After the confirmation that Tesla was going to start using BYD Blade batteries in the Tesla Model Y that it manufactures in Berlin, information on this subject has multiplied. According to a news published by the German media teslamag.de last Thursday, citing a document leaked to the press, the manufacturer has received the authorization by the European Union to be able to produce and market this “variant” of the Model Y. It includes the battery capacity, 55 kWh and the approved autonomy, 440 kilometers.
As it became known a few days ago, the Berlin Gigafactory will be the first to use BYD Blade batteries. Several Chinese media outlets claimed that the first units of these batteries had already begun to arrive at the factory where Tesla will begin to mount them in its electric cars. this same month of august.
In order to market the Model Y with a different battery than the one that had been mounted until now, Tesla needed the official approval of a European body. As usual in the case of the American manufacturer comes from the hand of the Road Transport Authority (RDW) from the Netherlands, responsible among other things for regulating which vehicles can be marketed in its territory. The approval document, dated July 1, 2022, indicates that the designation of the new Model Y is Type 005, and is known internally as the Y7CR variant.
This new Model Y has Blade batteries from BYD with a capacity of 55 kWh (whether gross or net is not indicated) and would approve an autonomy (in the WLTP cycle) of 440 kilometers with every load. Currently, according to the Tesla web configurator, the Model Y can be configured in two versions, the Long Range with 533 kilometers and the Performance with 514 kilometers, both with the same battery, dual motors and all-wheel drive. The new variant will probably be a cheaper version, with rear-wheel drive only and a smaller battery.
In this case, the same commercial strategy that Tesla has launched with the Model 3 and CATL batteries would be repeated. With them it specified, for the base version of this car that is manufactured in Shanghai, a capacity of 60 kWh and a range of 455 kilometers.
The Berlin Gigafactory will be the first to use the Blade batteries, as rumors from a year ago anticipated that a prior supply contract had already been signed between the two companies. On October 21 of last year, a local Chinese media quoted a source close to BYD to affirm that the manufacturer had received an order from 10 GWh of Tesla LFP batteries. Begining of June, Lian Yuboexecutive vice president of BYD announced in an interview that BYD would “soon supply batteries to Tesla.”
The information about the arrival of the batteries in Germany comes from the local media Sina-Tech. The same source indicates that the first electric cars with these batteries are expected to roll off the production lines. between late August and early September.
BYD Blade batteries
In March 2020, BYD introduced a new battery for electric cars called ‘Blade Battery’ that uses LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry and qualifies as indestructible, since they can, it can withstand all kinds of damage on it, without reacting with explosions or fires. These batteries have been subjected to nail penetration, heating in a 300°C oven, 260% electrical overload and crushing by being driven over by a 46-tonne truck establishing a new level of safety.
Battery dispenses with the usual modules in which the cells meet and then, once connected to each other, create a complete battery. In this way it saves a great amount of space in connectors and control systems, increasing the space available for the active material in a fifty %always according to what BYD indicates.
