And it is not the physique panels…
Manufacturing Hell
It is trying more and more probably that Tesla is dealing with severe bother with the manufacturing of its not too long ago introduced Cybertruck — and we’re not speaking in regards to the pickup’s extremely uncommon bulletproof chrome steel exoskeleton or massive glass panels.
As Tesla insiders told Reuters, the EV maker’s major bottleneck on the subject of constructing the Cybertruck is definitely producing the automobile’s next-generation 4680 lithium-ion battery cells, roughly 1,360 of that are wanted for every Cybertruck.
Tesla is making an attempt out a wholly new strategy to producing the cells that depends on dry-coating electrodes, a course of that is technically quicker and cheaper — not less than on paper.
However there’s one large drawback: Tesla apparently has but to determine the way to scale up the method sufficient to energy total automobiles with them.
Commercialize It
Whereas dry coating anodes and cathodes is a confirmed strategy to construct small vitality storage units, it has but to be completed for EVs on a “mass scale and at a excessive sufficient velocity,” as battery expertise guide Yuan Gao advised Reuters. “Tesla is the primary one to attempt to commercialize this.”
If Tesla needs to provide 250,000 Cybertrucks, it might want to provide nearly one million 4680 cells a day. In accordance with the report, Tesla’s Giga Texas manufacturing unit is just producing them at a fee that is adequate for twenty-four,000 Cybertrucks a yr proper now.
One insider, nonetheless, was optimistic, telling Reuters that if Tesla have been to “crack the code,” the “velocity would choose up” and that “there may be already a whole lot of traction in dry coating.”
And it is not simply battery cells which might be including to Tesla’s Cybertruck woes. Bending the thick chrome steel panels that clad the large pickup has additionally proven challenging.
It is also strikingly unclear what number of Cybertrucks have already been delivered to this point. Final month, stories recommend the corporate solely managed at hand over roughly a dozen or so vehicles following the corporate’s chaotic delivery event.
And getting that quantity to develop any time quickly — Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggests manufacturing quantity will solely occur in 2025 — can be a gargantuan job.
At this level, that should not be something new for the automotive firm. Musk has change into intimately familiar with manufacturing hell at Tesla through the years.
“We dug our personal grave with the Cybertruck,” Musk said throughout Tesla’s Q3 quarterly earnings name earlier this yr. “I do need to emphasize that there can be huge challenges in reaching quantity manufacturing with the Cybertruck after which making the Cybertruck cashflow constructive.”
Extra on the truck: Elon Musk Says the Cybertruck Will Be Able to Travel as a Boat, Until It Sinks
