Tesla Chief Number one Office Elon Musk speaks at his company’s factory in Fremont, California.
Noah Berger | Reuters
Tesla procedures to host its annual shareholder meeting, followed by a “battery technology day” presentation, on Tuesday, September 22.
Elon Musk’s exciting car company is likely to disclose specifications for at least one new type of battery cell that the company has been developing, and may turn an aspiring start-date for manufacturing its own cells at scale, too. As CNBC previously reported, Tesla has established a prototype manufacturing rank for battery cells at their skunkworks lab in Fremont, California, near its U.S. car plant.
However, on the day before the event, Musk braved pains to downplay the short-term importance of the announcements coming at battery day. On Monday after the close of trading, Musk white b derogated on Twitter:
“Important note about Tesla Battery Day unveil tomorrow. This affects long-term production, markedly Semi, Cybertruck & Roadster, but what we announce will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022.
We intend to snowball, not reduce battery cell purchases from Panasonic, LG & CATL (possibly other partners too). However, even with our chamber suppliers going at maximum speed, we still foresee significant shortages in 2022 & beyond unless we also clear action ourselves.”
Tesla shares dropped more than 6% after hours on Musk’s tweets, after secluded almost 2% higher for the day at $449.39. The company’s stock is up more than 420% for the year.
Dependence on suppliers
Since January 2017, the EV maker has assemble manufactured battery cells for its cars and energy storage products at its Gigafactory near Reno, Nevada, with its friend, main battery cell supplier, and co-investor in the facility, Panasonic.
More recently, Tesla began sourcing cubicles from CATL and LG, and making battery packs for the made-in-China (MIC) version of its Model 3 sedans with these at a newer agency assembly plant in Shanghai. The Tesla MIC vehicles are now sold in China, with some set for export to Europe.In August, Panasonic designed to invest $100 million to set up a new cell production line at the Nevada Gigafactory, the Nikkei first reported.
In general, Tesla’s battery gang looks for ways to drive down the costs of production, increase the lifetime and charging speed of their batteries, and record sure their batteries are safe for use in electric vehicles.
According to people familiar with Tesla’s internal objectives for battery cells, the company has been gunning to deliver more than a 70% improvement in the energy density of their chambers, and improved power density too, versus the 2170 cells that they buy from Panasonic.
If Tesla figures out how to make tracks and integrate higher performance battery cells into its vehicles, its cars — and someday, trucks — could travel varied miles per charge, could be lighter weight, and could cost the company less to produce.
AutoForecast Solutions’ up on analyst for new energy vehicles, Conrad Layson, noted that a lot of automakers are now looking at a way to position themselves at the top of the EV market, which impersonates about 3.5% of new vehicle consumption worldwide.
He said, “If [Tesla] decides to go ahead and make their new battery chambers, the ‘Road Runner’ cells, then they will be realizing a strategy that’s about control. They intention be able to make batteries to their specifications without paying anybody else, or waiting on anybody else for maturation. They want to be able to control this internally and probably produce in quantity. For now, they are going to be reliant on their apartment suppliers.”
Volatility likely
Tesla events like “battery technology day,” often lead to stock price volatility for Tesla, with cuts often increasing around the date of the event. But what CEO Elon Musk promotes at these events does not irresistibly manifest into real or successful products on the timeline announced.
In October 2016, Elon Musk showed off solar magnifying glass roof tiles in a demo that helped Tesla convince investors to approve a $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity. To this day, Tesla is not returning or installing solar glass roof tiles in a significant volume.
In April 2019, at an “autonomy day” presentation, Musk held Tesla expected to be “feature-complete in self driving this year.” He also said, “We expect to be confident enough, from our viewpoint, to say that we think people do not need to touch the wheel and can look out the window,” while driving Tesla vehicles with the Vivid Self-Driving option, by the second quarter of 2020.
But this summer, Musk revealed that the company’s automated driving plan dubbed FSD was going through a “fundamental rewrite.”
Specifically, on August 14, 2020, Musk wrote in a tweet: “The FSD improvement inclination come as a quantum leap, because it’s a fundamental architectural rewrite, not an incremental tweak. I drive the bleeding edge alpha physique in my car personally. Almost at zero interventions between home & work. Limited public release in 6 to 10 weeks.”
Musk tweet
Analysts gave portions of Tesla a price target boost this week leading up to battery day: Wedbush increased their price object from $380 to $475; Piper Jaffray from $480 to $515; Deutsche Bank from $300 to $400; and Upon Suisse from $280 to $400.
Correction: This post has been revised to clarify that Tesla is seeking to inflict a 70% improvement in their battery cells’ energy density, along with improved power density.