Tesla Battery Day: They've Gone to Plaid

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

Tabless batteries and a Plaid trim level of the Model S made the biggest news at Tesla’s much-hyped “Battery Day.”

Batteries that last longer, cost less, and have more power will help drive EV adoption, and the new 4680 tabless battery cells, which are cylindrical and larger, are claimed to provide five times as much energy as before, with six times the power and up to 16 percent more range. Tesla says production on these batteries has already begun.

“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,” Musk said.

Other planned battery improvements include different electrode materials, better cell design, and upgraded production processes.

Musk also claimed that a revised “full self-driving version” of Autopilot – which, again, is NOT Level 5 autonomy – in the next month or so. Given Autopilot’s documented failures and that it is not full autonomous, we’re skeptical at the moment.

Cheaper battery costs could lead to more affordable Teslas, and Musk claims a $25K car is in the works. Musk also touted improvements in the company’s manufacturing abilities.

Tesla has purchased a 10,000-acre mining site to mine more lithium. A new casting machine is meant to integrate the battery and its components into the car the itself, with the goal of reducing mass and the number of parts while also making the structure of the vehicle have more integrity.

A Plaid version of the Model S will be available next year, with pre-orders already available. The car will cost $140,000, have 1,100 horsepower, and Tesla claimed a 1:30.3 lap time at Laguna Seca. The range is listed at greater than 520 miles and top speed is claimed to be over 200 mph. Zero to sixty is claimed at under 2 seconds and a quarter-mile run under 9 seconds.

The Plaid will use three electric motors.

[Image: Tesla]

Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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  • Dukeisduke Dukeisduke on Sep 24, 2020

    I'm still wondering when they'll have planned replacements of the model lines - the basic styling of the Model S is the same as the day it launched. Will it become the EV version of the Checker Marathon? Also, is anyone proofreading the articles here? I see some glaring grammatical errors, like "Musk also claimed that a revised 'full self-driving version' of Autopilot – which, again, is NOT Level 5 autonomy – in the next month or so", and "A new casting machine is meant to integrate the battery and its components into the car the itself." They look like something I'd write (changing the wording, then forgetting to clean up the first wording), but then I'm just a commenter, not the writer.

    • Golden2husky Golden2husky on Sep 25, 2020

      dukeisduke: I have often wondered about Tesla's parts-sharing. It seems that all the running gear is shared across the board. Some add extra motors, others less, but it seems like all the same stuff gets recycled. The bodies may be different and the battery packs vary in size but there seems to be little that is unique to a specific model. Kind of like Lee Iacocca and 1980s Chrysler.

  • Ejwu Ejwu on Sep 24, 2020

    I think the Plaid S kind of made the new roadster pointless.

    • Mcs Mcs on Sep 24, 2020

      The roadster will be lighter and faster than the plaid S. Hopefully smaller too.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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