Tesla Is Fooling Us With Its 4680 Battery Cells Scam?
– Should you know what’s inside those 4680 battery cells Tesla is putting inside its cars? Tesla doesn’t think so, and that’s a problem.
– Lying Panasonic should not be trusted
https://www.crainsdetroit.com/manufacturing/michigans-checkered-history-ev-battery-investment
Tesla and Elon Musk have been singing the praises of 4680 battery cells for almost two years. The world of electric cars is all atwitter — you should pardon the expression — about this wondrous new battery technology. But what exactly is the story here? In a blog post on Medium, Will Lockett asks some probing questions and comes up with some disturbing answers.
“In September 2020, Musk revealed to the market Tesla’s 4680 battery and, at face value, it looked like it would revolutionize the EV world. It promised to slash the cost per kWh by 56%, produce more power than its predecessor, come in a structural pack (increasing the crash safety of the car), be more resilient to supply chain issues, be better for the environment, and even charge quicker. With such a battery, Tesla could finally offer their $25,000 EV, paving the way for the Cybertruck and second-generation Roadster to become a reality. Two years down the road, Tesla is only just starting to put 4680 packs into its cars, but recent teardowns have shown that something fishy is going on, as it seems Tesla might be pulling the wool over our eyes.”
Lockett says the 4680 has several unique and groundbreaking features. Its larger size — 46 mm in diameter by 80 mm long — allows each battery pack to use fewer individual cells, each with a higher capacity than a traditional 2170 cell. That makes the production and assembly costs of the battery pack lower. Instead of being bolted in the way they are in a traditional battery pack, they are set in a resin brick, which allows the pack to become a structural member of the car. This also lowers manufacturing costs.
The 4680 battery also reportedly had some significant internal changes. Rather than a graphite anode, it was supposed to use a silicon anode. That should make the 4680 far more energy dense and able to charge and discharge at much faster rates. Rather than using the typical NMC 811 (80% nickel, 10% manganese, and 10% cobalt) cathode, the 4680 was supposed to use a cobalt-free, high-manganese, low-nickel cathode. The cathode and anode are also said to be dry coated, which speeds up production and further reduces costs.
Finally, Lockett writes, rather than having a small tab connecting the anode and cathode to the positive and negative terminals of the battery, the 4680 has a strip of metal on each end of the rolled up battery that is folded down after rolling to make a flat plate-like metal surface that connects to the terminals. This makes manufacturing cheaper by having fewer assembly steps and reduces the power bottleneck in the terminals, making ultra-fast charging and high-power outputs possible.
Houston, we have a problem. Lockett points out that independent analysts like Sandy Munro have found that the 4680 battery cells being used today in some Tesla cars contain almost none of the groundbreaking features Musk hyped up back in 2020. They are 46 mm in diameter and 80 mm long and they are tabless. “But everything else is missing,” Lockett says. Here’s more:
“These teardowns showed that the anode material is graphite and the cathode material is NMC 811, meaning its internal chemistry is identical to its older 2170 cell. This means no superior charging speeds or higher energy density. It also means that this cell is still making use of environmentally damaging and humanitarian-troubling cobalt mining and remains vulnerable to nickel price rises. To make matters worse, the cell walls are three times thicker than a 2170 cell, further driving down energy density.
“It is very hard to identify whether the electrode is dry coated or not, as both methods of coating do the same job, and the results look identical. But this method is the thing causing Tesla to struggle to ramp up production because it is a bottleneck. Each time they try to produce more cells, the quality of the dry coating drops, and only a few cells pass quality control, causing the cost per cell to rise dramatically. But if they can nail this tech, the cost per cell will plummet massively. It stands to reason that if the current 4680 cells were dry coated, Tesla would be making a big deal of it. So, in all likelihood, the current 4680 cells probably aren’t dry coated.
“Far from being a groundbreaking, industry-shaking battery, it seems the present 4680 is just a bulky version of the batteries we already have.”
There Are 4680 Cost Advantages
Even without all the benefits promised, the 4680 battery cells do lower costs of manufacturing, Lockett says. “A 4680 pack for a Model Y costs Tesla $7,400, which is 33% cheaper than the equivalent 2170 pack. Yet, this is still a way off the target of 56% cheaper and without any upgrades in terms of energy density, range, performance, or charge speeds.” Then he gets to the meat of his argument.
