Samsung Has Just Embarrassed Tesla

Tesla's "revolutionary" tech will soon be old-school.

Photo by Lennart Uecker on Unsplash

Back in 2020, Tesla unveiled its “revolutionary” 4680 battery, which was meant to extend Tesla’s already substantial lead over its competition. This battery’s combination of ultra-cheap production and high-end-specs would enable Tesla to undercut the competition by a country mile, placing it at the forefront of the EV world for years to come. Or, at least, that was the plan. While the 4680 has cut costs slightly, it still hasn’t met its price or specification targets 4 years later, and the competition, such as BYD and their Blade Battery, has caught up and overtaken Tesla. As such, Tesla has taken a questionable turn to AI to grow the company as its market advantage wanes. However, the company that most likely manufactured your mobile phone is utterly embarrassing Tesla by proving giant leaps in automotive battery technology are possible and that Tesla is throwing its market advantage out the window by chasing a rabbit hole.

Before we dig into this, let’s quickly recap what the 4680 was meant to be and what it actually is. In 2020, Musk promised the 4680 would bring several new technologies to market, including a larger cell format, structural battery packs, tabless design, zero cobalt, pure silicon anodes and dry-coating, and that this would make it considerably cheaper at $60 per kWh or nearly a third of the cost of typical cells in 2020, faster charging and higher energy density. But that isn’t the battery Tesla currently produces. The current 4680 battery packs have the larger format, structural battery pack, tabless design, and some even have dry coating, but those other specifications have yet to materialise. These features alone have made the battery cheaper by making assembly easier, and as such, 4680 cells cost around $105 per kWh, only about 10% to 20% cheaper than current cells. However, the current 4680 is actually less energy dense and charges at the same speed, or sometimes slower, than Tesla’s previous generation battery, the 2170.

Why has Tesla failed to live up to their promises (again)? Well, the dry coating was meant to create the majority of the cost savings, and only once those cost savings had materialised could they use pure silicon anodes, which would increase energy density and slash charge times. But, dry coating seems to be a technology that can’t work at scale, and Tesla is seriously struggling to solve its issues.

In fact, these issues are so bad that Musk has given Tesla engineers until the end of the year to solve them. Otherwise, he will scrap the 4680 project altogether, even though Tesla has already poured billions upon billions into it.

So, what about this other battery? How is that any different?

Well, Samsung recently unveiled its new solid-state battery at this year’s SNE Battery Day.