Why did Tesla choose 18650 lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles?

18650 battery is the earliest, most mature and most stable lithium ion battery, which is widely used in electronic products. Over the years, Japanese manufacturers have accumulated a lot of relevant experience in the processing technology of 18650 batteries, making the consistency and safety of the 18650 batteries produced have reached a very high level. Compared with other batteries, the laminated lithium-ion battery is far from mature. The common ones are square batteries, soft-pack batteries, and even the size, size, and position of the tabs are not uniform. The processing that battery manufacturers have The technology can't meet the conditions, most of which are controlled by humans, and the consistency of the battery cannot reach the level of the 18650 battery. If the consistency of the battery fails to meet the requirements, the management of the battery pack formed by a large number of battery strings and parallel will not allow the performance of each battery to be better played, and the 18650 battery cell can solve this problem. In summary, the cell capacity of the 18650 battery is small, and the number of cells required will be a lot (ModelS has 7104), but the consistency is very good; the capacity of the stacked battery can be made larger (20Ah to 60Ah), single The number of bodies can be reduced, but the consistency is poor. In contrast, at this stage, it is difficult to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to improve the processing technology of laminated batteries together with battery suppliers. Therefore, when developing Roadster and ModelS, Tesla's only option is to buy batteries from the market and develop its own battery system. In contrast, the technical difficulty of developing a battery system that manages more than 6000 cells with good consistency is less than that of developing a battery system with more than 200 cells with poor consistency. Even if the number of single batteries increases, if the performance of these batteries is reliable, it is still easier to manage. It can be said that the use of 18650 batteries as the source of power for new energy electric vehicles is the best choice at this stage. As the battery technology matures, more new types of batteries will be used in new energy electric vehicles. Disclaimer: Some pictures and content of the articles published on this site are from the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete. Previous article: Explanation on lithium iron phosphate battery