Tesla announced that it has produced 1 million next-generation 4680 batteries at its pilot plant in California. The announcement comes as Tesla expects to begin delivering the Model Y equipped with its 4680 battery and new structural battery pack.
In 2020, Tesla introduced the new 4680 battery, a new cylindrical battery with much larger dimensions that the company claims to produce 6x more power and 5x the energy capacity while significantly reducing costs.
Since its unveiling, Tesla has been producing 4680 batteries at its "pilot production facility" in Fremont and mass-producing them at other factories, including the Texas Gigafactory and the Berlin Gigafactory.
While Tesla calls it a "pilot plant," the automaker has announced a goal of producing 10 GWh batteries at the plant, more than many other full-scale battery factories. Last month, Drew Baglino, Tesla's senior vice president of engineering, said Tesla had made "meaningful progress" in ramping up production at the pilot plant, but he did not confirm capacity. The wording isn't entirely clear, but it sounds like Tesla has produced 1 million 4680 batteries as of January.
Unfortunately, the authorities didn't give us much information, because the current productivity is the most important indicator of what kind of car production Tesla can achieve from the capacity of the pilot plant. With about 1,000 batteries per car, 1 million is enough to produce about 1,000 Model Y vehicles in Gigafactory, Texas.
That's not enough, but if Tesla can produce 100,000 4680 batteries per week, then it will be able to produce 100 Model Y cars per week, which will be a good start, because the 4680 battery will be synchronized with the production of the new Model Y.
Last month, Baglino also said tesla doesn't expect the 4680 battery to become a bottleneck in the Production of Model Y batteries at the Gigafactory in Texas, saying the company has also made progress in deploying larger 4680 battery production at new factories.
Tesla's oldest battery partner, Panasonic, has made an initial announcement that it will deploy a prototype production line for new batteries. Subsequently, Panasonic's new CEO Yuki Kusumi said that if the test production is successful, Panasonic is ready to make a "big investment" in the production of Tesla's new battery.
In October 2021, the Japanese manufacturer launched its own 4680 battery, which it developed in partnership with Tesla. Now, a new report from Nikkei Asia says Panasonic has approved an investment of 80 billion yen ($705 million) at its Wakayama plant in Japan to produce 4,680 batteries for Tesla.
Panasonic would not comment on the report and said it remains focused on its test line: We are looking at various options for mass production, including the test line we set up this fiscal year. However, we don't have anything to announce at the moment.
Panasonic plans to produce less than 10 GWh at the plant, the report said. With an average packaging capacity of 60 kWh, this is enough to produce more than 150,000 cars per year.