Tesla recently confirmed its plans to shift its lineup of Standard Range (SR) vehicles to lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
In order to do so, the automaker has reportedly ordered a 45GWh supply of LFP batteries from China’s CATL.
According to anonymous sources who spoke with the Chinese publication 36kr, the order is enough for Tesla to build around 800,000 EVs, and is intended for 2021 production plans.
The report also said that Tesla will increase cell production at Gigafactory Nevada by more than 40GWh next year.
Combined, this would give Tesla enough capacity to sell 1.5 million vehicles next year. If you are counting, that is nearly double what Tesla is on track to sell in 2021.
Currently Tesla has the SR and SR+ Model 3, and SR Model Y in select markets.
The massive order should not come as a big surprise. Tesla is seeing record demand that have pushed wait times out to nearly a full year for some of their vehicles, including the SR+ Model 3.
CEO Elon Musk has also said numerous times that despite their 4680 battery cell production goals, they will still buy as many batteries as the suppliers can provide.
If this deal is true, it looks like they are doing just that.
Several unnamed insiders: Tesla books 45GWh of #CATL 2022 #LFP capacity that will be mainly used in Model 3 & Model Y.
(36KR) pic.twitter.com/8LvsYKgaNh— Moneyball (@DKurac) October 29, 2021
h/t: CNEVpost
