Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentioned on the corporate’s 2020 This fall earnings name that every one engineering work is now full on the Tesla Semi, the freight-hauling semi truck that the corporate is constructing with an all-electric powertrain. The firm expects to start deliveries of Tesla Semi this 12 months, it mentioned in its This fall earnings launch, and Musk mentioned the one factor limiting their capacity to provide them now is the supply of battery cells.
“The foremost purpose we now have not accelerated new merchandise – like for instance Tesla Semi – is that we merely don’t have sufficient cells for it,” Musk mentioned. “If we had been to make the Semi proper now, and we might simply go into manufacturing with the Semi proper now, but we might not have sufficient cells for it.”
Musk added that the corporate does count on to have ample cell quantity to fulfill its wants as soon as it goes into manufacturing on its 4680 battery pack, which is a brand new customized cell design it created with a so-called ‘tables’ design that permits for better vitality density and, due to this fact, vary.
“A Semi would use sometimes 5 occasions the variety of cells {that a} automobile would use, but it will not promote for 5 occasions what a automobile would promote for, so it sort of wouldn’t make sense for us to do the Semi proper now,” Musk mentioned. “But it is going to completely make sense for us to do it as quickly as we will handle the cell manufacturing constraint.”
That constraint factors to the identical conclusion for the potential of Tesla creating a van, Musk added, and the lifting of the constraint will likewise make it doable for Tesla to pursue the event of that class of car, he mentioned.
Tesla has huge plans for “exponentially” ramping cell manufacturing, with a purpose of getting manufacturing capability infrastructure in place for a Toal of 200 gigawatt hours per 12 months by 2022, and a goal of with the ability to really produce round 40% of that by that 12 months (with future course of enhancements producing extra gigawatt hours of cell capability in gradual enhancements thereafter).
