Tesla Announces It Produced 10 Million 4680 Battery Cells at Giga Texas

Tesla announced it produced 10 million 4680 battery cells at Gigafactory Texas. It is a good sign for the automaker’s production ramp-up, which relies heavily on the new cell.

The 4680 battery cell format has taken the industry by storm since Tesla unveiled its own cell strategy at Battery Day in 2020.

The automaker claimed the potential to reduce battery cost by over 50% with the new design; it has been trying to bring it to volume production since, but it has run into some bottlenecks.

Earlier this year, Tesla gave a rare update about 4680 cell production that included good news about the automaker working through those bottlenecks, but it didn’t share numbers regarding production output.

To be clear, that’s the total production to date and not the current output, which is the most important metric, but it is still a good sign of progress, considering Tesla hasn’t been producing cells in Texas for long.

Ten million 4680 cells are enough to produce about 12,000 Model Ys.

Top comment by Preston Liked by 17 people

That's a big number, but to put this in perspective, when production hits full capacity of Model Y and Cybertruck, they'll probably need 10 million or more cells every week. If they weren't also bringing in batteries from other locations, they would only have a small trickle of cars coming out. Of course, they're likely planning on always having some of the cells coming from other sources, but I would guess they're hoping to scale to 5 million cells per week, perhaps by the end of next year. Also, as they work on ramping cell production, they're also undoubtedly working on increasing the energy density and improving the chemistry. And a big part of their plan involves the cathode plant that is still being assembled.

Giga Texas has produced more than 12,000 vehicles to date, but it has relied on cells from Tesla’s pilot battery factory in Fremont.

Now Tesla will likely start to rely more on cells produced at Gigafactory Texas, which should help reduce logistic costs.

On top of production in California and Texas, Tesla also announced an expansion of Gigafactory Nevada near Reno to produce the 4680 cells.

While Tesla still heavily relies on cell suppliers for most of its electric vehicle production, the automaker is expected to become a major player itself in cell production with those manufacturing projects.