Welcome back everyone, I'm Jordan Gisegi and this is the limiting factor. Today I'm going to walk you through Tesla's Q1 earnings call from a battery perspective. The major topics this time around are the potential market size of grid storage and why within a few years it may eclipse Tesla's auto business. The progress of the 4680 production against what was unveiled at Battery Day and some comments from Tesla on the state of the lithium market.
大家好,欢迎回来,我是乔丹•吉塞吉,这是《极限因素》。今天我将从电池的角度带领大家了解特斯拉的Q1财报电话。这次财报电话的主要话题有两个:网格储能的潜在市场规模,以及为什么在几年内它可能会超过特斯拉的汽车业务。4680生产的进展如何,与 Battery Day 上公布的一致吗?以及特斯拉对锂市场的态度。
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The first question and answer from Tesla's Q1 earnings call that's worth covering was about Tesla's energy business. It was a minor comment but it's a good springboard to talk about Tesla's energy business as well as a few key points from Masterplan Part 3. Let's get into it.
特斯拉Q1收益电话会议的第一个问题和答案值得关注的是特斯拉的能源业务。虽然这只是一个次要的评论,但它是谈论特斯拉能源业务以及Masterplan Part 3的几个关键点的好出发点。让我们深入了解。
The question was, quote, do you still believe Tesla energy will be bigger than auto? End quote. To which Elon responded, quote, yes, I should clarify like bigger than auto from the standpoint of like total gigawatt hours deployed. So it's possible automotive revenue may be higher. But gigawatt hours I think will probably be higher with stationary storage. If you just look at what's needed to transition the world to a sustainable energy economy, there's more stationary energy storage needed than there is mobile energy storage. So we are seeing growth of our stationary storage well in excess of automotive. End quote.
Let's take a closer look at what Elon's saying here because some people might point out that it doesn't appear to align with Tesla's Masterplan Part 3. Masterplan Part 3 shows that more energy storage is needed for vehicles than for grids storage by nearly double, which is the opposite of what Elon said at the earnings call. What's going on here?
让我们仔细看看埃隆在这里说的话,因为有些人可能会指出它似乎与特斯拉的Masterplan Part 3不一致。Masterplan Part 3 显示,车辆所需的能量存储是网格存储的近两倍,这与埃隆在财报电话会议上所说的相反。这是怎么回事?
The first thing I'd say here is that Masterplan Part 3 isn't set in stone. It's just a rough guess at what the transition to sustainable energy could look like. And that'll change as the hundreds of technologies involved in making that happen develop over the next 20 years. One might have in mind multiple potential scenarios.
我想说的第一件事是,Masterplan Part 3并不是铁板一块的计划。它只是一个对可持续能源转型看起来可能会是什么样子的初步猜测。这个计划会随着未来20年内参与它的数百种技术的不断发展而不断变化。我们可能想到了许多潜在的场景。
For example, it might be that he expects electrochemical battery cells to displace some of the thermal batteries or some of the hydrogen storage shown here. Thermal batteries are exactly what they sound like. Batteries that use some form of thermal mechanism for energy storage. Hydrogen storage means producing hydrogen with excess electricity and pumping it underground throughout the year. As a side note, 642 terawatt hours of hydrogen storage sounds massive, but it's not actually comparable to the 46.2 terawatt hours of electrochemical battery storage. That's because the electrochemical batteries will be cycled on a daily basis, whereas the hydrogen storage will accumulate during the spring, summer, and fall and be discharged throughout the winter, which means only one charged discharge cycle per year. That is, for hydrogen 642 terawatt hours means 642 terawatt hours per year, whereas 46.2 terawatt hours of electrochemical storage at 365 days means more like 17,000 terawatt hours. So it's not an apples to apples comparison.
The second thing I'd say about the discrepancy between Elon's comments in the earnings call and Master Plan Part 3 is that it doesn't matter because the underlying message is accurate. Tesla's energy storage business is exploding and that will continue. It's currently at a run rate of 4 gigawatt hours per quarter, which is 16 gigawatt hours per year. Meanwhile, they're in the process of ramping and installing 70 to 80 gigawatt hours per year in the US and China.
