Connect with us

News

Tesla celebrates key milestone for 4680 battery cell production cost

Tesla produces in-house 4680 battery cells at its Gigafactory in Texas, along with getting them from outside suppliers.

Published

on

Credit: Tesla | X

Tesla has highlighted an important 4680 battery cell milestone in recent weeks, noting that its Texas manufacturing team for the hardware has scaled production enough to outpace the cost-effectiveness of outside suppliers.

During Tesla’s first-quarter all-hands-on-deck meeting held a few weeks ago, CEO Elon Musk shared a number of recent milestones. One of them, as was also reiterated after the meeting by Michael Guilfoy, Tesla’s Giga Texas Director of Cell Manufacturing, is the fact that the company’s in-house 4680 battery cells have earned their place as the lowest-cost battery cell produced per kWh.

Musk also pointed out during the meeting that the achievement is particularly impressive, given that many of the company’s suppliers dedicate all or most of their businesses to battery cell manufacturing, while Tesla focuses on several other business sectors and still managed to surpass the milestone.

Check out Guilfoy’s full message below, as posted on LinkedIn, or watch Tesla’s Q1 all-hands meeting below that.

Been waiting to acknowledge this great achievement by Tesla’s 4680 Cell Manufacturing team since the end of last year….but as Elon announced last night, our Cell Manufacturing team in Texas reached a huge milestone at the end of 2024 with becoming the lowest cost per kWh battery cell producer for Tesla! The grit, determination, and passion of our team is unbelievable in helping deliver our mission.

Big thank you to our entire engineering and production teams for making this happen!! It’s the greatest honor of my career to lead this team and make such an impact in our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

Advertisement
-

And we aren’t done yet! 2025 will have more big milestones with fully ramped dry battery electrode manufacturing to deliver even more cost efficiency. Exciting teams continue to be ahead. Cheers to this world-class team!

READ MORE ON TESLA’S 4680 BATTERY CELLS: Tesla working on four dry cathode 4680 battery variants: The Information

Although Tesla also sources its 4680 batteries from multiple other suppliers, including Panasonic and LG Energy Solution, the company has also been working to scale up in-house production of the cells over the past few years. In September, Tesla officially surpassed a milestone of producing 100 million 4680 battery cells, after surpassing 50 million last June, and exceeding 20 million in October 2023.

Tesla initially unveiled the 4680 battery cell during a 2020 “Battery Day” event, during which it explained the cost and efficiency benefits of the battery size in comparison with the 2170 form factor.

Tesla loses battle to keep 4680 battery tech under wraps

Advertisement
-

Zach is a renewable energy reporter who has been covering electric vehicles since 2020. He grew up in Fremont, California, and he currently lives in Colorado. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, KRON4 San Francisco, FOX31 Denver, InsideEVs, CleanTechnica, and many other publications. When he isn't covering Tesla or other EV companies, you can find him writing and performing music, drinking a good cup of coffee, or hanging out with his cats, Banks and Freddie. Reach out at zach@teslarati.com, find him on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

Advertisement
Comments

News

Tesla Model Y L gets suspension complaints in over odd issue China

Published

on

Credit: @TeslaNewswire/X

The Tesla Model Y L is arguably the most hyped trim of the all-electric crossover, other than the Performance configuration that comes with white-knuckle speed and sports car-level handling.

However, it is not all perfect. Tesla owners in China who took delivery of the Model Y L, denoted with an L to highlight its longer wheelbase, are experiencing what they are referring to as “collapsing” of the rear wheels, as suspension issues appear to be an issue with some of the builds.

The gap between the wheel arch and tire has narrowed to the point that “not even a single finger” could fit, according to a report from Car News China. The failures are not tied to a specific mileage, as one owner said that after just 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles), they noticed the suspension issue when their car was fully loaded.

Advertisement
-

Another one had the issue at 30,000 kilometers (18,640 miles) and noticed that the wheel gap shrank to two fingers, so not as drastic as the person who reported a similar issue at 9,000 km.

Tesla Model Y L is gaining momentum in China’s premium segment

Along with the visual recognition of the issue, others are saying the sagging is causing abnormal wear on the inside of the tires. Extra weight and instant torque already provide additional stress on the tires in electric vehicles during normal operation, so it is no surprise that this is another complaint.

There has been no recall issued by Tesla, and the company has not yet publicly acknowledged the issue.

Some are suggesting that owners use a “finger test” to self-diagnose whether there is an issue with the suspension. There should be four fingers between the tire and the wheel well; anything less than that starts to get dicey.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

News

Tesla Cybercab event gains steam ahead of massive launch

Published

on

Credit: TechOperator | X

Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.

Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.

The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:

The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.

Advertisement
-

However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.

Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.

Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

News

SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit

SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.

Published

on

By

SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.

Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.

The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.

SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’

Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.

Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.

Advertisement
-

The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.

Continue Reading