“I, along with many other people, have thought that, at the very least, the current 4680 is more than just a larger cell. Tesla has been very sneaky by not being open about the nature of these 4680 cells. It almost feels like their silence is a tactic to make people think they are buying a car with a next-gen battery in it. When in reality, they aren’t.
“But should we really be annoyed at Tesla for this? After all, things like silicon anodes, dry-coated electrodes, and cobalt-free cathodes are all on the bleeding edge of technology. Can we really expect Tesla to pack all of this into a battery and then produce it on a large scale at dirt cheap prices?
“No, we shouldn’t. It makes sense for Musk to incrementally introduce these aspects into the battery production line. Start with the easy parts like the form factor, tabless design, and structural battery pack. Then start introducing the unique internal chemistry and finally start dry-coating. This way, each of these aspects’ production methods can be developed and refined before moving on to the next. Therefore, you create a robust, reliable, and efficient production line as quickly as possible.
“What isn’t okay is the silence over what is actually happening with the 4680 development and production. The fact that these teardowns have unveiled this rather than Tesla themselves announcing how 4680 development and production is going is shameful. It leads to many thinking they are buying something that they aren’t. Moreover, this adds to the growing notion that Tesla is, behind the scenes, rather a shady and morally ambiguous company.”
Ouch! A shady and morally ambiguous company? That is a powerful indictment. But wait. There’s more.
“So yes, something fishy is happening at Tesla, and the incredible 4680 battery is still in production hell. I would be looking to get my act together if I were Musk. It isn’t just Tesla in the EV game anymore. Even if Tesla finally gets around to making a 4680 with all the promised specs, companies like CATL, ONE, and Quantumscape are all producing open-market batteries that have the potential to not only match but blow the 4680 out of the water. Any more delays and Tesla will start looking antiquated.
“The rose tinted glasses are also starting to slip. The public is becoming more aware of how Tesla treats its workforce, how they approach the right to repair, and now how questionable their PR is. If Tesla continues this way, it won’t be the golden boy of the EV world for much longer.”
The Takeaway
I am not a battery scientist nor have I ever played one on TV. But when the 4680 news first surfaced, nobody knew much about what was inside and Tesla was pretty quiet about technical details. Tesla has shut down its media relations office and does not respond to any questions from the press. The only news we get about the company comes from Elon’s tweets, quarterly conference calls for shareholders, and special events like AI Day.
It’s a situation that invites commentators like Will Lockett to see skulduggery and malfeasance everywhere. It’s one of those unforced errors that seems to result from Elon Musk’s dictatorial leadership style.
Are people entitled to know specifics about the batteries that power their electric cars? That doesn’t seem unreasonable. Tesla does itself no favors by its obstinacy. Transparency isn’t hard. In fact, it’s smart business. Elon’s insistence on lowering a cone of silence around his business interests creates self-inflicted wounds. He should know better.
Featured image courtesy of Panasonic.
Former Tesla Engineer Absolutely Destroys Elon Musk
Bluntness, not kindness.
Insider’s Perspective
On Thursday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a surprising new claim: that the long anticipated Cybertruck will be able to “serve briefly as a boat so it can cross rivers, lakes and even seas that aren’t too choppy.”
Whether Musk was joking or not, former Tesla engineer Matt Brown had a few choice words about Musk’s decidedly outrageous statement.
“Having worked at Tesla, I can say with some confidence that the design engineers are hearing about this requirement for the first time here,” said Matt in a tweet.
Brown, who goes by “Superfast Matt” online, has credentials in the automotive space. In addition to Tesla, he’s worked at Apple and NASCAR, in addition to occasionally writing for Jalopnik and running a YouTube channel.
When asked if it would be possible for the Cybertruck to actually cross a lake, Brown was pretty blunt: “Possible, but it will almost certainly add cost and limit usability in other areas.”
Given the limited practicality of amphibious consumer cars in the past, that sounds about par for the course.
Laying Down the Law
Musk putting his engineers on the spot wouldn’t be surprising, given his allegedly grueling management style.
In July, Musk made a huge deal about employee attendance, sending out a tyrannical email demanding everyone work a minimum of 40 hours per week in person — or else. But reporting from earlier this month found that Tesla’s workplaces weren’t equipped to accommodate all the returning workers, lacking enough parking spaces and even desks for all the employees. Morale had apparently dropped so low that one-tenth of workers were absent on any given day.
