Elon Musk says prototypes are easy, production is hell. And when it comes to the long-awaited Cybertruck, Tesla’s hell is its pioneering 4680 battery.
Tesla delivered the first of its futuristic stainless steel-plated electric pickups last month and CEO Musk said in October that it would probably hit an annual production rate of a quarter of a million vehicles at some point during 2025.
But Tesla is still a long way off that kind of production pace, and one of the main bottlenecks is the speed it can make the 4680 batteries used in the Cybertruck with its new dry-coating technology, nine people familiar with the matter said
Really sounds like Tesla has a way forward but it will be slow grinding to get the gremlins and make sure it scales across all the lines that they need it on. I don’t think it is a huge problem, but the time that they are giving themselves is a pressure cooker in itself. Hopefully Tesla can do it, but I’m also thinking that there are many other companies that they could just buy to make this process easier and quicker. Scale is a hell of a problem though!