Elon Musk claimed last month that Tesla’s Cybertruck pickup truck would achieve an annual production target of 250,000 units by 2025. According to a Reuters report citing nine sources, Tesla is still far away from such a production target because one of the “major” bottlenecks is the production speed of 4680 batteries.
This 4680 battery uses novel dry coating technology during its manufacturing process. Reuters conducted comprehensive calculations using public data and public data provided by the above-mentioned sources. The results show that the 4680 battery cells currently produced by Tesla’s Giga plant in Texas can only power 24,000 Cybertrucks per year, which is approximately equivalent to the target production. 10%.
If calculated based on the number of cells contained in the 4680 battery pack installed in the Cybertruck, Tesla needs to achieve its annual production target of 340 million batteries. In other words, the daily output should reach nearly 1 million units to meet the demand for 250,000 Cybertrucks.
Calculations show it currently takes 16 weeks for the Texas factory to produce 10 million batteries. This means an annual production of 32.5 million of these batteries, equivalent to the battery usage of 24,000 Cybertrucks.
Elon Musk has also previously said that prototyping (producing the Cybertruck) is easy and production is “hell.” This time, according to these nine people, Tesla has not yet solved the problem of “dry coating” on an industrial scale. They say the anode dry coating of the 4680 cells is currently fine, but they are having trouble producing the cathode dry coating – the most expensive part of the battery.
Tesla also hopes to use the 4680 cells to power other vehicles, especially a $25,000 (Note: currently about 179,000 RMB) small car expected to be launched in the mid-2020s.
Tesla plans to install eight production lines at the Texas factory in two phases, with the final four production lines set to be operational by the end of 2024, according to Drew Baglino, Tesla’s battery chief, in October. However, people familiar with the matter said that it is not easy to copy existing technology from one production line to another.
