By now the world should know what big plans Tesla is pursuing in the field of battery production. For the first time in June 2019, the company announced an information day on this topic, which should take place in the same year. Since then it has been postponed again and again, and the Tesla boss kept the interest in cooking with little information bites; most recently, he announced the prospect of this June. But a Tesla observer now wants to know more about the topic: among other things, that a new Tesla super battery should first be installed in Model Y.
Tesla partner in China is CATL
It is already clear that what Tesla will present in June or later will have an enormous dimension and meaning. CEO Musk said at the end of January that the battery strategy would overwhelm everyone – it would even overwhelm him, even though he already knew it. The Reuters news agency probably learned only a small part of it in mid-May. According to this, a battery announced by Tesla with a durability of 1 million miles should come at the beginning of 2021 at the latest and also be cheaper and more powerful than previous ones.
Reuters named the Chinese company CATL as a partner for this part of the plan, which is to deliver the first cheaper batteries for the locally produced Tesla Model 3 these days. But it is expected that Tesla itself will also go deeper into battery cell production or at least bring more of its own developments into it.
New cell for Tesla Model Y?
Musk has already confirmed that technology from storage specialist Maxwell Technologies, which was taken over by Tesla, will play a role. This should enable much more efficient production and higher energy densities. In addition, there are chemical patents for greater density and durability, which Tesla has registered together with its Canadian battery research partner Jeff Dahn.
All of this actually means spectacular news from Tesla when it is finally revealed in a big context. However, a Tesla observer on Twitter has already published some new information that, according to his (contradicted) information, comes from an internal or otherwise well-informed source. Accordingly, Tesla will soon use a different cell format again – the so-called 2170 cells, which are larger than the standard 18650 still used for Model S and Model X, had already been developed for Model 3 and then Model Y.
THE B-DAY INVASION IS UNDERWAY
Here is a series of short despatches from the front line pic.twitter.com/1mp9mDwgbZ
– JPR007 (@ jpr007) June 7, 2020
According to @ jpr007, who appears to be from the financial industry and who regularly publishes Tesla analyzes and news on Twitter, the new cell is part of the Roadrunner project, which other media have already reported. Since last year, a team in a kind of Tesla laboratory in California has been preparing for series production. “Roadrunner is a different cell than 2170,” @ jpr007 reports about it now. And as the first Tesla model, the Model Y will be equipped with it.
Tesla Semi gets 4.0 battery
At first, he did not have any further information to offer, but confirmed that Tesla was facing major changes and that batteries would form the center of it; own cell chemistry and production are still up to date, but only a small part of the overall picture. It is currently a 2.0 battery, with which Tesla already wants to leave all current batteries from other manufacturers far behind. And the company is already working on 4.0 for the Tesla Semi tractor, a battery that will be characterized, among other things, by its comparatively huge format.
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