Elon Musk is hyping Tesla’s upcoming Battery Day – saying that it will be “one of the most exciting days in Tesla history” and hinting at a ‘Terafactory’ announcement.
Those announcements were expected to happen at what Tesla has been referring to as “Powertrain and Battery Investor Day.”
Much like the “Autonomy Day” that happened last year, Tesla said that it is planning to give presentations to investors, which are livestreamed, about the automaker’s latest development in powertrains and battery technology.
Later, Musk referred to the event as “Tesla April company talk” and said that it will be held at Gigafactory New York, where Tesla plans to offer media and investors tours of the facility.
Earlier this month, Musk updated Tesla’s upcoming event to add that it will focus just on batteries and not powertrain.
During a conference call following Tesla’s Q1 2020 results yesterday, Musk was asked about the Battery Day.
The CEO said:
“Yes. Actually, we don’t want to preempt Battery Day. We want to leave the exciting news for that day, but there will be a lot of exciting news to tell. And I think it would be one of the most exciting days in Tesla’s history and we’re just trying to figure out the right timing for that.”
Musk gave a hint later in the call when he talked about Tesla’s next factories becoming “Terafactories”.
When announcing the first Gigafactory, Tesla decided to call it that because it was going to produce ‘gigawatt-hours’ (GWh) in battery capacity.
A ‘Terafactory’ could be producing over a terawatt-hour of battery capacity, which is 1,000 GWh or about 20 times the current capacity of Panasonic’s production at Gigafactory Nevada and several times the world’s production for EV batteries.
As we previously reported, Electrek revealed that Tesla will present the result of its internal secret Roadrunner project at the battery event.
The goal is for Tesla to produce its own battery cells using technologies developed by Tesla’s internal teams, including work from its research lab in Canada led by Jeff Dahn, and new technologies recently acquired through the acquisition of Maxwell, on a massive scale and at a cost below $100 per kWh.
Musk said that Tesla is aiming for the event to be held the third week of May:
“We think probably the right timing will be probably the third week of May. Not giving a firm date, but we think that probably that’s the right timing. And depending upon what we’re allowed to do, it will either be in California or Texas.”
It will put the event between May 17-23.
Electrek’s Take
On top of the actual new cells and production system developed under Roadrunner, I think Tesla is going to announce a location to produce over 1 terawatt-hour of battery cells.
The fact that Elon mentioned California or Texas might lead people to think that the factory is going to be at one of those locations, but I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to that conclusion.
The event was first supposed to happen in Gigafactory New York, but I think he doesn’t believe any event is going to be able to be held in NY next month.
California is where Tesla is based and where the automaker is running its pilot production line for the Roadrunner battery cells and Texas is where Elon is based right now for SpaceX work and also where restrictions are being relaxed.
I am not saying that it’s not possible Tesla might announce a deal for a factory in Texas at the event, but I am just saying that it’s not a done deal just because he mentioned the state.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Comments