August 10 afternoon news, a number of sources familiar with the matter revealed that the blade battery supplied by BYD has been delivered to Tesla’s super factory in Berlin, Germany, which is also Tesla’s first application of BYD battery super factory, is expected to be equipped with BYD blade battery Tesla vehicles can be the fastest in a month (that is, the end of August to early September) off the line. From another source also learned that the much-anticipated Shanghai super factory has no plans to use BYD batteries for the time being.
As of press time, BYD has not commented on the matter; Tesla’s U.S. and European sources have not responded to emails seeking comment.
But a number of people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named, confirmed the authenticity of the news. A BYD source revealed that BYD supplied blade batteries to Tesla and shipped them to Europe. At the same time, the first batch of Tesla vehicles equipped with BYD’s blade batteries will be ready to roll out of the Berlin plant within a month at the earliest. A Tesla Shanghai super factory people said, has not yet seen any piece of BYD battery in the Shanghai super factory on the production line, nor have I heard of carrying out related plans.
At present, Tesla’s Berlin super factory mainly produces Model Y, which also means that BYD blade batteries will first be equipped with a part of the Model Y. Tesla is also reportedly piloting the Model Y with the 4680 battery pack in Berlin.
In early June 2022, BYD Group Executive Vice President and Director of the Automotive Engineering Research Institute Lian Yubo admitted in an interview with CGTN host Kui Yingchun that BYD would provide batteries for Tesla. But at the time he did not reveal the specific timetable, he said, “We admire Tesla, and Elon Musk is also a good friend, and immediately ready to supply batteries to him (Tesla), we are all friends.”
Rumors of cooperation between the two sides have a long history, dating back as far as August 2021, when a media report said that BYD would supply blade batteries to Tesla in the second quarter of 2022, and Tesla models with blade batteries have entered the testing phase. This news was not confirmed by both sides at the time, until Lian Yubo publicly acknowledged the cooperation between the two sides in an interview.
Before BYD, Tesla in the global scope of the battery supplier mainly includes South Korea LG, Japan Panasonic and Ningde Time, of which, Tesla in China and the Asia-Pacific market mainly by Ningde Time supply power battery, a small part by LG supply. 2021 April, BYD announced that its full range of pure electric models change blade battery, so BYD blade battery is mainly internal supply, previously only a small amount of external supply China FAW, Changan Automobile, Toyota, Zhongtong Bus and other car companies.
A background of the cooperation between the two sides is that BYD surpassed Tesla in sales in the first half of 2022. BYD’s financial report for the first half of 2022 shows that in the first six months of this year, BYD sold 641,400 new energy vehicles, a 314.9 percent year-on-year jump, surpassing Tesla’s global sales of 564,000 vehicles. Benefit from the car sales surge, BYD in the power battery business also once exceeded the old battery manufacturers such as Panasonic, and even in the lithium iron phosphate market segment to beat LG New Energy and Ningde Times.
Official data show that the total cumulative installed capacity of BYD batteries in 2022 is about 34.042GWh, an increase of 167.90% over the same period last year; in the first half of 2021, BYD ranked second in the country with only 8.422GWh of installed battery capacity, with a market share of 15.7%.
