There's been much hype surrounded around the Battery Day that Tesla and Elon Musk announced a while back but now we can confirm that the big news is that they're designing new bespoke batteries from the ground up on their own. To that end, they're aiming to cut the overall cost of battery production in half.
There was some water poured on the fire earlier this week when Elon made it clear that he thought the general impact of the news wouldn't be fully impactful until 2022. That's an odd departure from tradition by Musk who's notorious for ambitious deadlines and ultimately failed promises in many cases. Nevertheless, with good intentions, it seems the innovator and engineer is focused on bringing the next evolution of battery technology to the forefront sooner than anyone had imagined.
Building Better Batteries Means Better Everything For Tesla
By improving battery tech, it improves every aspect of the Tesla business model. Not only will the obvious things improve like range, horsepower output, and overall energy density improve, it will also lower the overall cost for Tesla. That means that the cost of cars can come down. More people will be able to purchase them and Tesla will have the opportunity to improve further. Just by making the overall size of the package more efficient, Tesla is claiming five times more energy capacity, 16% more range, and six times the power output. Combine those stats with the other innovations that they've made and there is a real possibility that this will completely accelerate Tesla past their competition in a way that wasn't expected until today.
The Overall Goal: Improving Sustainable Energy
Tesla is trying to advance sustainable tech as quickly as they possibly can. With that in mind, they're making the biggest strides they possibly can by halving the cost per kWh and producing seven times their current battery output. In addition, they're planning on reducing their overall cost by some 75% due to these advancements. That will go a long way in combatting the mountains that must be moved to fully transition to sustainable technology. Right now, the goal is 100gWh of internal production by 2022 and 3tWh by 2030. Nevertheless, Elon understands that there's a ton of work to get where they want to go. With that in mind, it's nice that they've been measured about their excitement with regards to the announcement.
Full Self Driving Tech Might Be Released This Year
Elon teased one quick thing during the end of the shareholders meeting. He's thinking that within roughly a month, some Tesla owners will have a chance to use the beta version of their first fully autonomous self-driving technology. That would be, as he puts it, "a profound change" to the version that owners use today. If true, it would be a great answer to the promised self-driving tech in the new Lucid Air.
Sources: Tesla