There were a couple of segments of Tesla’s 2024 annual shareholder meeting that stood out to me as particularly interesting with regards to Tesla battery production. The first part was from Tesla’s main presentation, and I’ll start with that. However, the big information actually came toward the end of the meeting in the Q&A session., Musk states: “And we’re also innovating a lot in battery production with the 4680 that’s built right here.
“But it is, it is a hard problem, I have to say. There’s quite a lot of brain damage that’s required to be good at cell manufacturing.But I think it does — it does give Tesla resilience if there are changes in the, I don’t know, geopolitical situation, somehow.Indeed, one wouldn’t want to be under the thumb of China too much if geopolitical issues between the US and China heated up. Tesla’s battery supply from China could then dry up.
So, in short, it is notable and impressive that Tesla is engaged in its own cathode and lithium refining. “So, achieving affordability is actually at this point, um, more about the rest of the car than it is actually about the battery pack. The price per kilowatt-hour of cells from suppliers has dropped dramatically. So, there was a massive spike for a few years in the cost of lithium-ion cells from suppliers because every car manufacturer put in gigantic orders for battery packs — like giant, giant orders.