Tesla lays out ‘Battery Day’ plans that lead to a $25,000 electric car

As far as things that are closer to reality, Musk claimed a private beta of the long-awaited Full Self Driving upgrade for Tesla Autopilot could start in the coming months, following a “fundamental rewrite” of the car’s software.

Tesla

Along with Drew Baglino, SVP of powertrain and energy engineering at Tesla, Musk said the changes include new tabless cells that can contain six times as much power, five times as much energy and increase range by 16 percent.

The new cells measure 46mm by 80mm, which gives them their name, the 4680. As you can see in the livestream below, making these larger cells raised issues of thermal management, which has been addressed by their cylindrical design. Eliminating a “foil-to-tab” weld and aligning the foils in a shingled spiral gives these cells a shorter electrical path, although as TechCrunch notes, the manufacturing process isn’t quite working yet.

Tesla

Tesla

That’s in addition to “in body” battery cell engineering that makes the battery an integral part of the car’s frame, and plans to extract lithium from clay in the Nevada desert.

As Reuters notes, analysts estimate Tesla battery packs cost bout $156 per kWh in 2019, and could cut that to as low as $70 or $80 in the next few years, which could shave off a couple thousand dollars per vehicle.

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