关于埃隆在财报电话会议和《Master Plan 3》中的评论存在的不一致,我想说的第二件事是,这不重要,因为其基本信息是准确的。特斯拉的能源储存业务正在蓬勃发展,这种趋势将会持续下去。目前,其每季度的运行速率为4千兆瓦时,即每年16千兆瓦时。同时,他们正在美国和中国逐渐大规模安装70到80千兆瓦时的能源储存系统。
Tesla's as compared to the auto business, which after 15 years is at a cell consumption rate of about 132 gigawatt hours per year and only growing at around 50 per year. That is, within the next 3 to 5 years, Tesla's energy storage business will probably be consuming as many gigawatt hours of battery cells as the vehicle business. Why is the energy storage business able to expand so much more quickly? First, energy storage products are easier to manufacture. They're basically wiring cabinets filled with batteries. That's an oversimplification, but the basic idea is that they don't need motors, climate control, wheels, suspension, comfortable seats, and an entertainment system. Second, building on that, one megapack uses as many batteries as about 50 Tesla vehicles and should have almost the same profitability for each kilowatt hour or megawatt hour sold. Third, energy storage is fully driven by economics rather than customer preference.
There's a lot of energy markets out there where adding battery storage to intermittent storage like wind means big profits. That is, grid operators will take as many megapacks as Tesla can supply until the market is saturated.
Fourth, as this image from RISED at Energy Shows, Tesla is the only fully vertically integrated one-stop shop for battery storage on the market. That means Tesla should be able to build their business more quickly, cheaply, and with less friction than the competition.
His first point was, quote, so on battery day we establish a cost down roadmap through 2026 across five areas of effort. For the cell factory, the Texas 4680 factory is part way through building, commissioning, installing, and operating, and will be 70% lower cap ex per gigawatt hour than a typical cell factory when fully rent, in line with what we described at battery day. And we're continuing to pursue further densification and investment reduction opportunities in future factory buildouts like in Nevada. On cell design, we're in production with not only the first generation tablet cell we unveiled at battery day, but a second more manufacturable version in Texas today. End quote.
First, for context, Tesla's still showing additional operational expenses incurred by 4680 production in their quarterly slide deck. And referencing back to battery day, the longest time frame spoken on battery day to meet cost reduction targets was about three years. That was said alongside a graph that showed cost reduction starting in early 2022 and completing sometime in 2025. Let's call that completion by 2026.
That is, as usual, Elon was optimistic when he said three years to fully realize the cost targets announced on battery day, which would be this year. As per Drew's comments and as illustrated by the graph shown at battery day, it sounds like the actual internal target was for around 2025 to 2026.
However, although the end goal remains the same, it's clear Tesla's getting a late start on the cost reductions because the cells are still creating drag on income and they were supposed to start having a positive impact last year. So is the 2026 day still possible? Let's take a look.
First, as Drew said, they're targeting about 70% lower CAPEX improvement than a typical cell factory when fully ramped. That's in line with the 69% advised at battery day, so the total CAPEX number is still the same.
Second, as Drew also said, Tesla's been putting a lot of work into improving the cell design and cell factory beyond what they originally envisioned at battery day. Cell design and cell factory make up the bulk of the savings at the dollars per kilowatt hour level and the investment per gigawatt hour level.
That means in terms of just these two areas, the groundwork for cost reductions is already there, and the question becomes, can Tesla achieve volume production in the next three years? Just because although Tesla may have already reduced the cost of their new 4680 cell lines, they still have to increase the speed of the cell lines to drive down the cost per kilowatt hour of the cells that are being produced. As we'll see in a moment, Tesla's making slow but steady progress on that front.
Before we cover that, what about other areas of cost improvement like anode material, cathode material, and cell to vehicle integration?
在我们讨论这个之前,其他降低成本的方面,比如阳极材料、阴极材料和电池与车辆的集成怎么样呢?
