Tesla just announced that it has produced 10 million 4680 battery cells at its Gigafactory near Austin, Texas, according to reporting from Electrek.
This news comes via a tweet from the company's official Twitter account, which included a photo of the many employees ostensibly responsible for the production of the batteries.
Produced our 10 millionth 4680 cell at Giga Texas this week! pic.twitter.com/0x2CNoDvCR
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 16, 2023
The electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer first unveiled the 4680 battery at a shareholder meeting called Battery Day 2020, during which Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk said, "The battery stuff we're going to talk about is truly revolutionary and essential to Tesla's goal."
Unfortunately, the production of the 4680 batteries has hit a few snags over the years. Tesla claimed that the 4680 cell is 50% cheaper to manufacture than its previous battery cells, as well as having a more rigid structure. However, for reasons that Tesla has not been willing to share, it has been unable to ramp up production of the battery cells until recently.
The 10 million 4680 battery cells referenced in Tesla's tweet refer to the total number of cells produced to date, not to any kind of current manufacturing capacity. Still, the milestone seems to indicate that the EV company has worked through its previous production problems and is now producing the 4680 battery cells at a higher rate than ever before.
In a rare update back in April 2023, Tesla's senior vice president of engineering Drew Baglino described the 4680's production progress.
"For the Cell Factory, for the Texas 4680 factory, we are part way through building and commissioning and installing and operating, will be 70% lower capex per gigawatt hour than typical cell factories when fully ramped in line with what we described on Battery Day," he said. "On the cell design, we're in production with not only the first generation tabless cell we unveiled on Battery Day but a second more manufacturable version in Texas today."
According to Electrek, 10 million 4680 battery cells are enough to produce about 12,000 Model Ys. The 4680 battery cells are also expected to be used in Tesla's long-awaited Cybertruck, which has faced a great many production delays of its own.
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