Hello everyone, I am the president of the Electric Vehicle Commune.
Recently, Tesla quietly launched a new business in China, battery recycling.
(Comparing the official websites of Tesla in China and the United States, there is no battery recycling option on the US official website)
According to Tesla officials, scrapped lithium-ion batteries will not be landfilled. Instead, it achieves 100% recycling through dismantling and extraction! While saving resources, it is also environmentally friendly.
However, battery recycling is nothing new for my country’s new energy vehicle companies. The "Interim Measures for the Management of Recycling and Utilization of Power Batteries of New Energy Vehicles" issued at the beginning of 2018 clarified that car companies must bear the main responsibility for battery recycling.
According to data from China Automotive Research Institute, a total of 200,000 tons of power batteries will be retired this year, and the market size has reached 10 billion. By 2025, this number will reach more than 30 billion. For car companies, whether they recycle batteries themselves or cooperate with battery manufacturers/third-party companies, it is a huge amount of income.
Zhihu user @我是大也 also broke the news that formal battery recycling manufacturers can hardly recycle old batteries, and they can be digested in the secondary market alone, which proves the development prospects of the battery recycling industry. .
It is not surprising that Tesla has joined the ranks of battery recycling at this time.
But what is less known is that Tesla had already formulated a complete battery recycling plan when it built its first super factory 7 years ago. Now it's just a matter of step by step and implementing the previous plan.
The person who led this plan was not Musk, but the man who stood behind Musk and silently supported him for 15 years! In his eyes, he loves batteries more than anything else.
He is Tesla’s former chief technology officer, Jeffrey Brian Straubel.
01. Using technology to change the world
Straubel is a typical technology geek.
His great-grandfather founded the Straubel Machinery Company 130 years ago and manufactured the first marine internal combustion engines for the United States. The innovative and hands-on spirit passed down from the family has deeply influenced Straubel.
While some of us were still obsessed with video games, 14-year-old Straubel had already begun building his first electric car!
He found a golf cart in good condition from a scrap car yard near his home and decided to repair it with his own hands.
If you don’t know what a golf cart is, you can refer to the electric patrol cars that can be seen everywhere in China:
This easy-to-drive, environmentally friendly mobility car spreads the seeds of new energy , deeply planted in Straubel’s heart.
The future belongs to clean energy.
Within two years, Straubel, who could not control his inner feelings, extended his claws on two mountain bikes again. In a sense, this is a hybrid system of human power and electric motor, which is somewhat similar to the Toyota Prius that was born at the same time (wrong).
The power-assisted bicycle he developed is powered by two 17.2Ah lead-acid batteries, and when pedaled by humans, it has a comprehensive range of up to 48km and a top speed of 51km/h. Its performance is better than what we run on the road. The little eDonkey is even stronger! That was the 1990s.
With his love for new energy, Straubel naturally entered Stanford University to study for bachelor's and master's degrees in energy engineering.
While studying, this technology geek also did something shocking.
In 2000, he bought a 15-year-old second-hand Porsche 944 for US$1,600 and converted it from oil to electricity, preparing to participate in the quarter-finals held by the American Electric Vehicle Racing Association. mile drag race.
After finally making the changes, Straubel encountered a problem: although this electric Porsche accelerated very quickly and could reach 100 km/h in about 9 seconds, its range was only 20 miles (32 kilometers). , there is no way to drive from California to Oregon, which is 1,300 kilometers away.
According to ordinary people's thinking, it is definitely to call a towing service or simply rent a tow truck and pull the person and the car together, which saves trouble and worry.
But Straubel disagreed: if you build a car yourself, you must drive it yourself!
So he spent another $500 to buy an equally old first-generation Volkswagen Beetle (rear-mounted and rear-wheel drive) and sawed it in half, using the rear engine and drive wheels as The power source was installed on the back of the electric Porsche, and the Porsche was responsible for the steering. It just drove to the destination!
It can be seen how important it is to learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well - you can really travel all over the world.
The hard work paid off. This electric Porsche finally finished the race in 17.28 seconds with a tail speed of 127km/h, breaking the world record and becoming the fastest accelerating pure electric car in the world at that time!
In the same year, Straubel also graduated successfully with a master's degree in energy engineering.