This also is far from the first time Tesla engineers have gone behind Musk’s back to publicly decry their CEO. Notably, some nineteen Tesla engineers went public last year claiming that Musk had misled the public on Autopilot’s safety.
So is Musk having his engineers scramble to get this thing to double as a boat? If he is, it might be worth to sort out those massive, potentially leaky, panel gaps first.
More on Elon Musk: Elon Musk Cropped The Credit Out of Our Cartoon and Tweeted It Out
THE LITHIUM BATTERY POLITICAL PROFITEERING LIES
Fuel Cell electric cars solve all of the problems of lithium ion electric cars but DNC billionaires own the mines for lithium ion batteries, so they sabotage and blockade fuel cell electric cars. As warned, there is not enough lithium ion to solve America’s electric car problem and the whole lithium ion electric car industry has crashed as everyone realizes that what they were warned about lithium ion is true.
Check back; these files are updated daily by investigators. See the evidence back-up behind the topics at: ( http://www.federal-report.com ) ( https://focus-book.com ) ( http://www.tesla-motors-news.com ) ( http://the-elon-musk-problem.com ) ( http://the-san-francisco-hammer.com ) ( https://san-francisco-news.com ) ( https://sanfrancisco-news.org ) ( https://case-xyz2020a.com ) and a vast number of other self-propagating evidence mirrors around the globe…
Corrupt political families conspire to give government funds, contracts, tax waivers, buildings, stock market profits and other insider perks to themselves and their friends. They also conspire to blockade, harm, sabotage and black-list those who compete with them and their friends. These corrupt politicians are never prosecuted for their crimes, and can laugh in the face of those who point out their crimes, because they control the prosecution system. Their Quid Pro Quo criminal corruption is the single largest cause of the taxpayer hatred of Congress.
What Went Wrong With The Electric Car Industry?
Only men seem to start car companies. Most psychologists say that this is because men see cars as dick insecurity emblems.
Elon Musk is known to be a wildly insecure narcissist who feels that he must get every woman, that he can find, pregnant in order to prove his manhood to his abusive father, who got his sister pregnant.
Musk embodies the ultimate expression of ‘car-as-dick’ thinking because Musk was not only molded by his purse-swinging, kept-woman, mother, abusive father and crooked brother but also by the Silicon Valley frat boy rape-culture.
Silicon Valley is, of course, the Eden of modern misogyny and tech-bro douche-baggery.
Musk dragged all of the biggest assholes from Silicon Valley, The DNC and Goldman Sachs into his Tech Cartel. Together they created a temporary monopoly in the electric car industry by exchanging stock market payola with Senators and White House staff who, in exchange, locked off the electric car and space industries just for Musk.
But that scheme was not sustainable. It was amazingly crooked and lucrative but, it could not last. It was Big Tech’s Roman Empire and it was doomed to fail spectacularly.
Musk counted on Obama and Biden to stick with his original quid-pro-quo deal to trade government cash for election rigging via his boyfriends at Google and Facebook. Tesla was the money conduit for a bunch of political scammery.
Biden and his cheerleader actress front girl: Jennifer Granholm, bounced into office with a Wizard of Oz promise to give everybody electric cars. They were so wrong about the pitfalls of their plan and they hired so many idiot sex freaks and unicorn fart unaware fools that their scheme blew up…instantly and literally.
Elon Musk and the Senators he owns: Pelosi, Harris and Feinstein, will lie, until their dying day about these batteries that they all own stock in! –
— Lithium ion batteries: Cause wars, rape and genocide in the Congo, Afghanistan and Bolivia from the corrupt mining deals involved with mining lithium and cobalt; are insider trading-owned by ex-CIA boss Woolsey and DOE Boss Chu; excrete chemicals that mutate fetuses when they burn; destroy your brain, lungs and nervous system when they burn; kill the factory workers who make them; cause Panasonic to be one of the most corrupt companies in the world; poison the Earth when disposed of; can’t be extinguished by firemen; poison firemen when they burn; are based on criminally corrupt mining schemes like URANIUM ONE; Have over 61 toxic chemicals in them; come from an industry that spends billions on internet shills and trolls used to nay say all other forms of energy; are insider-trading owned by corrupt U.S. Senators who are running a SAFETY COVER-UP about their dangers.
