This guy sounds like he knows his battery tech. And this would explain all the longs on Twitter grumbling the 4680s are not up to snuff. Just putting this out there for those of us who hold $TSLA:
In September 2020, Musk announced Tesla’s next battery, the 4680. This gigantic cylindrical cell would be far cheaper, faster at charging, and way more energy dense than anything they had developed before. Two years on, and Tesla is now producing and installing 4680 batteries into their production cars, but the next-generation battery that Musk promised has failed to materialise. What’s worse, a recent teardown by the now-famous Sandy Munro shows the current 4680s are actually worse than Tesla’s old 2170 cells. So, what’s going on? And can Musk remedy this situation?
Let’s recap what the 4680 was promised to be and what Tesla is actually making today (a topic I already covered here). Musk originally declared the 4680 would have some breakthrough design features such as a tabless design, dry-coated electrodes, zero cobalt content (the mining of which has a significant environmental impact), a silicone anode, and a structural battery pack. What’s more, the much larger form factor would mean each pack would have far fewer individual cells, making them less expensive to assemble. All of these features combined would create a battery that is cheaper and more powerful than anything else on the market.
Some Model Ys are currently being built with a structural 4680 battery pack. This is where the cells are set in a resin-like material, allowing them to become a load-bearing member of the vehicle’s chassis. This saves time and money by simplifying and speeding up the battery pack assembly process. In fact, the current 4680 packs are $3,600 cheaper to manufacture than the old, $11,000 2170 packs.