Tesla’s value plummets by $50BN as Elon Musk admits his promised cheaper battery is three YEARS away – despite announcing plans for $25,000 fully autonomous vehicle
- Elon Musk announced Tesla is developing a ‘tabless’ battery cell
- The announcement was made during a livestream of Tesla Battery Day
- Musk also announced a $25,000 electric Tesla that is fully autonomous
- But both are at least three years away, and the announcement left investors slashing $50 billion from Tesla’s market value
Investors slashed $50 billion from Tesla’s market value on Tuesday despite Elon Musk’s promise to cut electric costs so radically that a $25,000 self-driving electric car will be possible – but not for at least three years.
Musk made the announcement at the firm’s live-streamed ‘Battery Day’ that had shareholders sitting in their own Tesla watching the billionaire speak on a stage.
Musk shared that the firm is currently producing the cell, dubbed 4680, at its pilot Fremont gigafactory that will reduce cost and lower the sales price of its electric vehicles closer to gasoline-powered cars.
Eliminating the tabs allows for continual motion through the system, which provides six times the power and enables a 16 percent range increase to vehicles.
Musk also revealed the firm plans to make 20 million electric vehicles a year, along with an affordable model for $25,000 that is also fully autonomous.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a ‘tabless’ battery at the firm’s live-streamed ‘Battery Day’ that showed attendees sitting in their own Tesla watching the billionaire speak on a stage
Musk called it the ‘Tesla drive-in movie theater,’ when he took the stage overlooking a parking lot of Teslas with attendees sitting inside to adhere to social distancing recommendations
Tesla’s market cap dropped $20 billion in just two hours after trading closed Tuesday, as Musk and other Tesla executives presented their new battery and manufacturing strategies. Shares closed down 5.6% and dropped another 6.9% after hours.
‘Nothing Musk discussed about batteries is a done deal,’ said Roth Capital Partners analyst Craig Irwin. ‘There was nothing tangible.’
Investors had expected two significant announcements at Musk’s oft-touted ‘Battery Day’: The development of a ‘million mile’ battery good for 10 years or more, and a specific cost reduction target – expressed in dollars per kilowatt-hour – that would finally drop the price of an electric vehicle below that of a gasoline car.
Musk offered neither. Instead, he promised over the next several years to slash battery costs in half with new technology and processes and deliver an ‘affordable’ electric car.
‘In three years … we can do a $25,000 car that will be basically on par (with), maybe slightly better than, a comparable gasoline car,’ Musk said.
Musk acknowledged that Tesla does not have its ambitious new vehicle and battery designs and manufacturing processes fully complete. Tesla has frequently missed production targets set by Musk.
Tesla’s market cap dropped $20 billion in just two hours after trading closed Tuesday, as Musk and other Tesla executives presented their new battery and manufacturing strategies. Shares closed down 5.6% and dropped another 6.9% after hours
Tesla expects to eventually be able to build as many as 20 million electric vehicles a year. This year, the entire auto industry expects to deliver 80 million cars globally.
Building an affordable electric car ‘has always been our dream from the beginning of the company,’ Musk told an online audience of more than 270,000.
Tesla on Tuesday also introduced a new Model S Plaid, a 520-mile range sedan that can reach top speeds of up to 200 miles per hour (320 km per hour), with deliveries starting in 2021. The Plaid was listed on Tesla’s website on Tuesday at a price of nearly $140,000.
Musk called the live-stream event the ‘Tesla drive-in movie theater,’ when he took the stage overlooking a parking lot of Tesla vehicles with attendees sitting inside to adhere to social distancing recommendations.
He joked, ‘It’s a little hard to read the room with everyone being in cars,’ even as he was received by a chorus of honking horns.
Musk revealed his plans for Tesla to produce its own battery cells, which the firm has begun at its pilot Gigawatt facility in Fremont, California.
The factory pulled inspiration from facilities that work with filling bottles and making paper to design a way to keep continual motion through the assembly line.
The tabless battery, called 4860, is said to make the firm’s electronic vehicles five times more energy dense, six times more powerful and increase the range by 16 percent
For the design, Tesla took the existing foils of traditional batteries and created a laser pattern to form dozens of connections in the material
The tabless battery, called 4860, is said to make the firm’s electronic vehicles five times more energy dense, six times more powerful and increase the range by 16 percent.
For the design, Tesla took the existing foils of traditional batteries and created a laser pattern to form dozens of connections in the material.
Not only does it provide benefits to vehicles, but the design is easier to manufacture, needs fewer parts and without tabs it has a shorter electrical path length.