—- Apple products with lithium ion batteries have been exploding and setting people on fire; over time the chemical dendrites inside each battery grow worse and increase the chances of explosion as they age
– LITHIUM ION BATTERIES BECOME MORE AND MORE LIKELY TO EXPLODE AS TIME GOES ON AND AS THEY AGE; “Bad Guys” have figured out how to make them explode remotely; have their dangers hidden by CNN and MSM because pretty much only the DNC people profit from them; are the heart of Elon Musk’s stock market scam.
—- The Obama Administration promised Silicon Valley oligarchs the market monopoly on lithium ion batteries and the sabotage of fuel cells in exchange for campaign financing and search engine rigging; United States Senators that are supposed to protect us from these deadly products own the stock market assets of them so they protect them and stop the FDA, OSHA, DOT and NHTSA from outlawing them. WRITE YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE AND DEMAND THAT LITHIUM ION BATTERIES BE MADE ILLEGAL TO SELL! NiCAD and Hundreds of other battery chemistries DO NOT have all of these problems but Lithium Ion batteries get a monopoly because of politician insider trading ownerships.
—- A recent fire on U.S. Highway 101 near Mountain View, CA, burned the driver alive and killed him. In Florida two kids died in a Tesla, burned alive, screaming in agony. A man died in agony in a Tesla crash in Malibu that set Malibu Canyon on fire. A young woman, at the start of life, and her boyfriend were burned alive in their crashed Tesla.
—- There are many more deaths and crashes than you have heard about. The deaths and the cover-ups are endless. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and their associates own the stock in Tesla Motors and/or it’s suppliers and mining companies and they cover-up and halt investigations and laws designed to save the public. They, and their crony’s, spend over $1B a year to shill and troll hype about lithium ion batteries and cover-up the dangers. Lithium ion EVs are more prone to battery fires. Experts say that their lithium-ion batteries can fuel hotter fires that release toxic fumes and are more difficult to put out.
—- Lithium ion fires keep reigniting which explains why it takes so long and requires copious amounts of water or foam (it is an electric fire, after all) to smother the flames. Tesla employee Bernard Tse and his team warned Elon Musk about these dangers in 2008 and they got fired and/or warned to “say nothing” by Musk. Three top Tesla engineers died in a plane crash next to Tesla offices in San Carlos after two of them agreed to become whistle-blowers.Elon Musk exists because he bribed DNC politicians and Senators Feinstein, Reid, Boxer, Harris, Clinton and Pelosi to give him free taxpayer cash and government resources from the Dept. of Energy and the Calif treasury.
—- DOE has been covering-up organized crime activities at DOE in which DOE funds are being used as a slush-fund to pay off DNC campaign financiers and to pay for CIA/GPS Fusion-Class attacks on Silicon Valley business competitors of those DNC campaign financiers who DOE staff share stock market holdings with. Elon Musk is a criminal, a mobster, an asshole, a bald fake-hair wearing, plastic surgery-addicted, douchebag, woman-abusing, sex addicted, tax evader.
—- Musk exploits poor people and child slaves in the Congo and Afghanistan to mine his lithium and Cobalt. Musk spends billions per year to hire Russian trolls, fake blogger fan-boys and buy fake news self-aggrandizement articles about himself. Musk thinks he is the ‘Jesus’ of Silicon Valley. Fake News manipulator Google is run by Larry Page and Larry is Musk’s investor and bromance butt buddy.
—- Musk uses massive numbers of shell companies and trust funds to self-deal, evade the law and hide his bribes and stock market insider trading. A huge number of Tesla drivers have been killed; pedestrians and oncoming drivers have also been killed, and Musk covers it up.
—- The DNC and the MSM refuse to allow any articles about Musk’s crimes to be printed because they benefit from Musk’s crimes. Musk has been professionally diagnosed as a ‘psychotic narcissist.’A ‘Silicon Valley Mafia; cartel of frat boy sociopath venture capitalists like Steve Jurvetson, Tim Draper, Eric Schmidt, et al; threaten those who do not support the cult of Tesla or their political candidates.
—- In EVERY blog that you read that mentions ‘Musk’, at least 1/3 of the comments have been placed their by Musk’s paid shills. Musk holds the record for getting sued for fraud by his investors, wives, former partners, employees, suppliers and co-founders.