After graduation, Straubel is still exploring the direction suitable for new energy.
The first job he got in 2001 was as a propulsion engineer at Rosen Motors (a North American car dealer & parts company), mainly responsible for the research and development of hybrid vehicle transmission systems.
This job also made Straubel more firmly believe that the future trend must be new energy.
Soon after, he switched to Pentadyne Power Company and began to lead the design and manufacturing of flywheel energy storage systems. There, Straubel successfully developed a 150kW power inverter and motor-generator control system, and after conducting research on various energy storage devices, he made an astonishing discovery:
With the development potential of lithium battery technology at that time, it was completely possible to use more environmentally friendly travel methods to greatly reduce people's dependence on fossil energy!
But no one does such a good idea!
With the dream of using battery technology to change the world, Straubel joined hands with the famous engineer Harold Rosen to establish Volacom Aerospace Company and served as chief technology officer, beginning his attempt at electric aircraft. .
“In the foreseeable future, electric flight will definitely become a very interesting and attractive field.”
Thanks to the solid foundation laid in my first job Based on the basics, Straubel quickly invented a new type of ultra-long-range hybrid propulsion system. After applying for a patent, he licensed it to Boeing and made his first pot of gold.
With this money, Straubel wants to use it to build a pure electric car that can travel across the United States.
It was during this period that Straubel met the great talent in his life, Elon Musk.
02.? Accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy
There is nothing that a hot pot cannot solve. If so, then two. ——Hot Pot Law
Straubel thinks so too. At the meeting, he tried his best to persuade the billionaire Musk, who had just sold Paypal to cash out, to invest and participate in Volacom's electric aircraft plan.
However, since the hot pot was replaced by seafood, the law really failed - until the end of the meal, Musk did not want to pay a penny. Seeing that the two of them were about to break up.
In desperation, Straubel asked two questions:
If you connect ten thousand lithium-ion batteries in series, do you know what will happen?
If I said, I want to use this kind of battery to build an electric car that can run thousands of kilometers and cross interstates, would you vote for it?
This idea immediately hit Musk, who wanted to build an electric sports car: Sure,?I?will?give?you?some?money.
Although it seems stingy Musk only gave him US$10,000, which was only enough to cover the cost of a battery pack, but the two had already formed an indissoluble bond.
But at that time, it was not just Straubel who thought this way, another company had even stood on the shoulders of giants and built a similar electric sports car.
As early as 1997, Al Cocconi, the chief designer of GM EV1, led the entire team to establish AC Propulsion on his own, using the foundation of EV1 to create A two-seater prototype sports car T-Zero.
Although this car is just a prototype car without air conditioning, no doors, and the roof can only be manually removed to enter the car, the T-Zero powered by lead-acid batteries has a driving range of up to 160 kilometers, 0-96km/h acceleration time is only 4.9 seconds.
Even Musk was full of praise after the test drive, thinking this is what he thought an electric sports car should be like.
However, the battery life of this car is its biggest shortcoming.
Under the intense driving conditions commonly used in sports cars, the range reduced to dozens of kilometers is simply not enough, and it can’t even cover the round trip from home to the track. The sky-high price of US$220,000 is even more prohibitive for many people.
A Silicon Valley engineer named Martin Eberhard saw the potential of T-Zero and suggested that AC Propulsion replace it with a longer-lasting lithium battery and was willing to do so. Provide angel investment of US$150,000.
But at this critical juncture, AC Propulsion fell short:
Its CEO Al Cocconi only wants to be a supplier of three-electric systems for car companies. They are even willing to develop a V2G vehicle-road collaboration system that has not been widely popularized so far, but they are just unwilling to be an electric vehicle manufacturer!
If it weren’t for the stubbornness of the founder, there would probably be no Tesla Roadster, and there would be no Tesla today.
You also know the subsequent story: Musk brought Straubel to join the group, and the previous Silicon Valley engineers Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning (Marc Tarpenning) and Ian Wright (Ian Wright) jointly established Tesla's start-up team, hoping to use series-connected lithium battery packs to turn Tesla Roadster from concept to reality, step by step to accelerate the world The transition to sustainable energy.
The 31-year-old Straubel served as chief technology officer and led the R&D and design of Tesla Roadster.
