Tesla has announced the battery cell team at Giga Texas hit a major milestone, producing its 10 million 4680 battery cell this week in Austin. As has become tradition Tesla took to Twitter to announce the milestone moment, sharing a picture of some of the battery cell team members outside Giga Texas.
Produced our 10 millionth 4680 cell at Giga Texas this week! pic.twitter.com/0x2CNoDvCR
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 16, 2023
First unveiled at the Battery Day event in 2020, the 4680 battery cell provides 5x more energy, 16% more range, and 6x more power, and is also much cheaper to produce than conventional lithium-ion batteries. The company initially started production of the 4680 cell at a pilot facility on Kato Rd in California, just down the road from the Fremont factory.
With the construction of Giga Texas the necessary 4680 production equipment was installed at the factory in late 2021 and into 2022, before production began later in the year. Before today the most recent update on 4680 cell production at Giga Texas came in December, when Tesla said they had built 868,000 of these cells, or enough to produce about 1,000 EVs in one week.
About six months later and Tesla’s cumulative total from Giga Texas has now topped 10 million cells, which would be enough to built about 11,500 EVs. Given the timing between the two updates just shy of 26 weeks apart, that means Tesla is producing on average about 351,000 4680 cells every week at Giga Texas. That figure is lower than we expected at this point, but still an impressive accomplishment nonetheless.
Tesla will obviously need many more 4680 cells than that in the future with the Cybertruck on the horizon, which was originally expected to launch with 4680 cells. With the production numbers where they are currently, it would not be surprising to see Tesla launch the Cybertruck with 2170 cells, or they might have enough for this year as production of the Cybertruck will still be quite low in 2023 before ramping into 2024.
The company is already laying the foundation to expand 4680 production. Earlier this week it was reported that Tesla had secured a new 210,000 square foot facility near Kato Rd that will be used for 4680 production.
