As we reported on Friday, local Reno media outlets were given rare access to the Tesla Gigafactory and we even got our very first glimpse of the manufacturing floor. Though reporters were not allowed to take footage of the assembly line and it looks like all pictures were from the same angle near the offices.
Now it appears that someone with better access leaked several pictures of Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack assembly line, and it’s awesome.
A Redditor going by the username “prollywannatho” shared an imgur album on the Tesla subreddit Saturday night, with no other information.
A quick look at the person’s Reddit history shows that they claimed to be a “robotics service engineer” or in other words, a “robot programmer”.
Interestingly, several of the pictures feature what could be ‘automated guided vehicles’ (AGVs) carrying Tesla battery modules and we can also see what could be magnetic guiding tape on the floor.
Here’s the gallery from imgur:
We can see a bunch of custom Powerwall crates stacked up in the background of a few of the pictures.
Earlier today, we reported on Tesla officially discontinuing the Powerwall for backup power in order to focus on the 7 kW (really 6.4 kWh) dayly cycling Powerwall. A Tesla representative confirmed seeing “enormous interest” for the daily cycling version.
The pictures also show that Tesla is using the same modules for the Powerwall, its home battery pack, and the Powerpack, its battery pack for commercial or utility-scale projects.
The company seems to be using only 1 module in the Powerwall, which can hold 6.4 kWh of energy, and the Powerpack appears to be able to fit up to 16 of the same modules for up to 102.4 kWh. Previously, Tesla was referring to the Powerpack tower as a 100 kWh unit.
It’s a very cool sneak peek into the Gigafactory thanks to prollywannatho. Can you spot something else interesting? Let us know in the comment section below.
Our recent coverage of the Gigafactory:
- Amazing new aerial pictures of the Tesla Gigafactory suggest lots of activity at the plant – February 2016 [Gallery]
- First glimpse inside Tesla’s Gigafactory [Video]
- Elon Musk and SolarCity CEO organized an event for Nevada lawmakers at Tesla’s Gigafactory to lobby for solar energy
- Will human hands ever touch Tesla Gigafactory battery cells?
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I’m going to lay bets that the modules for Model 3 are going to be very, very similar. Though probably not identical, since they need higher peak power.
The cell modules in those slabs seem to be identical in layout to the ones in the Model S/X packs. Probably not the same cell chemistry though; energy storage would be higher.