03.?The soul of innovation, the founder of Tesla
He set two uncompromising small goals for Roadster: 0-96km in 4 seconds /h acceleration time, and a cruising range of 400 kilometers.
These two points are exactly what T-Zero failed to achieve.
In his words, Roadster must subvert people’s stereotypes about electric vehicles with weak performance and extremely short battery life.
The characteristics of high performance and long battery life also determine Tesla’s future development direction.
To achieve this, at least nearly 10,000 laptop lithium batteries need to be connected in series, which inevitably requires rigorous testing.
But lithium batteries are very naughty. From time to time they will overheat and explode for you to see. Engineers are often "gloriously injured".
To this day, burn marks can still be seen on the ground in Straubel’s backyard.
“As the energy density and quantity of battery cells increase, the problems of battery packs and thermal management systems also increase exponentially.”
How to connect batteries in series and control them well The temperature of each battery and preventing explosion and fire have become the most important keys.
The plan proposed by Straubel is to arrange 6831 batteries into 11 modules, with 621 batteries arranged in each module. This is also the earliest Cell-Module-Pack battery pack. prototype. In addition, a dense network of cooling pipes is inserted into the center of each battery to use coolant to take away heat from the battery, and the temperature difference between the individual batteries will be very even.
In this way, the life and safety of the battery are greatly improved, and the naughty lithium battery can be safely installed in the car!
Although it seems now that this method has long been adopted by most new energy vehicles, at the time when lead-acid/nickel-metal hydride battery air-cooling combinations were commonly used, lithium battery liquid cooling was already extremely innovative. The design is 10 years ahead of the world.
However, the coolant and pipes drag down the weight like the fat on a fat man. The fat Roadster only has a range of 272km, but there is no good way to solve it.
"This is a thorny problem that has no main solution and can only be faced directly. Improving details from 10-15 can bring about systemic progress. Just?do?it."
p>As a result, from the vehicle's aerodynamic performance, tire rolling resistance, brake calipers to interior materials... the Roadster?'s battery life was released bit by bit, and the 394 kilometers has basically been reached the initial set goals.
Another difficulty is the ultimate acceleration and control performance.
The T-Zero prototype car can achieve an acceleration time of 4.9 seconds with extremely light weight. But the fat little Roadster cannot violate the laws of physics - the heavier the body, the slower the acceleration.
The technology used by AC Propulsion, which paid a large amount of patent fees, failed to play its due role.
Later, Tesla’s former chief battery scientist Kurt Kelty recalled this past event in an interview, saying: “Straubel was always able to turn things around. Decay becomes magical. When difficulties lie in front of him, he can stop and rethink and lead everyone to find the right direction instead of getting deeper and deeper into the problem."
Given the existing conditions. If we cannot achieve it, then we will learn and make it ourselves.
In the end, Straubel led the team to redesign almost every powertrain component. Coupled with the carbon fiber body, aluminum alloy covering parts, single-speed gearbox and new electronic control system, the Roadster's 0-96km/h acceleration time is only 3.7 seconds, tying the Ferrari F430 and Lamborghini Gallardo of the year. Top supercar!
Roadster achieves high performance and long battery life.
Zhou Hang, CEO of Yidao Yongche, gave himself a Tesla Roadster as a 40th birthday gift.
In his words, Tesla has taken people’s stereotyped electric vehicles to the extreme through innovation.
In a word, dimensionality reduction strikes.
The Model S and Model The ultimate experience from an electric car.
It was Straubel who established Tesla’s high-performance and long-range characteristics and injected innovative soul into Tesla.
Without Straubel, the current Tesla is likely to be the same as Nissan leaf, BMW i3 and other models, disappearing from the crowd.
As Elon Musk believes:
“We should be grateful for that seafood meal in 2003. Without Straubel, Tesla would not be where it is today. ”
04.? Still a teenager after returning
As a meritorious veteran, Straubel has quietly dedicated 15 years to Tesla.
The overcharging route that Straubel insisted on not only brought a better experience at the time, but also today, ten years later, it uses 250kW V3 overcharging to tell people that charging can also be done soon.
