So far, Tesla’s management has been reluctant to make specific statements about the progress in the production of battery cells in the internally developed Format 4680. In September 2020, the company announced that it wanted to achieve annual capacity of 10 gigawatt-hours on a pilot line near its Fremont plant in California by the end of 2021, but has not received any specific inquiries since then. However, at the end of the week, the first figures for the production of 4,680 cells from an unofficial source at Tesla became known.
4,680 million cells in Tesla inventory
The latest official information on the matter came on a fourth-quarter earnings call in late January from Drew Baglino, senior vice president of Tesla’s propulsion and energy division. There are enough other batteries from suppliers for this year, he said, and volume planning for 2022 will not fail due to the unavailability of 4,680 cells. Significant progress has been made in trial production in Fremont, and Tesla is already building daily battery packs from its own batteries for use at its new Gigafactory in Texas. Baglino explained that the first electric vehicles will likely be delivered in the first quarter of 2022.
That should actually work if the numbers published this weekend in the Tesla Motors Club (TMC) forum are correct. One of his relatives belongs to Team 4680 in Fremont, member Oliver MX explained to the original. Among other things, a million good 4,680 cells are said to have been available at the end of January. Depending on how much capacity Tesla wants to give the Model Y with its own batteries, it’s estimated that about 800 of them are needed per battery pack.
So, Tesla could build a good 1,000 Model Y with 4,680 cells alone with the stock configured so far, but of course there should be more. But the TMC member also has current numbers for continuous production, which is evident from the inside graph. According to this, at the end of January 14 Tesla’s cell production machines were put into service in one day, which together amounted to 92 percent – so this percentage of batteries meets the requirements. One of the 14 machines gave a rejection of 82 percent, but it is said to have been used for training purposes that day.
Only eight Model Ys batteries per day?
Yield above 90 percent, especially including overseas, is a high value. However, the statement also in Tesla’s drawing at TMC caused disappointment: The total number of usable cells produced was 4,680 on the day 6,269. If that’s all for now, with 800 batteries per Model Y, it would only last for about 8 batteries per day. However, the fact that the time given on the drawing is 5:22 p.m., which is the end of a day with 8 hours more than hourly production, conflicts with this. And for now Tesla can still focus on experimentation and improvement rather than the highest possible production – according to SVP Baglino, there should be no shortage of batteries for this year.
