Telsa are one of the world’s biggest purchasers of batteries through their partnerships with manufacturers like Panasonic, LG and CATL. Their endless hunger for more cells is unlikely to be satiated anytime soon, as demand for electric cars and power storage continues to rise.
As announced at their Battery Day keynote, Tesla has been working hard on a broad spectrum of projects to take battery technology to the next level in order to reach their goal of 3 TWh annual production by 2030. One of the most interesting aspects of this was the announcement of Tesla’s new tabless 4680 battery, which will be manufactured by the company itself. Let’s take a look at what makes the 4680 so exciting, and why going tabless is such a big deal.
Roll Up, Roll Up
A diagram showing a typical cylindrical cell design, with tabs to connect the anode and cathode to the cell casing.
Tesla are somewhat unique among electric car makers in that they’ve resolutely stuck to using cylindrical cells in their battery packs, where other manufacturers have largely used prismatic designs. Beginning with the venerable 18650 popular with laptop manufacturers and flashlight builders, Tesla later moved on to using larger 21700 batteries, with the bigger form factor meaning each cell had greater capacity. To construct these cells, long, thin sheets of anode and cathode material are laid on top of each other with a seperator material in between, and then rolled up into a “jellyroll” to fit inside the cylindrical body. The anode and cathode each have a small tab, generally at the center of the rolled up sheets, which pass power to the terminals on the outer case of the battery.
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