With regards to the anode material, I don't think they're going to realize a high silicon anode with roughly 20% greater energy density, 5% lower cost per kilowatt hour, and 4% lower capex by 2026. That's because a high silicon anode is something no one in the battery industry has cracked yet at scale, and Tesla's still struggling with just making the battery cells. However, I'm betting they will add at least some silicon and get a good portion of the cost and energy density benefits.
With that said, given that Tesla's over-achieving on the cell design and cell factory, I think they can make up the 2-3% shortfall that under-achieving in silicon might create.
With regards to the cathode material and cell to vehicle integration, let's continue with Drew's comments. Note, on the cathode material side, we have a number of activities underway per the battery day road map. For lithium, our corpus Christi lithium refinery breaks ground this may. Our goal is to start commissioning portions of the facility before the end of the year. The refinery uses the sulfate-free, spod-gaming refining process with reduced process costs, no acid or caustic reagents, and lower embodied energy. It actually produces a beneficial by-product that can be repurposed in construction materials.
We discussed all of these concepts on battery day. Same with the cathode precursor. We've successfully demonstrated a lower process cost, zero waste water precursor process that we described on battery day, at both lab and pilot scale, and are in the detailed design phase for incorporating this technology into the front end of our Austin cathode facility.
On cathode production, we are 50% equipment and 75% utilities installed at our new cathode building in Austin, with our goal to begin dry and wet commissioning this quarter and next quarter with a target to produce first material before the end of the year. End quote. In short, things are well on track with cathode and lithium production, with cathode production starting before the end of the year and lithium production probably starting early next year after commissioning.
And lithium is one of the inputs into cathode production, so both show up in the cost reductions for cathode laid out at battery day. That only leaves us with cell to vehicle integration, but before we cover that, I think it's worth providing some technical explanations and resources for what Drew said about lithium refining and cathode production.
First, Tesla's sulfate-free refining process for lithium hydroxide, which breaks ground next month. These are the Tesla is either using the Odotech lithium hydroxide process or they've developed their own similar process. Thanks to RK equity for bringing the Odotech process to my attention. As you can see, one of the byproducts of the Odotech process is calcium carbonate, which can be used in products like concrete and aligns with Drew's comments that the process they're using produces byproducts that can be used in construction materials.
But of course, it also meets the requirement of being an acid-free process that uses pressure leaching with sodium carbonate rather than a more typical sulfuric acid roasting process. As for the cathode production process, I've already done a full video on this titled Tesla's cathode production process. On screen is the key slide, which compares Tesla's process to a conventional process.
For battery raw materials, our mind and refine, there are basically two broad steps to manufacturing cathode material at the factory. First, combining chemicals like lithium and nickel in a liquid-based process to make what's called the precursor, and then baking those precursors at high temperature until they form red blood cell-sized crystals.
Baking the precursor to form crystals is the easy part, and where Tesla's innovating is the process to form the precursor. They have it working at lab and pilot scale, and now they're building a full-scale precursor production line into the front end of their cathode facility at Austin. The front end simply means that precursor production is at the beginning of the line, because the back end of the line is baking the precursor to form crystals. The only point I'd add here about the precursor process is that it's never been done at scale before, so there is a potential for delays, so I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla's timeline slipped.
As a final note, quite a few people seem to be confusing cathode production with the cathode coding process. In short, there's a process to make cathode powder by combining lithium with nickel and other chemicals. This is completely separate from the process of combining that cathode powder with other materials and then sticking it to an electrode foil, which is called coding.
Tesla uses a dry coding process, which is shown here. So when Drew said Tesla's doing dry and wet commissioning next quarter for the cathode precursor and cathode production, some people thought that meant Tesla is abandoning the dry coding process. But that's not the case. Dry and wet commissioning means first running the cathode production equipment dry to test of its working, and then running it with the liquids that are normally used in the production process. It's like if you buy a blender and test it without any fluids in it before making a smoothie. The same concept applies to industrial equipment.
The last element of cost from the battery day presentation was cell to vehicle integration, also known as the structural pack. On that, Drew commented, quote, we saw big improvements with pack manufacturing with the 4680 cell and the structural pack concept. 50% lower cap ex and 66% smaller factory for the same output in gigawatt hours per year. We do believe structural as a concept is a good one. It's simpler. We'll continue to structurally load the cells and use the pack as the floor of the vehicle while iterating the design closer to be level execution of this A level architecture in future programs. End quote.
