What's up with 4680 battery cells?
Why is Tesla even trying to produce 4680 cells?
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‘‘The 4680 is going to fail and never be successful.’’
― Robin Zeng, CATL Founder and Chairman
You've likely heard all the hype surrounding Tesla's 4680 battery cells. Introduced during Tesla's Battery Day in 2020, the 4680 cell format promises higher energy content and power capability. Four years later, this battery format has only been integrated into some Tesla vehicles produced at Gigafactory Texas, such as the Model Y and the Cybertruck.
The production of 4680 cells has encountered significant challenges. There have been rumors that Tesla has been recalling Cybertrucks equipped with these 4680 cells due to an issue termed "Cell Side Dent Induced Core Collapse." Additionally, CATL's founder, Robin Zeng, has publicly expressed skepticism about this battery format, stating outright that it will never work. Even Elon himself was on the verge of scrapping the project altogether. Nevertheless, it seems that Tesla has tapped China's Ningbo Ronbay New Energy and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing to help reduce materials costs as it ramps up production of 4680 battery cells.
Tesla has been attempting to scale up the production of their 4680 cells for the past four years. According to their public announcements, in September 2024, they stated that they had produced their 100 millionth 4680 cell. Prior to that, in June 2024, they announced the production of their 50 millionth cell. This means that within a span of three months, they produced 50 million cells, equating to an annual production rate of 200 million cells. Given that each cell is estimated to have 87 Wh of energy, this translates to 17.4 GWh of 4680 cells produced per year.1 This is enough to quip 141 463 Cybertrucks with batteries.2
This is a promising achievement. But why is Tesla even considering the 4680 cells? Why go through all this trouble of introducing a new cell format?
