Tesla's 4680 battery is roaring in full self-driving

"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" (editor Zheng Yuanfang), on the 26th local time, Tesla held a 2021 annual earnings conference call, at which Musk revealed the latest movement of the company's 4680 battery and automatic driving.

Tesla's Model Y from Tesla's Texas Gigafactory will be powered by 4680 batteries and will begin deliveries at the end of the quarter — a more precise and early point than previously expected. Musk has previously said that the first vehicles carrying the 4680 will be shipped this year.

However, the first Model Y off the production line of the Berlin Gigafactory in Germany will be equipped with a 2170 battery instead of a 4680, and the former is also installed in the Model 3. Drew Baglino, Tesla's senior vice president of powertrain, added that the 4680 battery will not be the limiting factor for production in 2022.

This also means that in the race of 4680 batteries, Tesla, which was the first to release the battery, will finally lead the opponent to achieve mass production delivery.

Just this week, the Nikkei Shimbun reported that Panasonic plans to invest about $700 million in the construction of a 4680 battery factory in Kasama Prefecture, Japan, and will start small-scale production this year, confirming technical safety and efficiency, and will put into mass production in 2023.

The domestic BAK battery and Ewell Lithium energy in the development of 4680 batteries is relatively accelerated, at present, the two companies have launched relevant integration technologies, and give a more specific plan. The Head Leopard Research Institute expects that in 2023, the 4680 battery will usher in the inflection point of large-scale market application.

It is worth mentioning that the Model Y of the Texas plant will also be equipped with a structured battery pack, which can also be directly mounted on the bottom plate of the body while increasing the density to improve assembly efficiency.

Figure | Seat installation of models equipped with structured battery packs (Source: Tesla)

In terms of self-driving, Musk has made it clear that Tesla will achieve full self-driving within this year.

At present, Tesla's FSD software is only in beta, and the number of beta users has risen rapidly recently. The beta version was first launched in October 2020, and the initial users were limited to a small number of car owners and some employees; nearly a year later, the user range was expanded to car owners with a safety score of 100 points; the score threshold was lowered to 98 points in recent days, and the number of users "exploded".

The company's latest report shows that there are nearly 60,000 vehicles in the United States today equipped with the beta version of FSD, compared with only a few thousand in the third quarter of last year.

In addition, Musk said on the 16th of this month that the FSD beta will be "cautiously" promoted to Canada in 2-4 weeks.

Behind Musk's "ambition" to achieve full autonomous driving may be related to the company's AI technology.

The company revealed at the meeting that Dojo will come in handy this summer and may be promoted to other companies in the future.

Dojo is Tesla's training unit, 120 Dojo can form a cabinet ExaPOD, each ExPOD hashrate up to 1.1 EFLOPS, comparable to the world's head supercomputing equipment. When Dojo came out, the industry had expected that ExaPOD would be used in Tesla's own data center to train autopilot algorithms.