Tesla CEO Elon Musk and iPhone Engineer discuss battery technology [Video]

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5HT9mj_4M]

There’s no real hard news at this talk given by Elon Musk this week but it is certainly interesting to see the back and forth with the iPhone Engineer (Evan Wong? Didn’t quite get the name) and the CEO of Tesla. Apple is of course rumored to be an investor in Tesla’s battery Gigafactory so that makes the conversation all that more interesting. Some notes:

• The engineer manages a big part of the hardware development of the iPhone.
• Apple is one of the biggest buyers of batteries along with Tesla and they’ve done a lot of thorough testing
• Chemistry, material, packaging and process affect  battery life constant.
• Tesla buys 18650 form factor batteries and is sticking to them.
• When musk asks about the energy density, the engineer knows not to say anything (he says he doesn’t want to get sued by his employer – to many laughs from the audience).
• Musk assumes the battery energy density is public domain because of teardowns
• Musk says in high production they can get to 260Wh/KG at the lowest price per kW which might be good info for those looking at the Gigafactory specs.
• Apple likely can’t use these cells in their products because they are 18mm thick, much thicker than many of Apple’s products – or so speculates Musk

More of the conversation here.