Tesla has unveiled its new battery cell, now known as the 4680, at its Battery Day event.
The new cell is bigger, offers six times the power of Tesla’s previous cells, and five times the energy capacity.
Tesla is currently holding its Battery Day, and it started the show by unveiling its new in-house battery cell.
Last week, Electrek had an exclusive first look at the new cell, and today’s event confirmed what we reported: Tesla developed a new cell with a much bigger form factor and a tabless design.
Today, the company confirmed that the new cell is 46mm by 80mm, giving it its name: the Tesla 4680 battery cell.
The company faced the same problem as anyone who tries to increase capacity by making a bigger cell. They have a thermal management program.
As previously reported, Tesla fixed this issue by creating the first tabless cylindrical cell design (before and after):
Along with confirming the information, Tesla released new data about the performance of the new cell.
Tesla claims that the new form factor of the cell results in a five-times increase in energy and six-times increase in power capacity:
The automaker says that just with the new cell form factory they would increase range by 16%.
However, Tesla didn’t reveal improvement in energy density and instead focus on the form factor.
It also results in a 14% reduction in cost per kWh — again at the cell form factor level only.
But the cell is only a small part of the story.
The manufacturing process to make those cells also bring several cost improvements, and we are going to discuss those improvements in upcoming articles, along with the chemistry changes that Tesla is planning.
Check our Tesla Battery News Hub for all the latest news to come out of the event.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