That is, they've already had success reducing costs with the first generation of the structural pack that's been going into the model Y. However, as they've said in the past, that's a C grade implementation of the A grade base architecture of the structural pack.
For the cyber truck, Tesla will more fully incorporate the structural pack into the structure of the vehicle while also likely removing excess weight and material in both the pack itself and the battery cells. That'll likely bring the cost savings of the structural pack closer to what was projected at battery day. And I expect that'll continue to improve over the next few years. That is, the structural pack looks to be on track to meet cost targets by 2026.
But the elephant in the room is of course manufacturing speed and quality. Without that, none of the cost improvements from battery day will be possible. On that, Drew commented quote, and zooming out for the 4680 team, Q1 was all about cost and quality. We made significant improvements in both areas. Texas production increased by 50% quarter over quarter, through yields increased by 12% and at Kato, P-Crate increased by 20% and through yields improved by 20%. End quote.
Let's break that down. Kato has a 4680 production facility at Kato Road in Fremont, California and another facility in Austin, Texas. Kato Road has a nameplate capacity of 10 gigawatt hours per year and Austin is starting with 1 25 gigawatt hour line. Combined, those two facilities hit a production rate of a thousand packs per week last quarter, which is a run rate of about 3.5 gigawatt hours.
The Kato facility has been working on ramping for about 2 and a half years, but started ramping an earnest about 15 months ago. Austin started ramping 6 months ago, so although Austin has a higher capacity, most of the 3.5 gigawatt hours of cells would have come from Kato Road. Drew said that Austin made a 50% quarter over quarter improvement in production. I'm assuming that means 50% more total production. Yeals improved by 12%, which means that more of the cells that were produced were usable.
Based on that, my guess is that Austin's annual production rate is at most 1 gigawatt hour of good cells. Kato Road saw a peak rate increase of 20%, which means that production may have been lower or higher than last quarter, depending on how much they were running the line. However, Kato Road also saw an improvement in yields by 20%. Based on that, my guess is that the annual production rate at Kato is at most 4 gigawatt hours of good cells.
That is, in the last 3 months, both the Austin and Kato line improved in terms of production and the percent of cells that are usable. The question is, will they have enough battery cells to support the ramp of the cyber truck? And how are they going against their goal of the 1000 packs per week per quarter increase that they advised at investor day?
On the cyber truck question, my view is that the first generation cells from Kato Road are being used in Model W's, and the second generation cells from Austin will be used in the cyber truck. Even if Austin's only at a run rate of 1 gigawatt hour per year and didn't improve at all for the rest of the year, that's enough for about 5 to 10,000 cyber truck battery packs, which would be just enough cells for the cyber truck ramp. However, it is cutting things pretty close, and I'm wondering if Tesla has backup plans for a 2170 pack for the cyber truck.
As for the goal of a 1000 packs per week per quarter, we don't know if that was an average target based on exponential growth or if they're expecting linear growth. In either case, it looks like they've fallen short. Is that something to be worried about? It depends on what the specific worry is. If the worry is cyber truck production, as I said a moment ago, Tesla may have backup plans for a 2170 battery pack. It wouldn't be ideal, but it would keep the 4680 production ramp from bottlenecking the cyber truck production ramp.
If the worry is that Tesla will somehow fall behind on EV technology, that's not a worry I share because Tesla's years ahead of any potential competition in most areas. The one concern I do have is that Tesla may be missing out on potential growth or will miss out on potential growth if the 4680 production ramp continues to stumble. So it's not an existential concern, but rather a case of hoping that Tesla meets or exceeds their 50% growth target as deep into the future as possible. But for the time being, it's a case of weight and sea.
And hopefully, Tesla gives us an update every time they increase production by a thousand packs per week. And that in the next quarter or two, we see them hit 2000 packs per week or a 7-gigawatt hour run rate. Either way, we are seeing other positive signs for 4680 production. Model Y's with the 4680 pack now appear to be a permanent fixture on Tesla's North American order page. So the 4680 lines are having an impact on Tesla's total cell supply and production is reliable enough to support a commercial vehicle program. If this were a battery startup, that would be a huge deal. But expectations were set pretty high at battery day, and Tesla fully meeting those expectations still appears to be a few years away.
