Tesla's 4680 Battery Struggles, Expansion and Future Outlook

TapTechNews July 16th news, due to various reasons, the performance and production capacity of the 4680 battery that Musk previously touted failed to reach its target in 2023, which in turn led to the repeated postponement of the 25,000 US dollars electric car in Tesla's plan and then was shelved in February this year.

TheInformation citing the words of three informed people disclosed that Musk has lost patience and issued a new military order to the 4680 battery R & D team in May this year, requiring them to solve the technical problem of battery collapse during use by the end of this year and further cut costs.

In fact, the production capacity of Tesla's 4680 battery has been greatly expanded. Currently, in addition to one production line and one assembly line, two additional assembly lines have been built, and at the same time, experiments on improving the production and performance of the 4680 battery are also being carried out.

Tesla's supply chain vice president Karn Budhiraj said: We have one production line being debugged, and four more will start to be installed in the third quarter of this year. Therefore, there is no doubt that this year is an important year for the mass production of the 4680 battery.

The Tesla 4680 battery is a new battery technology announced by Tesla at the Battery Day event in 2020. It is a cylindrical battery with a diameter of 46 millimeters and a height of 80 millimeters. Compared to the previous 2170 battery, its single energy has increased by 5 times, the power has increased by 6 times compared to the tabbed battery, and the power output has increased by 6 times.

Tesla also announced a new manufacturing technology called dry electrode battery (DBE) at the 2021 Battery Day to significantly improve battery performance through a new silicon negative electrode. However, the 4680 battery currently produced by Tesla still uses a chemical composition similar to the 2170 NMC battery and does not use a silicon negative electrode and DBE.

TapTechNews reported on June 6 that Tesla announced that the Austin Super Factory has produced 50 million 4680 batteries. In the past year, the production of Tesla's 4680 battery has increased significantly, with a cumulative production of 40 million, which is equivalent to nearly 1 million per week on average.