Funny how some fans are happy to buy a $250K car with just $20K in batteries, as they are presuming the 200kWh is needed to get the power to get it to launch this quick. Tesla makes quick slow cells. Every hybrid on the market has quicker cells. Those would not need 200kWh to achieve that launch power. For a small production such as the very costly R3, Tesla could just get some off the shelf cells from Panasonic or anyway and just do that 1.9 dash with easy. And it would not need to be 100kWh even. Such power cells do offer bad energy density usually, but it's improving.
If R3 does NOT have a revolutionary lighter/denser cell tech, it's a total ripoff in my book. And if they slack that hard, don't be surprised to see others offer the same (acceleration and range) for a fraction of the price with off the shelf cells from Samsung or LG.
The legacy car brands are not making 200 kWh Tesla killers yet not because they can't build such quantum tech, it's just they'd need to build too many, and they can't get the cells for that many cars. The GigaFactory was a necessity for steep growth, not just a nice-to-have.
I do wonder what the prototype cars had under the floor. A ~100kWh pack with normalized C rating, or a super light pack from 150-200kWh in homegrown 2170 cells. A proto you can go crazy light with, relatively easily. Once you want to build 1,000 of them, you can run into marginal unit costs that are just too high.
With purchased higher C cells, a 100kWh R3 would be loads lighter than what being presumed to simply have the well known unchanged 2170's, and still offer the punch experienced at the unveiling event.
If truly 200 kWh in standard 2170, it's a bad deal financially and technically a bit uninspired. Where is our 6-8% annual density improvement? In 6 years we only got the "85" -> "90" cell upgrade, and it hurt longuevity with frequent DC charging. The 2170 seems to have brought nothing in terms of density, but it does charge nice and quick for its size.
