Panasonic will mass-produce the 4680 Type battery, developed by Tesla, starting from April 2023. The 4680 Type battery, which Tesla unveiled in 2020, has twice the diameter of Tesla’s 2170 cells, which currently fill the Model 3 and Y’s battery packs. Doubling the diameter results in four times the volume of the individual cells. The new form factor can achieve up to 16% more range.
Used efficiently, the added volume of the new battery cells means that Tesla can reduce the number of individual cells per car battery pack from thousands to potentially less than a thousand. This can reduce the cost per kWh by as much as 14%.
Panasonic is investing $700 million into building a production facility at its Wakayama Factory in Western Japan to manufacture the 4680 Type Li-Ion batteries.
Tesla currently produces 4680 battery cells in its Gigafactory in Texas. It says the supply of the 4680 cells is strong but that the ongoing chip shortage is the main bottleneck. The new cell will first be integrated into the powerpacks for the Tesla Model Y.
The 4680 Type battery is essential for Tesla’s new structural battery pack, which acts as a bonded structure between the car’s upper and lower steel face sheets, essentially eliminating the central body parts of the car and giving better torsional rigidity and inertia.
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