According to Chinese media reports, Tesla will use improved LFP cells from CATL in the Model Y produced in China starting from next year. CATL will supply so-called ‘M3P’ batteries to Tesla for the first time for the Model Y with a 72 kWh battery from the fourth quarter of 2022.
The cathode is no longer made of lithium iron phosphate, but of lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP). This should enable a higher energy density than with LFP cells. The LMFP material will be supplied by Shenzhen Dynanonic, which plans to produce 110,000 tonnes of the material from the second half of this year.
Such reports around LMFP cells for Tesla are new. Previously, it was assumed that the energy density of LFP batteries would be increased, for example, via improvements in CATL’s cell-to-pack technology – the third generation of CtP technology that has been presented is supposed to enable higher energy densities of 160 Wh/kg for LFP cells.
According to the Late Post report, which was picked up by the English-language CN EV Post and others, Tesla is also developing its own LMFP batteries. However, due to the long development cycles, the carmaker had decided to initially source such batteries from external suppliers – i.e. CATL with preliminary products from Shenzhen Dynanonic.
CATL had already announced in mid-July at the World EV & ES Battery Conference 2022 in Yibin, Sichuan province, that the M3P battery (which is an internal CATL acronym and has nothing to do with the Tesla acronym for the Model 3 Performance) is already in mass production and will be used in production vehicles from 2023. Tesla is CATL’s largest single customer.
LMFP is not only the focus of Chinese suppliers; some companies in Germany are also working on this material. IBU-Tec Advanced Materials wants to expand its product family of LFP battery materials in future to include a variant with added manganese. A consortium around Varta and the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) wants to develop LMFP cells for electric aviation.
weixin.qq.com via cnevpost.com
Keyword: Tesla to use new batteries for the Model Y