Tesla’s Gigafactory super battery factory has reduced the cost of battery packs by at least 1/3. Under Straubel’s single-handed management, from the groundbreaking to the completion of the production line, Tesla has become the world’s largest battery factory. The largest battery factory. The current annual production capacity of 35GWh can provide stable battery supply for Tesla’s models.
In the eyes of ordinary people, as the chief technology officer of Tesla, he has an extremely bright future. As a founder, with hundreds of millions of dollars in stock and a glorious resume, he is a sure winner in life.
But Straubel chose to leave in 2019 after doing everything a chief technology officer should do.
On that day, Tesla’s stock price plummeted by more than 14%, and its market value evaporated by more than 40 billion. This shows how important Straubel, who has been at Tesla for 16 years, is to Tesla.
Why did Straubel leave?
Ten years ago, before Tesla Model S was mass-produced, someone asked Straubel what was the core of Tesla.
His answer was simple and straightforward: batteries.
One of the reasons why pure electric vehicles have been questioned is that the batteries are not environmentally friendly: the raw materials such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese required to manufacture high-density lithium batteries are polluting from mining to preparation. Environmental risks, and discarded batteries, whether landfilled or informally recycled, will also cause secondary pollution to the environment.
As the market share of electric vehicles continues to expand globally, the prices of key raw materials for manufacturing power batteries are rising like a roller coaster. Nickel has risen by 20% in just three years, and cobalt has risen by 15%, forcing Musk to personally shout from the air: "Please mine more nickel. If it can be mined in an environmentally friendly way, Tesla is willing to provide long-term "The best way to solve these two problems is the reason why Straubel left - the battery recycling business.
The new starting point after leaving Tesla is his battery recycling company, Redwood Materials.
According to Straubel’s calculations, the current cost of power batteries is 50-75% in raw materials, and the supply of used lithium batteries is also growing explosively. Not only scrapped electric vehicles can provide recycling sources, but also those defective products that come off the assembly line from battery factories and cannot be installed. This is a huge blue ocean market.
Rather than selecting cells with better performance from decaying batteries to reassemble them for secondary use, it is better to dismantle and recycle them in an environmentally friendly way to make new batteries.
His idea is also crazy: build a reverse super factory next to the Gigafactory of his old employer.
Tesla sends raw materials to the factory to make batteries, and Redwood sends used batteries to the factory to make raw materials!
The recycling process has almost no loss and is completely environmentally friendly.
Straubel’s vision is that the recycling rate of power batteries can reach 100% in the future, and that battery prices can be reduced by another 50% within 10 years through battery recycling.
In this way, electric vehicles have zero emissions, batteries are pollution-free, battery costs are lower, and mining volume is less, forming a perfect closed loop. The purpose of closed loop is similar to Tesla's vision - to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy by solving the problem of sustainable energy use.
The good news is that Straubel has won the recognition of many partners, including Panasonic.
At the end of last year, Panasonic began transporting used batteries from the Nevada battery factory to Redwood for battery recycling. The quantity has also increased rapidly from the initial 181 kilograms to two tons, and is still growing rapidly. The battery business for electric vehicles and mobile phones is also being developed.
Perhaps in the near future, we will see the moment when Straubel and Musk join forces again.
However, this time Straubel no longer provides limited battery technology, but a steady stream of battery raw materials.
Writing at the end
In fact, when writing this article, there was a heated discussion within the Electric Vehicle Commune.
What exactly is environmental protection?
Strictly speaking, the production of any product will produce carbon emissions, and cars are no exception.
If we pursue absolute environmental protection, then human beings should stop all industrial production activities and return to the life of primitive people.
Car companies have stopped building cars. It is better to go to the grassland to ride horses and shoot arrows. Horse-drawn carriages are the most environmentally friendly, and horse manure can be picked up and used.
But that kind of ultra-leftism is not the environmental protection we want.
Real environmental protection means, like Straubel, going out to solve problems personally and doing your best to contribute to environmental protection, rather than just shouting an empty slogan.
If gasoline cars cause global warming, then build electric cars.
If people have a stereotype about electric vehicles, use a product to impress them.
If the battery of an electric vehicle is not environmentally friendly enough, then use recycling to make the battery environmentally friendly.
Use battery technology to change the world.
He did it.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.