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When do you think the Model Y will Get the 4680 battery?
- Thread starter jayely1
- Start date
It’s 6+ months away for sure. No one can really say whether it’s worth waiting for (from your perspective).
Initial customer deliveries of Model Y with 4680’s is very likely this year (< 5 months) but the real question is when will they be able to ramp up cell production that allows the Model Y to ramp up as well.
cleantechnica.com
“Expect the first fully produced test Model Y, which will be running operational but not street legal, in the next week here at Giga Texas. And that would include the stampings, the castings, the welding, the painting, the batteries — everything — a full test running prototype. It’s also used for training of the new employees.
Tesla To Make Its 1st Texas-Built Test Model Y Next Week, 1 Month Ahead of Giga Berlin - CleanTechnica
Made-In-Texas Production Model Ys To Begin In 2 Months
cleantechnica.com
“Expect the first fully produced test Model Y, which will be running operational but not street legal, in the next week here at Giga Texas. And that would include the stampings, the castings, the welding, the painting, the batteries — everything — a full test running prototype. It’s also used for training of the new employees.
“And I also found out that Tesla is convinced that within the next two months, they will have production Model Ys coming out of Giga Texas.”
Given the discussion during the Tesla earnings call about the 2170 battery backup plan for giga-Austin Model Y's, it seems likely it will be well into 2022. Musk talking about backup plans likely means that the "backup plan" is the current plan; especially given comments during the earnings call about the production challenges remaining to be addressed for the 4680.
Agree, I don’t see new cells in the Y for at least a year. They will be more focused on getting those for the cybertruck vs Y.
I don’t think at all. It is software controlled. Added range and structure pack is the benefit.
MY1stEV
Member
My personal opinion is a Model Y with a 2170 or 4680 cells will be no different (except for the redesigned battery pack being structural ).
The primary beneficiary of the 4680 cell is Tesla. The increased storage capacity of the 4680 means that Tesla can build MORE Model Y's with FEWER batteries and still achieve the same performance. This will increase Tesla's profitability margins per car. Don't expect Tesla to announce a 400+ mile MYLR when they already have more orders than they can complete with the current specs.
The primary beneficiary of the 4680 cell is Tesla. The increased storage capacity of the 4680 means that Tesla can build MORE Model Y's with FEWER batteries and still achieve the same performance. This will increase Tesla's profitability margins per car. Don't expect Tesla to announce a 400+ mile MYLR when they already have more orders than they can complete with the current specs.
Yes, if the 4680 was ready for production the CT would have remained the top priority focus for giga-Austin production.
Terminator857
Active Member
It won't be faster initially. Elon may decide to sell a ludicrous version, who knows, but that will be a year or more later after initially launched. Initial production is expected by October. Very small numbers, perhaps just goes to employees. May not have 4680 cells by that time, but likely a few cars with 4680 before end of year. Will take 11 months after start of production before reaching full volume production. So September of 2022 before readily available.
More info here: Giga Texas Updates
Even if true, I would expect any available 4680 to be limited to Performance MY with premium pricing. It doesn't sound like everything is ready to fulfill hundreds of thousands of orders of MY, even without CT. The fact that they have 2170 "back up plan", as mentioned earlier, indicates not even Tesla is confident they can get 4680 ready for the masses this year. Previously Elon stated Giga Austin was all 4680, but not now.
I would love to see a LR+ version with ~420 miles of range and acceleration boost for $5-6K more than LR now. This would slot in nicely as the LR would be $53,990K, LR+ $58,990 and P $60,990. In this scenario optioned up on a LR+ it would be = to P cost with more range but less performance...
Austin is literally building test Model Y's rn for training, with a suspected ramp up for production models by October/November. Elon has also confirmed the Model Y's have taken precedent of Cyber Truck and they will be made at Austin with 4680's from the start. The writing is on the wall. I expect this becomes much more apparent as we get closer and closer to October, going into Q4.
If you look at the price of M3SR+ vs M3LR there is a $10k price difference for 90mi. more range (263 vs. 353). I believe the price difference has historically been $9k before the recent price changes. That puts the price of every additional mile at ~$100-$111.11.
If this applied to your MYLR vs. MYLR+ example, I would expect the MYLR+ w/ 416mi. (326mi. + 90mi) to cost $63-64k.
