of, you know, are they this new form factor that fits in the car? before, you know, they were all separate, little triple a, double, double a style batteries. now they're creating these new cells. it's gonna be a challenge anytime there's new things. you know? how many times with spacex as the rocket not quite you know, it's blown up or not landed, didn't even this last one, they dumped it in the water because it didn't quite work properly.

Jon: okay. yeah. i don't know. i, like, i'm i was trying to find a picture of what the forty six e d looks like internally. i think it might still be a round cell double a battery.

Craig: yeah. i'm not sure. the pictures we have in the articles are

Jon: i'll i'll send it to you. but yeah. it's, which of the silicon startups are going to be the next ten billion oh, sorry. so yeah. so i for me, i'm struggling to understand how this is the technology that we're using. if you scroll down, you'll see the it's broken down. but why are we using double a cell technology? why are we like like, why are we still at this point? why are we not further along? scroll down a little bit further. it'll show you.

Craig: oh, i'm not sure when you say the breakdown, what this keep

Jon: going. keep going. keep going. keep going. there. nope. okay.

Craig: got it.

Jon: so it's still, the components within the battery, it's still cylindrical. yeah. so

Craig: yeah. that's, i'm surprised. i don't know. i guess my guess is because the factories and all the molds and everything are designed to build back up, batteries at this level. yeah. at some point, they'll change the form factor, but i also think that it's easy to mass produce that. and if a handful die, then the whole thing keeps going, so it's not a big deal. if you make bigger batteries and they start, dying, you're gonna have problems. so i don't know, how they put it all together and make the wall of things because they look like there's these huge batteries when it's just a bunch of little ones. so yep. it's interesting to see that i whether, the battery manufacturers will be right or tesla will be right. a lot of people are naysayers when people get in the industry. i thought the apple iphone wasn't gonna do well because, you know, breaking into the phone business is not easy. but, you know, low and bold, here we are. right? then yeah. so it's easy to on the outside looking in and say, oh, we know you don't know how to make batteries. we know how to make batteries. you're doing it wrong. well, you know, when sometimes you're breaking the mold, maybe he is doing it wrong just to make a better battery long long term. are, spacex, they have teams and teams of people building those mobile nuclear solutions, and they're iterating, iterating, iterating. right? they

Jon: yeah.

Craig: you know, build them so fast that it's version after version after version to make them better, lighter, smaller. yeah. maybe this one isn't great, but maybe the next version will be. and so i don't know. you know? i honestly don't know, and we won't know until, you know, it's been out for a lot longer.

Jon: yeah. and i think the next iteration is gonna be moving to a solid state battery. right?

Craig: that's the idea. hear,

Jon: we hear it. we've talked about it.

Craig: the military is using graphene batteries now, so we'll be interesting to see where that goes. we'll be seeing i love where this is going because, you know, we need new battery technology, and we're talking about it all the time. but curious to see where this goes. the other thing i just wanted to point out for a correction for you, it looks more like, the warthog from, halo. so i would say it's more of an xbox, looking arbors than a playstation

Jon: yeah.

Craig: car. anyway okay. here's the question for the listeners. will the four six eight o battery cell be a breakthrough that finally puts tesla on the fast track to domination, or will it be a costly detour? we wanna hear your thoughts. share your predictions and insights. you know? do you bet against elon musk or not? and, again, with him being distracted, being involved in politics, and having different things, he might not have time to focus on these things. so, you know, whether your team tesla are rooting for the underdogs, join the conversation and let us know what you think.

Jon: yeah. one, one last thing about elon. i don't know if you know this, but, he's he's losing a lot of, users on x, and they're going to blue sky. so, apparently, there's there's a huge problem with that too, people leaving x and going to blue sky.

Craig: yeah. but this just reminds me of everybody leaving to go to threads and you know? yeah. does it you know, the media left and came back, and then the media's leaving again, and they'll come back. i also think that at least from the media point of view, they're coming to grips with it's not necessarily a good idea to eliminate half your audience, that they have to start taking a more balanced approach and having more sides, shown on these things so that because that's what's been happening. they've been losing ratings like crazy because they pick a side and then you know? i never understood this. again, michael jordan said this first, and republicans buy shoes too. why would i? yeah. you know? so, hopefully, people are starting to maybe take their politics back in a little bit because politics and business don't usually play well together, and it's better idea to keep some of that stuff to yourself.

Jon: for sure.

Craig: yeah. would you try to run a business?