Not sure if this has been posted:
Winning In Asia: A ZoZo Go Podcast: Kurt Kelty, VP, Automotive at Sila Nanotechnologies on coming breakthroughs in EV batteries. on Apple Podcasts
Kurt Kelty is a very interesting interview guest since he was a major player at Tesla on the battery side for a long time. Some of the nuggets from my listening.
1. Originally at Giga Nevada, Elon wanted to manufacture cells themselves, but didn't have the competence and thus brought in Panasonic as a manufacturing partner. This means the genesis of battery day technologies extends back > 6 years.
2. Kurt Kelty left in 2017 from what i can see, and he mentions that the tabless cell r&d was already going on at that time.
3. Panasonic refused to work with Tesla for the longest time, but Kurt was extremely persistent. Panasonic created the Suminoe cell plant but it was a ghost town and poor investment. Tesla essentially saved this factory, and Panasonic saved Tesla. It was really hard to get a cell supplier for Tesla in the early days, and Panasonic was by far the best at this time.
4. Kurt thinks cells are near parity from the Tier 1 cell suppliers now, back in 2012 this was not the case.
5. Kurt says he's never worked with someone who could predict the future as well as Elon, and also set really hard, impossible seeming targets that were actually achievable. There was peer pressure among employees that they would not let each other down.
6. Sila Nano silicon anodes are showing 20% improvement in energy density, but material is currently expensive.
7. Kurt thinks Tesla will be selling a couple million units in a few years.