Presumably, this particular installation was still using nickel-based cells.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/05/11/tesla-transitions-to-lf...
That said, chemistry has come a long ways, the Wheego is more like a hotrodded golf cart than an actual car. That was the norm for 2011 though.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-nomics/2012/03/14/can-tiny-...
Remember that heavy industry isn't like software, you don't get to Just Decide to match the product to the market and switch when it makes sense. You make a bet years in advance on resource contracts and factory capacity, and if the needles don't match you need to find some way to generate revenue from what you actually have, not what you want to produce.
But yes: LiFePO4 has a high internal resistance (which is bad for applications with high current loads) and somewhat poor energy density (bad for mobile applications), but is significantly cheaper at scale due to the elimination of Cobalt and has an absolutely massive cell durability advantage (GREAT for grid storage).
But you won't see phosphate batteries in anything but budget/commuter EVs. They aren't something Tesla is going to bet on for their main production choices, but absolutely something you'd expect to see them optimize as they scale.
I'm not sure about that. Elon Musk said on the most recent Tesla earnings call that he expects the industry to shift heavily towards LFP over time.
Obviously the cost savings and cobalt avoidance are a significant reason, but LFP has some other advantages. Tesla's LFP Model 3 SR+ actually has slightly more range and faster charging than the NCMA version, at the cost of about 100 kg extra weight. Plus you can charge LFP to 100% every time without having to worry about accelerated battery degradation.
LFP makes sense in many ways for stationary storage, but it does have lower energy density, so you couldn't keep the same kWh in the same form factor without some changes.
Funny this got downvoted. Was this comment controversial in any way?
Since nearly all Tesla revenue comes from Tesla customers I would imagine the customers will be ultimately footing the bill.
>Was this comment controversial in any way?
Honestly it comes off as cynical and a little dumb -- which is why it might be grey. If a business agrees to a cost -- it will be the customers paying for that cost. Your peevish "Who is paying for this" tone suggests you're being indignant as though you're being asked to cough up some dollars here.
And like reddit asking why you're being downvoted will lead to more downvotes.
They've just started breaking even now, and it can take a while to cover all the past costs. As of the latest 10-Q the accumulated deficit (sum over all past earnings) is -$3.6B. The total capital raised from investors is well over $15B.
They have been more than "start(ing to) break even now". It would be more accurate to say they have been more than breaking even since some time between 2018 and Q1 2020 depending on your measure; capex, opex, financials (interest, depreciation, etc), unexpected charges, etc
But yeah, it is starting to look okay if not good. I was (well technically still am, but the position is tiny now) one of the shorts in TSLA, but I am done with that, didn't quite work :)
Just like any other kind of investment ever done.
People like you who really love Tesla for some reason seem to be willingly ignorant of that fact. As others have mentioned before even DIY batteries were recommending other battery technologies for precisely these reasons.
Tesla either really didn't know, which would be massively incompetent, which I don't believe or willfully misled buyers into buying for this purpose unsafe products.
If this was the first time this happened(Tesla marketing unsafe products as safe until they got caught) you could brush it away as honest mistake, but since it's not, it's safe to say they just wanted to quickly market an unsafe product.
It's not a cynical question by the way, but a sarcastic one. No idea why you decided to take it so personal though. There is a slight chance, that Tesla actually replaces this with something less dangerous, which would be the right thing to do, but that's unlikely to happen, since people like you in government believe that when the scammer scams you, the scammer isn't to blame, but it's the customer that should foot the bill.
Given that this didn't happen in the USA, there's also the off-chance, that someone in that country actually holds Tesla responsible for what happened.
It's not as if someone somewhere sits down and makes this choice. Tesla charges prices the market wants to pay, at volumes Tesla can manufacture, and tries to minimize its expenses. What happens in the end in terms of profit and loss is subject to literally thousands of variables, not just a change in a battery pack tech.
This is especially the case for an industry that's heavily into R&D and innovation.
What is the difference between the customer or tesla paying?
I got a free replacement battery from Apple in the mid 2000's when they said that a batch of their batteries had a "small fire risk"...
If I'm being cynical, I guess it depends if their line is:
"the old battery is dangerous which is why we've changed the materials we use"
or
"we're changing the materials we use, and that has this interesting side effect that totally coincidentally fixes a dangerous issue with out old batteries"