How Tesla Energy Is Helping Ukraine!
In today’s post, we’ve got new details on how both Tesla and SpaceX are powering Ukraine’s fight against Russia, an unexpected new Model Y update and the NHTSA giving the OK to removing steering wheels and pedals in autonomous cars. So let’s get going.
Tesla Supply Ukrainian Resistance with PowerWall
Elon Musk’s latest shipments of aid to Ukraine are now including both SpaceX and Tesla Energy products that will help maintain power and connectivity for citizens and government forces in the war torn country.
In the latest news we’ve seen a second batch of Starlink Terminals shipped directly to Ukrainian authorities, but this time the satellite dishes were accompanied by Tesla Powerwall batteries and the means to use them as mobile power sources.
This is a product that Tesla designed a few years ago to function as a home based energy storage solution. It pairs with the Tesla solar roof and can hold enough electricity to power an average house for about one day. This is very important because we’ve seen the Russian army targeting power generating stations and shutting down electricity to parts of the country. Tesla appears to have also produced a 10 minute instructional video that shows step by step how to use a Powerwall as a mobile power station.
This shipment was referenced by Elon in a tweet response to Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister who again thanked him for sending additional resources. On March 9th, Elon wrote, “You’re welcome. We have also sent power adapters for car cigarette lighters, solar/battery packs and generators for places where electricity is not available.”
According to a Tesla internal email that was obtained by CNBC, Tesla has teamed up with SpaceX to provide coverage expansion for its Starlink services to help provide an alternative internet infrastructure. The email reads, quote, “Volunteers across the Giga Berlin and Germany Service team responded quickly to test, configure, pack and ship several hundred Starlink units which have already been gratefully received by Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Minister. In true Tesla fashion, the solution has been put together in less than 3 days.”
So that explains our mystery of how Elon is getting this SpaceX equipment into Ukraine so fast, he’s leveraging his brand new car factory in Germany as a staging ground and making use of Tesla staff and contractors to build out the Powerwall kits and pack Starlink dishes. The email explains, “On top of this, the Energy team supplemented the Starlink roll out with a fleet Powerwalls. The system included PV inverters given by our Certified installer network, pre-made DC cables given by one of our Supercharger Installation Partners and AC cables made out of scrap from Giga Berlin. All of it assembled by a team of 40+ volunteers from across the EMEA organization, committed to doing what they can to support.”
I think that really illustrates how real this effort is, they’re pulling resources from Superchargers and gathering up spare parts from the factory to make this happen.
In the support video, Tesla explains step by step how to get a Powerwall up and running without even needing to take it out of the box. This is absolutely not how a Powerwall is supposed to be used, this is Tesla demonstrating a MacGyver solution to hack their own product. The system provided can be started up using any 12v power source like a car battery or even just 8 AAs connected in series. They also demonstrate how to quickly connect Powerwall to solar panels and recharge the cells.
We know from Elon Musk that following a special software update, Starlink can operate on as little as the 12v output from a car’s cigarette lighter but we don’t know how long that can actually hold out for - probably not too long, and then your car would also be dead. So with the 13 kWh of energy in a Powerwall they’ll have a much more practical solution for the long term.
We’ve also heard news from SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who provided some back story about getting Starlink service active over Ukraine so fast. It seems that the plan was actually in the works for several weeks ahead of Russia’s invasion. Shotwell said the company had been working for about a month and a half to get landing rights, or government approval to provide services in Ukraine. This could simply have been a normal part of SpaceX’s current expansion of Starlink into many parts of Europe, or this could have been a preemptive action against Russia’s troop build up that began last December.
In lieu of getting an official approval from the Ukrainian government, SpaceX saw the Tweet from Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister to Elon Musk as their sign to move forward with the plan. Shotwell said, “They tweeted at Elon and so we turned it on. That was our permission. That was the letter from the minister. It was a tweet.”
When asked about why SpaceX made the decision to become so involved with the foreign conflict, Shotwell made reference to maintaining the free flow of information, quote, “That was the right thing to do. I think the best way to uphold democracies is to make sure we all understand what the truth is.”
Elon Musk has continued to put his money where his mouth is by now offering any Ukrainian employees at least three months of paid leave with full salary if they choose to return home to fight the war. Tesla has also made Supercharging stations free at locations around the Ukraine border in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.
A New Model Y Coming Soon?
A new version of the Tesla Model Y has mysteriously appeared on the EPA website, and we’re not quite sure what to make of it.
According to the EPA this is a 2022 Model Y with all wheel drive that is rated for 279 miles of range. That’s opposed to the existing Tesla Model Y Long Range with all wheel drive that is rated at 330 miles of range. What’s the deal with that? Well, there are only two real possibilities here, and both are kinda weird.