By reducing the distance the electron has to travel, the cell has less thermal issues and a shorter path length in a larger tabless cell, according to Musk, who explained that though the cell is bigger, it measures 80 millimeters in length, the power to weight ratio is better than a smaller cell with tabs.
‘This is quite hard to do,’ said Musk.
‘Nobody’s done it before. So.. It really took a tremendous amount of effort within Tesla engineering to figure out how do we make a fricking tabless cell and make it actually work and connect it to the top cap.’
The new cell manufacturing system is ‘close to working’ at the pilot plant level, Musk said.
Tesla will produce the new battery cells initially on a new assembly line near its vehicle plant in Fremont, California, with planned output reaching 10 gigawatt-hours a year by the end of 2021.
Pictured is the design of a traditional battery. Tesla’s new 4860 eliminated the negative and positive tabs at the ends
Tesla is currently producing the cell, dubbed 4680, at its pilot Fremont Gigawatt factory -making it the firm’s first in-house battery
Tesla will produce the new battery cells initially on a new assembly line near its vehicle plant in Fremont, California, with planned output reaching 10 gigawatt-hours a year by the end of 2021
Musk also note the firm aims to rapidly ramp up battery production over the next few years, to 3 terawatt-hours a year or 3,000 gigawatt-hours, roughly 85 times greater than the capacity of the Nevada plant.
Along with announcing the new battery, Musk touched on Tesla’s upcoming Plaid powertrain that is listed for $139,000 on the website and be available in the Model S late 2021.
Musk’s ‘Cybertruck’, which looks like an armored vehicle with a futuristic angular body in gunmetal grey, will go into production in 2021.
The new tabless battery will, however, power the upcoming Tesla electric vehicles, including the heavy-duty Semi truck, the roadster and the futuristic Cybertruck – all of which were on display at the event.
Tesla’s pickup, which Musk said will cost $39,900 (£31,000) and up, will have an estimated battery range of up to 500 miles.
Tesla boasts that the car’s nearly impenetrable monochrome exoskeleton provides passengers maximum protection, together with ultra-strong glass that absorbs and redirects impact force.
The $200,000 Roadster sports car – an updated version of Tesla’s first production vehicle from 2008 – can travel 620 miles on a single charge, a new record for an electric vehicle.
Its maximum speed is over 250 mph, which would make it the fastest car in general production.
The Semi, meanwhile, which was unveiled in 2017, is a long silver cargo truck that can reach 60 miles per hour with an 80,000-pound load.
It has Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving system, designed to keep a vehicle in its lane without drifting, and can transition from one freeway to another with no human intervention.
Prior to the event, many had speculated the Musk was set to unveil the firm’s highly-anticipated ‘million-mile battery’ that was said to clock up over a million miles over the course of their lifespan – rather than powering a car for a single million-mile-journey without recharging.
The battery will power upcoming Tesla electric vehicles, including the heavy-duty Semi truck, the roadster (pictured) and the futuristic Cybertruck – all of which were on display at the event.
The tabless battery will power upcoming Tesla electric vehicles, including the heavy-duty Semi truck (pictured)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking on the heavy pickup truck market with the Cybertruck electric vehicle
Musk said in a tweet that the battery improvements to be unveiled will not be in high-volume production until 2022.
‘Important note about Tesla Battery Day unveil tomorrow,’ said Musk in a tweet early on Tuesday.
‘This affects long-term production, especially Semi, Cybertruck & Roadster, but what we announce will not reach serious high-volume production until 2022.’
In a tweet earlier this month, Musk said ‘many exciting things will be unveiled on Battery Day’.
WHAT IS TESLA’S ‘GIGAFACTORY’?
Tesla’s ‘Gigafactory’ is located on Electric Avenue in Sparks, Nevada.
The factory’s name stems from ‘giga,’ a unit of measurement that represents billions.
One gigawatt hour is the equivalent of generating one billion watts for one hour — one million times that of one kilowatt hour.
Tesla says the factory will be producing 35 gigawatt hours of batteries by 2018.
The current structure has a footprint of 1.9 million square feet, which houses 4.9 million square feet of operational space across several floors
It’s currently about 30 percent finished – and once complete, it will be the biggest building in the world
That’s the equivalent to the entire world’s production in 2014.
New York City uses around 52 gigawatt hours of energy per year.
Once completed in 2020, the factory is set to become one of the biggest buildings in the world, with a final size of 10 million square feet.
Already, the current structure has a footprint of 1.9 million square feet, which houses 4.9 million square feet of operational space across several floors.
‘Once complete, we expect the Gigafactory to be the biggest building in the world,’ Tesla said.