Tesla builds a pilot battery production line and will become the second OEM of its own battery factory

According to foreign media reports, Tesla is building a pilot battery production line in Fremont, California, and designing its own battery production equipment. This is also Tesla's first attempt to produce power batteries on its own. Faced with the growing global electric vehicle market and the annual sales target of 500,000 units, which is an expansion of 40% compared to 2019, even with first-line power battery suppliers such as Japan's Panasonic, South Korea's LG and China's CATL, Tesla La still hopes to take his fate into his own hands to avoid the dilemma of Jaguar, which stopped production for a week due to insufficient battery supply.

It’s no wonder that CATL, which just announced the signing of a battery cooperation agreement with Tesla, has issued risk warnings in succession in the past two days, mentioning that the cooperation agreement with Tesla will still have an impact on the company’s future operating performance. Uncertainty.

Since 2019, there have been rumors that Tesla plans to make its own batteries for its electric vehicles.

It first acquired Maxwell, a supercapacitor manufacturer with battery technology. In October 2019, Tesla quietly acquired Hibar, a Canadian battery production equipment manufacturer, and later became an annual shareholder. At the conference, Tesla all but confirmed that it will produce its own batteries.

According to a new job posting from Tesla, Tesla is currently building a pilot battery production line in Fremont. In some job postings, Tesla describes the responsibilities of "designing and debugging Tesla's first battery production tools." In addition, Tesla's battery manufacturing and battery engineering team is also recruiting talents in this area in Europe and revealed new plans to expand battery manufacturing in Europe: positions responsible for planning and managing new battery manufacturing and equipment engineering projects need to be promoted Development and deployment of new manufacturing equipment and processes and planning and execution of new battery manufacturing expansion plans in Europe.

Although the battery manufacturers that have announced successful cooperation with Tesla include Panasonic, LG and CATL, Tesla has always stated that it will build its own battery factory in order to further reduce its battery costs. On January 29 this year, Tesla once again reviewed its battery plan and claimed that "Tesla will not raise capital and will focus on increasing battery production capacity and reducing battery costs."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk mentioned in the fourth quarter 2019 earnings call that it would become new partners with LG and CATL. A few days later, CATL, the largest power battery supplier in China, issued an announcement on the morning of February 3, confirming that it had signed an agreement with Tesla to supply lithium-ion power battery products to Tesla. Delivery starts in July.

At present, the power battery cells of Tesla’s models are all produced by Panasonic and LG. Among them, Model S and Model X use Panasonic 18650 batteries, which were announced in December last year. The "Catalogue of Recommended Models for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles" shows that the domestic Tesla Model 3 uses both Panasonic and LG Chem's 2170 batteries.

As the sales of Tesla models continue to rise, battery demand continues to increase. Tesla has expressed dissatisfaction with Panasonic's insufficient battery supply, saying it is the "fundamental constraint" on its electric vehicle production. Therefore, there are two other battery cooperation plans between LG and CATL, but since Tesla and CATL It was learned from the cooperation agreement that the scale of the supply agreement between the two is relatively small. So at present, it seems that although Tesla has signed supply agreements with three battery suppliers, this may be a transitional measure adopted by Tesla in order to wait for its own battery factory to achieve mass production.

The global new energy vehicle industry has developed rapidly in recent years, and almost every automobile company hopes to control the core component of new energy vehicles—power battery technology. As the core component of electric vehicles, power batteries account for as much as 40%-50% of the total vehicle cost. As a result, many car companies have launched strategic cooperation with power battery manufacturers or built their own battery factories to seek their own long-term development.

Among the global new energy OEMs, BYD is currently the only one that can produce and supply batteries by itself. Even if Tesla's battery production line is completed and put into production smoothly, it will not be completely self-sufficient in a short time, so its cooperation with mainstream battery suppliers such as Panasonic will continue in the short term.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.