Idea number one - this is the new Giga Texas Model Y with 4680 batteries. We heard last week that Tesla was awaiting an EPA approval of their new Model Y, which was assumed to be the new Austin made, structural pack 4680 car. If this is that, then we’re actually getting significantly less range, which is like, the opposite of what we expected to happen. It seems unlikely.
Tesla would honestly look pretty damn stupid if they were to debut the much hyped, brand new, revolutionary battery technology in a car with extremely mediocre range. That wouldn’t appeal to anyone. Maybe the idea is that they reduce the sticker price by using fewer cells in the battery pack? But realistically how much money can that save when they’re still using nickel based cells? A couple grand? Doesn’t seem worth it. Maybe Tesla screwed something up with the 4680 and it doesn’t perform as well as expected? That would be a catastrophe.
Idea number two - this is actually a new LFP battery Model Y. Which would be something we definitely expected Tesla to introduce to North America this year, particularly given the skyrocketing cost of nickel. LFP batteries have an iron based cathode, so zero nickel or cobalt is used in the cell, and those are the most expensive and hard to source battery metals out there - iron is cheap and plentiful.
What we did not expect from an LFP Model Y was all wheel drive or 279 miles of range, those specs would be insane for an LFP car. If we look at Tesla’s current Model 3, the lowest tier vehicle, that has LFP batteries and a single electric motor with rear wheel drive and is rated for 255 miles of range. If they just put that same battery and motor into a Model Y, the range would drop, because a Model Y is bigger and heavier - add to that an extra motor that sends power to all 4 wheels and the range would tank to a ridiculously low level. But this Model Y has MORE range than an LFP Model 3.
Now, they could have made the pack size bigger, that’s true. But it would have to get a *lot* bigger to support this kind of performance, and we can’t see that really being possible with the CATL brand, rectangular cells that Tesla are known to use - these are big, heavy batteries and they can only fit so many under the floor of the car.
Unless this is not Tesla’s usual LFP battery in the New Model Y. This could be something else entirely. Some technological leap forward that makes things previously thought impossible now become reality. That would be pretty interesting.
Let’s go tinfoil hat mode for a minute and consider some old rumors that might be turning out to be true. Last year we heard multiple reports that Tesla would purchase a special kind of “blade” LFP battery cell from the CHinese EV maker BYD. As recently as October 2021, this website called Electrive reported the following - “The rumour that Tesla will also use blade batteries from BYD with LFP cells from the second quarter of 2022 onwards has received new food for thought: According to Chinese media, BYD has now received an initial order from Tesla for LFP battery cells with a volume of 10 GWh.”
The BYD Blade battery is a significant leap forward in LFP cell technology. Instead of the big, chunky prismatic cells, these are long, thin slats of metal that can actually be formed into a structural battery pack that is pretty similar to Tesla’s 4680 structural pack. The Tesla structural pack will be more rigid with the cylindrical cell honeycomb interior, but the BYD pack looks perfectly sturdy. And it also has impressive performance that goes beyond any other LFP pack on the market. BYD doesn't sell cars in North America, but their flagship sedan in China, called the Han, is able to get 605 km or 375 miles range with the blade battery pack. Now China doesn't use EPA ratings, so not directly comparable, but it’s still vastly more range than the LFP equipped Tesla Model 3.
So maybe this new Model Y is powered by a BYD blade structural battery pack? It sounds crazy, but it actually makes the most sense. And during the launch event for the blade battery, the Vice President of BYD, He Long, said, “Today, many vehicle brands are in discussion with us about partnerships based on the technology of the Blade Battery.” And he added that BYD will gladly share and work with global partners to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for all industry players.
It’s hard to say exactly how this would affect the price of the new all wheel drive Model Y, obviously it’s got to go down by a significant amount to justify the lower range. But given the insane cost of nickel that has already prompted Tesla to add one thousand US dollars to the price tag of the existing Model Y last week and probably more increases on the way… This new Y, if it comes with LFP, could easily be 8 -10 grand cheaper.
Steering Wheel Delete Get NHTSA OK
In a rare bit of good news coming from America’s traffic regulator, The NHTSA said last week that it would no longer require fully autonomous vehicles to equip human control elements to meet crash standards - that means a company like Tesla could legally remove the steering wheel and pedals from a level 5 autonomous car, something Elon Musk has been threatening to do for years.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said of the rule change, “Through the 2020s, an important part of our safety mission will be to ensure safety standards keep pace with the development of automated driving and driver assistance systems. This new rule is an important step, establishing robust safety standards for ADS-equipped vehicles.”
And according to Reuters, the NHTSA expressed a similar comment, saying that vehicles designed to be solely operated by an ADS would make manually operated driving controls “logically unnecessary.”
So, there we go, the opportunity for a Tesla dedicated robo taxi car is getting closer than ever. Now we just need FSD to come through and hit level 5 autonomy.