Let's finish up with Drew's comments. Quote altogether, the team accomplished a 25% reduction in COGS over the quarter, and we are on track to achieve steady state cost targets over the next 12 months. Going forward for the rest of the year, the priority one is yield and cost for the 4680 program as we steadily ramp production ahead of the Cybertruck next year. End quote.
In other words, Tesla is tightening up their processes to increase the number of good cells they produce, which is important to reducing costs. Their view is that they can hit cost targets in the next 12 months. They didn't specify what cost targets those are, but I imagine there's an internal cost target they want to hit to make sure the Cybertruck with 4680 cells is as profitable as possible as early as possible in the ramp.
That is, I don't think the target they're referring to is the battery day targets, because as I covered earlier, their goal is to hit the cost targets from battery day by 2026, and that's on an abbreviated timeline. As an interim summary, it's possible to hit the cost targets laid out at battery day by 2025 or 2026, but that comes with a big asterisk, which is that it's dependent on increasing the production speed of the 4680 lines. This is why I bring up production rate in every quarterly earnings call video.
However, yields are also important, and Tesla's also making steady progress on that front. With the 4680 discussion out of the way, let's move on to lithium cost. There was a surprising amount of discussion in the earnings call about lithium cost, and that discussion was wide-ranging, so instead of walking you through all the quotes, I'll just summarize the key points.
First, spot prices for lithium carbonate have dropped by 70% in the last few months. Second, the spot market only makes up a small percentage of the total lithium market, so you don't read too much into the spot price. Third, regardless, lithium prices are reducing, and Tesla plans on taking advantage of that by locking in lithium prices with multi-year fixed price contracts. Fourth, high lithium prices are encouraging miners to become more ambitious with bringing new supply online. Fifth, even when reiterated that lithium refining, rather than mining, is the bottleneck.
And as a result, Tesla is building the largest lithium refining and cathode production facilities in North America. Sixth, Zach Kirkhorn said that he expects not just lithium carbonate, but also lithium hydroxide prices to drop. Seventh, he also reinforced that because it takes months for lithium to go from mine to refinery, to cathode, to battery cell, it takes months for price reductions to show up in vehicle cost.
With those key points in mind, I'll add some commentary here. Lithium carbonate is the type of lithium that's used for LFP battery cells, and lithium hydroxide is the type of lithium that's used for high nickel battery cells. So with the falling prices that Tesla expects, LFP battery prices should see really first in products like energy storage and standard range vehicles. Then nickel battery cells not far behind for products like long range or mass sensitive vehicles, like the Tesla semi.
Tesla's expectations seem to be that macroeconomic conditions will continue to worsen, which will drive prices lower. If that's the case, Tesla might not lock in contracts immediately. However, there are also alternative views out there that prices will actually rebound later this year. So it might pay for Tesla to move fast. I don't have an opinion on who will be correct here, but if you're interested, check out the article on screen by Matt Furnley of Battery Materials Review.
I can confirm that high lithium prices are driving increased activity among lithium minors, and I'll be doing a video on lithium supply in the next couple of months. In that video, I'll also cover Elon's assertion that lithium refining is the bottleneck. The short story is that currently refining isn't the bottleneck for the global market, because the margins are pretty thin for refining versus mining. With that said, Tesla isn't the global market. They may have plenty of mind lithium supply lined up, and need refining capacity localized to their 4680 lines in North America, because most refining is in China.
In summary, Tesla's energy storage business is ready to rip over the next couple of years. The 4680 production system is making slow, but steady progress against the targets laid out at battery day, and Tesla's positioning themselves to take advantage of low lithium prices by locking in long-term contracts.
In the next video, I'll be giving my thoughts on Tesla's rare Earth-free motor, and why, despite all the hype around new iron nitride magnets from Niron Technologies, I think ferrite may be a better choice.
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