In 2020, Elon Musk dedicated an entire presentation to the story of advanced 4680 battery cells, promising at that moment to establish their mass production by the end of 2023. Such cells are produced by the company in small quantities, but if technological problems are not resolved by the end of this year, Tesla may refuse to further expand production.
Image Source: Tesla
Strictly speaking, Tesla initially expected to launch mass production of 4680 battery cells in the United States by the end of 2022. They are currently produced in small batches in Texas, but in 2023 the company was forced to abandon the idea of producing them at its Berlin facility. As noted earlier, Tesla had problems producing anodes for such batteries using the “dry” method, which promised to significantly reduce production costs and make it more environmentally friendly. In June 2023, Tesla announced that it had managed to produce a total of 10 million cells of size 4680. However, this is still very far from the target quantities, although this year Tesla representatives have repeatedly emphasized that the production of Cybertruck electric pickup trucks is not limited to the availability of traction batteries based on 4680 type cells.
In any case, The Information, citing sources close to Tesla, reported this week that Elon Musk has set the company’s specialists the task of launching the production of 4680 type battery cells in significantly larger quantities by the end of this year. If this fails, Tesla may completely abandon their production in-house. Currently, not only Cybertruck pickups, but also Model Y crossovers assembled in Texas are equipped with cells of this type. Initially, Tesla planned to use 4680 cells in the production of Semi trucks, but now they do without them, and are still produced in literally single copies.
The company can also receive cells of size 4680 from its partners like Panasonic, so even if it refuses to produce them independently at the Texas plant, nothing catastrophic will happen from the point of view of the company’s ability to produce Cybertruck pickups. According to informed sources, the problem for Tesla is the transition to the “dry” method of manufacturing cathodes. In the case of the anode, it has already been mastered, but from the point of view of production costs, it is more important to master a similar method for manufacturing cathodes, and so far it has not been possible to solve the corresponding problem. Tesla inherited this technology from the company it purchased, Maxwell Technology, but problems still arise with its implementation in mass production. According to The Information, some 4680 type battery cells are capable of sudden failure during operation.