Tesla has revealed that it’s working on a new type of battery that should see the cost of its cars plummet and allow it to produce a ‘mass market’ vehicle for less than £20,000. That’s less than the cost of a Volkswagen e-Up and a…well, any current electric car you care to name, actually. Tesla’s cheapest model today is the Model 3, with a starting price of £43,000
The battery, which has been designed by Tesla alone and will be produced in-house, uses a cylindrical design that has five times more energy, six times more power and gives a 16% longer driving range compared like-for-like with the batteries in today’s Teslas. It’s also half as expensive to produce.
Electric cars are currently significantly more expensive than their internal combustion counterparts – to the tune of £12-15,000 in the case of the new Vauxhall Mokka not including the Government grant, for example – because of the additional R&D costs and the cost of manufacturing the batteries, which use expensive materials like cobalt. An electric car’s battery alone is estimated to account for around a quarter of the manufacturing cost, with analysts reckoning that price parity will come only when a battery pack’s cost drops below $100 (£78) per kWh. Tesla’s production battery pack currently costs around $156 (£120) per kWh.
The new battery will be produced at the company’s Nevada factory using largely automated processes, and some of the cost will be offset by recycling old batteries at the same plant, as well as reducing cobalt use significantly. It’s not known whether this new battery uses cobalt, but Tesla is known to be developing alternatives out of silicon and other cheaper materials.
“We do not have an affordable car. That’s something we will have in the future. But we’ve got to get the cost of batteries down,” said Musk.
Tesla currently buys batteries from companies including Panasonic and LG Chem, an arrangement that will continue until Tesla has got its own production up to speed, which includes building new battery production plants across the US.
Keyword: Cheap new Tesla battery will unlock ‘sub-£20,000’ model