Source: Caijing.comAuthor: Jia Zijian2023-03-04 20:24
Caijing.com Auto News On the morning of March 2, Beijing time, Tesla’s highly anticipated first “Investor Day” event was officially held at the Austin plant in Texas, USA. At the event site, Tesla CEO Musk introduced the “Master Plan 3” (Master Plan 3) for the development of sustainable energy.
Although the previously rumored “Model 2 new car priced at $25,000” has not been released, Musk also explicitly refused to answer the information about the new model. But Musk and his Tesla team still released a lot of “eye-catching” key information in this three-hour investor event.
Regarding the “Master Plan 3” (Master Plan 3), which has received the most attention for the development of sustainable energy, Musk said on the spot, “Achieving a sustainable energy economy requires 240 TWH of energy storage, 30 TWH of renewable electricity, and investment in the manufacturing sector. $10 trillion and so on.”
Musk and a number of Tesla executives took turns to appear on the stage, and successively announced a series of information about Tesla: the goal is to build a car every 45 seconds, the Mexican factory is about to start, the Cybertruck pickup will come out this year, 100% Self-developed controllers, reducing the use of silicon carbide and rare earths, reducing the assembly cost of next-generation vehicles by 50%, opening up the supercharger network, and 10 models to achieve the annual sales target of 20 million vehicles, etc.
The ‘big picture’ idea needs $10 trillion
Musk wants to “reform the planet”.
From Musk’s introduction, it can be seen that the plan consists of five parts: eliminating fossil energy, transforming the grid to increase renewable energy, producing more electric vehicles, using heat pumps in domestic, commercial and industrial fields, using high-temperature energy storage in the industrial field, and Green hydrogen, and the application of sustainable energy to the electrification of aircraft and ships.
And this process requires a manufacturing investment of 10 trillion US dollars. Musk believes that “renewable energy should be used to empower our existing power grid. The 240TWh static energy storage in the key data covers wind energy and electric energy. If humans want to achieve a sustainable energy structure, the first thing to do is to change The current energy structure uses as much renewable energy as possible, builds a power grid through renewable energy, and reduces the use of fossil fuels through the use of solar and wind energy.”
The other is the scale of vehicle electrification. Tesla needs to produce 20 million electric vehicles a year to achieve this goal. At the same time, it also emphasized the energy saving of electric vehicles. The energy of boiling a pot of pasta can make Model 3 travel one kilometer.
Musk also pointed out that heat pumps have great potential. “Households, businesses and industries can all turn to the use of heat pumps. In the future, we need to further promote the use of heat pumps. Heat pump products can be seen everywhere in life, such as air conditioners, refrigerators, and heat pumps in factories. I believe that heat pumps can replace fossil energy. Realize heating,” Musk said.
In terms of high-temperature heat transfer and hydrogen production, special electric equipment should be produced to store and transfer high-temperature heat and hydrogen conduction to realize electrification, which can save a lot of energy. Musk pointed out that “hydrogen energy will be useful for industrial processes, but it should not be used in cars.”
In addition, there were discussions on the application of hydrogen energy in the industrial field, changing the energy structure of aircraft and ships, and so on. Musk believes that future means of transportation (including aviation and ships) should be electrified, but the current energy density of batteries is not enough to change the existing energy structure, and can only be used in some short-distance aircraft, but we can further study .
At present, 80% of energy consumption comes from fossil fuels, but the energy efficiency of fossil fuels wastes a lot of energy. In this regard, Musk emphasized that the transition to a sustainable economy will actually require fewer fossil fuels than are currently consumed. The key limitation in the production of new energy batteries is the capacity to purify lithium, not the exploration of lithium ore.
It is reported that the Corpus Christi lithium smelter in Texas, USA has broken ground and is scheduled to be put into operation within 12 months. The main business includes the mining, purification and refining of lithium ore.
According to Musk’s vision, the world is expected to realize this ambitious sustainable energy plan by 2050. In the future, Tesla will release a white paper outlining a clear path for the earth to use sustainable energy.
