Tesla Has Successfully Tested Its 4680 Cells Ahead Of Mass Deployment

Tesla in its Q2 earnings report has revealed that it has successfully tested and validated its 4680 battery cells also called tabless cells which are said to provide dramatic improvements in range, charging and battery life. These cells are critical to Tesla launching the Semi Truck which it also further delayed thanks to production constraints of these new types of cells. Tesla notes these cells will help it reduce costs by 50 per cent. 

"We have successfully validated the performance and lifetime of our 4680 cells produced at our Kato facility in California. We are nearing the end of manufacturing validation at Kato: field quality and yield are at viable levels and our focus is now on improving the 10% of manufacturing processes that currently bottleneck production output. While substantial progress has been made, we still have work ahead of us before we can achieve volume production. Internal crash testing of our structural pack architecture with a single-piece front casting has been successful," Tesla noted. 

Work has started for the Austin gigafactory which will also have a battery facility 

Panasonic had revealed that it was working with Tesla prototyping these new batteries. Panasonic's new CEO had even said he didn't mind making a huge investment in these cell types if they worked well in the prototype stage something which Tesla has now come out and confirmed. Tesla is said also be working with LG for these cells. 

Tesla needs these cells to be produced at scale for its Texas and Berlin gigafactories, especially for the Model Y and Semi Truck. It has been doing production at Kato and once production is figured out it will build new factories for the same. It has a goal of having 4680 cels with 100 GWh capacity by 2023 and 3,000 GWh by 2030.