—- Elon Musk has gone out of his way to hire hundreds of ex-CIA staff and assign them to “dirty tricks teams” to attack his competitors and elected officials who Musk hates. Musk never founded his companies. Musk’s “Starlink” satellites are domestic spy and political manipulation tools – never get your internet from one. Musk stole Tesla in a hostile ownership take-over from Marty the true inventor of the Tesla.
—- The same kind of EMF radiation proven to cause cancer from cell phones exists in massive amounts in a Tesla. Musk can’t fix a car or build a rocket and has almost no mechanical skills. If you pull a report of every VIN# of every Tesla ever built and cross reference that with insurance, repair and lawsuit records you will find that the “per volume” fire, crash, death and defect rate is THE WORST of any car maker in history!
—- Musk is a lying con artist and partners with Goldman Sachs to rig the stock market. Sachs has a dedicated team of 18 men who rig stocks and valuation bumps for Musk. Over 1000 witnesses can prove every one of those claims in any live televised Congressional hearing! Senators Dianne Feinstein, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and their associates own the stock in Tesla Motors and/or it’s suppliers and mining companies.
—- That is why they criminally help cover-up investigations of Tesla! All of this was reported, in writing, to James Comey, Patricia Rich and David Johnson at the FBI. The DNC bosses own the stock in lithium, Solar and EV markets and use kickbacks from those markets (Especially via convoluted campaign finance laundering via Elon Musk) to finance the DNC. The DNC bosses use character assassination as their main political tool against any member of the public who speaks out against their felony stock market scams and PizzaGate-like scandals.
—- The Harvey Weinstein reports by Ronan Farrow show that they have teams of hired goons that they pay to destroy people’s lives. They use Black Cube, Mossad, In-Q-Tel, Stratfor, Gawker Media, Gizmodo Media, Media Matters, David Brock, Sid Blumenthal, NY Times, Google servers, Facebook servers, Podesta Group, Perkins Coie, Covington and Burling and a host of “assassins”.
—- It should be a felony to hire character assassins in the USA. DEMAND A LAW and DEMAND the termination of these attack services. IE: Gawker and Gizmodo Media sets-up the attack stories and, in paid partnership with Google, Google kicks their attack links around the globe, in front of 8 Billion people, forever. Google locks the attack articles of its enemies on the front top search results of Google search results forever, on purpose!
—- That is why Google is being terminated in the largest, most well resourced anti-corruption public service take-down in history! Tesla and Musk are protected by shareholders Harris, Pelosi, Feinstein, Brown and Newsom. Panasonic (indicted for bribery and Musk’s partner) spends billions of dollars annually cover-up lithium battery fires and battery defects.
—- There are hundreds of millions of people in America. The same 120 of them are all involved in operating the same crimes and corruption including: the Sony Pictures corruption; the Afghanistan rare earth mine scandals operated through The Energy Department political slush fund that involves the lithium battery cover-ups (headed by Elon Musk); the Big Tech Brotopia rape, sex trafficking, bribery, exclusionism, racism and misogyny issues they were taught at Stanford University;
—- The Facebook – Meta – Google – Alphabet – Netflix, et al, coordinated news manipulation and domestic spying that they engage in; the hiring of Fusion GPS – Black Cube – Gizmodo/Gawker assassins; the destruction of the housing market by their mass real estate manipulations; patent theft and industrial espionage; and the bribery of almost every politician all the way up to the Oval Office.
—- So, while the categories covered in this investigation may seem diverse. They are connected through an enterprise of criminality and illicit, coordinated operations. We list, by name, the 120 most complicit individuals organizing these crimes, in the evidence documents already submitted to the FBI, FINCEN, DOJ, FTC, SEC, FEC, Congress, InterPol and other authorities. Digital financial tracking of those persons and all of their family members should be assumed to have been under way for some time. Wire-taps and device taps of those persons and all of their family members should be assumed to have been under way for some time.
Elon Musk’s Electric Car Batteries Made By Forced Labor Overseas
Increasing ties have been found between the origin of the batteries needed to power the technology and forced labor in Chinese work camps.
In addition to forced labor, Uyghurs are also subjected to re-education, wherein government-appointed “teachers” attempt to create loyal subjects to the nation and communist regime.
It’s true that doing so will be resisted by Democrats who don’t want to slow the deployment of solar panels and electric cars in the US, and be resisted by free market Republicans, but the evidence is clear and this is becoming a moral and national security imperative.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) June 20, 2022