After a year Tesla unveiled their new cell design during Battery Day. Tesla battery supplier Panasonic recently showcased the 4680 lithium-ion cylindrical battery. It was shown to the wall street journal and shared a few details on its production.
Kazuo Tadanobu, The head of Panasonic’s battery said that the larger cell designs require five times the capacity of smaller models. Last month Panasonic announced that the company is creating a new energy business, which they names Panasonic Energy Corporation, by April 2022.
In an update about the 4680 battery cell, Panasonic stated that Tesla plans to work with Panasonic (The current battery supplier for Tesla) to increase its battery production capacity. During an earning’s call Lars Moravy, Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering termed that Tesla is generally in a “Cell-constrained world.”
Replying to an investor’s question about the production of Tesla’s $25K model, Lars Moravy said “We’re working on a strategy to increase our production rates as quickly as possible. I think Zach spoke to that well. And we’re doing this while trying to add the least amount of incremental complexity to the business. We don’t want to add any new vehicles to our lineup when we’re generally in a cell-constrained world.”
Making new vehicles amid chip shortage
Amidst the challenges faced by Tesla all around, including the shortage of chips and recent glitches in its Full-Self Driving Beta 10.3, the company seems to determine to continue its work on some new exciting vehicles and start the production. During the Earnings call Q3 2021, Tesla announced that the Cybertruck will be their next launch.
While talking about the production of Cybertruck, Moravy also mentioned the supplies demand Tesla has faced and now facing as the effects of a worldwide pandemic.
He said, “As we’ve mentioned before, after Model Y in Austin, our next product launch will be Cybertruck. And that timing, of course, depends on increasing cell capacity both from our suppliers and through our in-house cell as well as many other headwinds we face in the supply chain and completing our currently full plate of products on the table.”
With the continuous challenges faced by Tesla, the company is determined that will start testing a few vehicles with 4680 cells by next year. For now, Panasonic Energy Corporation will officially work alongside Tesla in the test production of 4680 battery cells in March 2022. The game-changing battery cells are expected to push the EV industry even further as more ranges and efficiency will be possible.
