They won’t be structural 2170. It will be a separate Fremont-like 2170 line. It was mentioned in the last earnings call and by Elon recently in his SV owners club interview. The factory is huge, it makes no sense to only have 1 line. And it will churn out identical to Fremont cars (well almost if they use the front casting in Austin). And they are probably shipping pre assembled packs from Nevada. There is no 2170 production at Texas that we know of so if you ship just the cells then you need to create the line to manufacture packs which is silly when you already have that in place. If they can ship castings from Texas to Fremont, they can ship battery packs from Nevada to Texas.
There's been no discussion of building at Austin a Fremont MY chassis configuration (v1.5, a chassis with rear casting and 2170 battery pack)(v1.0 has no castings).
Musk mentioned a 2170-pack MY. That doesn't describe which chassis.
Remember, using both F+R castings saves many assembly steps, in both time as well as in the direct costs of stamped steel parts/welding and the associated robots.
This was
the major factor in undertaking GigaPress diecasting engineering for the MY.
Use of the front casting for the MY chassis
requires an additional floorpan sheet be added to reinforce the chassis when using a 2170 battery pack.
This has been clearly documented in Germany, in the Austin Giga Rodeo, and prior descriptions by Tesla.
Front castings have been being made, and stored onsite, at Texas since the Fall. Clearly documented in GigaTexas drone videos.
All MY AWD chassis are v2.0 (F+R casting, structural pack).
2170 battery packs are largely assembled in Nevada. Early 4680 battery packs for Austin were shipped in from Fremont.
We don't directly know any current status on battery packs at Austin, other than that 4680's are limited in availability.
So production would require several changes / parallel stations to accommodate the non-structural 2170 battery pack.
That's not to say it can't or won't be done.
It makes sense, at some point, to enable both chassis builds to maximize flexibility and provide for MY cars at various price points.
It also makes sense, financially, to push out of Austin as many cars as possible - the tax incentive alone is very big.
But it's so early, and in the midst of Austin ramp up an added complexity to logistics, assembly, and distribution, that seems a reach.
Fremont is going gangbusters, and the product quality coming from Fremont has improved dramatically over the last year or so.
Maybe this discussion was instigated by Musk deliberately to keep the fires burning for the Tesla diehard community and drive further demand.
Tesla is a master at online marketing. This smells of more of it.