I don't think Tesla will do this. Instead, I expect them to use the 4680 cells cost and density improvements to keep range about the same and reduce cost and battery supply constraints.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
This is what I could find:
Elon Musk, July 26th, 2021:
" So let's see, the Model Y in Texas -- made in Texas and Berlin will be -- will look very much like the Model Ys we currently make, but there are substantial improvements in the difficulty of manufacturing. So for example, the Model Y made here and in Berlin will have a cast front body and a cast rear body, whereas the one in California has cast rear body but not a cast front body.
We're also aiming to do a structural pack with 4680 cells, which is a mass reduction and a cost reduction, but we're not counting on that as the only way to make things work. We have some backup plan with a non-structural pack and 2170s essentially. But at a scale production, we obviously want to be using 4680s and structural pack. From a physics standpoint, this is the best architecture, and from an economic standpoint, it is the lowest-cost way to go, so the lightest, lowest cost.
But there's a lot of new technology there. So it is difficult to predict with precision when does it work and when do you reach scale production. And Drew is going to talk a bit more about the 4680 productions. Yeah, so we are making great progress on 4680 cells.
But there are -- there is a tremendous amount of innovation that we're packing into the 4680 cells. And so it's not simply a sort of minor improvement on state of the art. There are -- and we went through this on the battery cell day, really dozens of -- half a dozen major improvements and dozens of small improvements. So I think it will be great, but it's difficult to say when the last of the technical challenges will be solved."
To me that doesn't sound like Giga Texas is going to be pumping out 4680 Model Ys at the start - maybe just some prototypes for a bit, before transitioning.
Elon Musk, July 26th, 2021:
"Really, this is not -- we'll definitely make the 4680 reliable enough for vehicles, and we, I think, are at the point where, in limited volume, it is reliable enough for vehicles. Again, going back to limited production is easy, prototype production is easy but high-volume production is hard. There are a number of challenges in transitioning from sort of small-scale production to a large volume production. And not to get too much into the weeds of things, but right now, we have a challenge with basically what's called calendaring, or basically squashing the cathode material to a particular height.
So it just goes through these rollers and gets squashed like pizza dough, basically, but very hard pizza dough. And it's causing -- it's denting the calendar rolls. This is not something that happened when the calendar rolls were smaller, but it is happening when the calendar rolls were bigger. So it's just like -- we were like, OK, we weren't expecting that."
Andrew Baglino (SVP, Powertrain & Energy Engineering), July 26th, 2021):
"On the reliability side, as Elon mentioned, we have successfully validated performance and the lifetime durability of the 4680 cells produced in Kato, and we're continuing ongoing verification of that reliability. We're actually accruing over one million equivalent miles on our cells that we produce every month. In our testing activities, the focus on that is very clear. We want high-quality cells for all of our customers.
And yeah, we're just focused on the unlucky limiting steps in the facility. And with the engineers focused on those few steps remaining, we're going to break through as fast as possible."
So again, to me it looks like sometime in 2022.
Andrew Baglino:
"We'll have all the equipment installed to accomplish 100-gigawatt hours, and it's possible that by the end of the year [2022], we will be at an annualized rate of 100-gigawatt hours by the end of the year [2022]."
Elon Musk:
"Yeah, I mean my guess is more likely than not, above 50% of reaching 100-gigawatt hours a year by the end of next year on the annualized rate, something like that. "
I guess we'll see.
Terminator857
Active Member
Dents in the press after calendaring sounds like one the simplest things to take care of. Use harder or thicker more durable press material? Heat the cathode material? Insure cathode material is uniform? Change the press roles regularly and reform the old ones?
Many simple solutions to that problem. When talking about high volume, need to conduct tests and make sure the best solution is chosen, but doesn't sound like big problem.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I’m sure it is just an example. I imagine if it were simple it would not have been a problem. I have no opinion on what the timeframe may be. But new tooling takes time, has to be validated, regression tested, etc.
As Elon says, production is hard. It’ll happen, but there are engineering challenges.
The timeframe just is what it is, in the end.
I just provided the quotes since I hadn’t seen the actual details provided by Tesla discussed here (I am sure they have been discussed).
The summary as I see it is that as of a week ago they did not have a validated production-ready process for 4680. It seems like it is probably close but I have no idea.
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