Compared with the “grand vision” of sustainable energy, focusing on Tesla electric vehicles is more “down-to-earth”.
Keywords “efficiency and cost”
Although the new car received a “later” reply, Tesla still released a lot of key information.
At the event, Musk and his executives revealed that Tesla’s goal is to build a car every 45 seconds, the Mexican factory is about to start, the Cybertruck pickup will come out this year, 100% self-developed controllers, reducing the use of silicon carbide and Rare earth, 50% reduction in next-generation car assembly costs, open supercharger network and other news.
Zhu Xiaotong, Tesla’s global vice president and head of Greater China, introduced the link about “manufacturing”. It said that Tesla reached the milestone of producing 4 million electric vehicles in 2023, and the goal of the Tesla Gigafactory is to produce a car every 45 seconds.
In addition, he also introduced the achievements of Tesla’s Shanghai factory, as well as the construction and development of several other factories around the world. Zhu Xiaotong said, “The Shanghai factory adopts a linear design, which can improve efficiency very well. We have done a lot of simplification and deletion. There were many redundancies in the buffer zone before, and we have deleted them. If there is a job, others can’t do it.” Well, let’s consider doing it ourselves.”
And where is Tesla’s new factory located? Musk revealed on the spot that the new factory is still under construction. The Mexican super factory is located on the outskirts of Monterey, Nuevo Leon, and released a rendering of the factory. The next generation of entry-level models will be the first to be put into production at the Mexican factory.
At the scene, Tesla’s chief designer Franz von Holzhausen also said that Tesla’s Cybertruck electric pickup will come out this year. The Cybertruck and all future Tesla vehicles will move to a 48-volt electrical system.
In addition, Cybertruck has the highest proportion of self-developed controllers for existing Tesla models, with a self-developed rate of 85%. Tesla revealed that the next-generation platform will achieve 100%. It is also mentioned that in the past, the parts supply chain faced some constraints, and we need to have a better response to such constraints.
And Tesla also hopes to reduce the use of rare earths and further promote the transition to clean energy. In the future, Tesla will reduce the use of silicon carbide by 75% in the next-generation model platform, and the next-generation permanent magnet motor will not even use rare earth materials at all.
In terms of manufacturing, Tesla has redesigned the production process and will continue to reduce the number of body parts, with emphasis on integrated die-casting technology and chassis battery integrated design. In terms of assembly, serial assembly and parallel assembly are carried out at the same time, increasing production efficiency by 30%, and the goal is set to reduce the assembly cost of the next generation of cars by 50%.
In terms of charging facilities, Tesla said that the company’s super charging hardware and installation costs are 20% to 70% lower than the industry average. And Tesla charging piles are compatible with all electric vehicles. Recently, the first batch of 10 super charging stations have been opened to other electric vehicles.
In terms of autonomous driving, Ashok Elluswamy, director of Tesla’s autonomous driving software, said that Tesla’s approach to artificial intelligence systems is very different from before. Companies are able to use artificial intelligence and more to solve complex planning problems. He also pointed out that manual labeling is not enough, so Tesla is adopting an automatic labeling system.
Musk also joked about autonomous driving, “In the future, all cars will use pure electric drive and drive autonomously. By then, driving a fuel car on the road will be no different from riding a horse.”
It is worth noting that Tesla also showed a video of the humanoid robot Optimus at the meeting. Musk bluntly said that the Optimus robot displayed at last year’s AI Day did not work properly at all, but the situation is improving.
He also said that Tesla robots are highly self-developed and are currently Tesla’s highest priority project. Like the self-driving FSD, the Tesla robot is also a “real-world AI” that needs to interact with the real world, which is essentially different from ChatGPT.
Musk also believes that “Tesla’s robotics business may be more valuable than the car business in the long run.”
On a similar topic, in the last question-and-answer session of the “Investor Day” event, someone asked Musk about his “view on artificial intelligence.” He replied, “There are concerns about artificial intelligence, and the field of artificial intelligence should be regulated accordingly in the future. And ensure that artificial intelligence can work in the public interest, otherwise artificial intelligence may be very dangerous.”