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Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

electrek.co

481–490 of 836 posts

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#481

For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car. For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition. Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year. https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...

Did he always have this problem? I don't recall this from the early Tesla days. I have the totally subjective impression that the predictions have been getting worse and worse.

Very much yes.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#482
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an entire Wikipedia article about Musk's (mostly) failed predictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

Neat. It's a bummer though that it's limited to Telsa. Would love to see a fuller one of his all bold statements about robotics, tunnel transportation, space travel, and AI.

This one was from a couple years back. The list could probably double with DOGE alone.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#483
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model Y is a genuinely good car... I can't think of an automaker with better software. I've recently been shopping for another electric SUV and to be told that to get charging stops on your long trip 'through an app on your phone' instead of built into the navigation is.... Wild Edit: it needs to be said that I consider a car a solution to the A to B problem, and nothing more :) This was one of the premium German…

Tesla, Rivian and a few others are tech companies that make cars. They have great software and integration between components. Traditional automakers are assemblers of modules made by dozens of suppliers. That's why Teslas navigation accounts for traffic, weather, elevation changes, charger speed & availability to plan routes. For legacy car manufactures battery preconditioning is about the most sophisticated route p…

> That's why Teslas navigation accounts for traffic, weather, elevation changes, charger speed & availability to plan routes. For legacy car manufactures battery preconditioning is about the most sophisticated route planning feature they'll have.

Would be more convincing if my legacy car maker car didn’t do all these things you claim only a Tesla can.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#484

For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car. For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition. Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year. https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...

It's incredible there is something wrong with a group of people completely unable to see when someone is lying to them. And no matter how many times they are lied to, as long as they are rich enough they believe them. I don't know what to think anymore about this. He has continuously conned his way along and does it just long enough to jump to the next con. Tesla is crashing and somehow people though giving him a hug…

If something is literally incredible, then it's prudent to stop and consider whether it should be believed or that you have made an incorrect assumption. In this case, you wrongly assume that Musk is somehow being rewarded for something that happened in the past, or for something that might not even happen. The reality is that the pay package will only have value if Elon manages to dig Tesla out of the hole.

Despite how much conning you believe Musk has done (I won't refute it), Tesla is a company that actually builds cars, and while the Cybertruck flopped and anyone could see that coming from a mile away, that doesn't really affect the Tesla bottom line. That Musk grifted the government into buying them doesn't really do anything besides saving Tesla some money.

I wouldn't buy Tesla shares, I still don't really see their crazy valuation, but I would buy a Tesla car, as they are ostensibly awesome. If you disregard all the lying Musk has done it's still an epic car with unrivaled self driving capabilities.

That he starts talking about something historically has been a sign that some part of it is going to be a reality. You can stand apart from the crazy people who worship the ground he walks on, and still appreciate that he accomplishes great things. Whether it's through conning and grifting, or hard work and keen insight, there are still an electric car company and a rocket company where there weren't before.

Just stop reacting to people believing or shouting things or grotesque behaviors, and just look at the actual reality. It'll do you a lot better than just believing everything Musk says is BS.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#485
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main issue with prismatic cells is that to be safe, they must be made with LFP chemistry, which hurts energy density This is obviously untrue. Tons of other chemistries have used prismatic cells with good safety as well. You think Macbooks and iPhones use LFP or cylinder cells? > Batteries with cylindrical cells were easier to repair, It can be just as easy to repair a prismatic battery as a cylinder battery. I…

Since this is a discussion about electric vehicles, I thought it could go without saying that I was talking about batteries in such vehicles, not batteries in consumer electronics that are 1,000 times smaller. To use an analogy: If someone stores a gallon of gasoline in a single-walled plastic container, that's probably OK. But storing 1,000 gallons of gasoline without certain safety measures is unsafe. So it goes wi…

Apart from Tesla very few EVs ever used cylindrical cells.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He appeared at an AfD thing

I am well aware that clip mustve been played thousands of times. He really had no clue how politics work here. The people voting Afd et al. are NOT people buying EVs. The venn diagram of those groups is two circles.

> He really had no clue how politics work here.

Its not like this differs from the US. Neither white supremacists (the "alt right") nor mainstream republicans were buying his cars.

You should be open to the possibility that he isn't clueless, he might actually just be a racist authoritarian.

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#488

For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car. For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition. Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year. https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...

And Tesla's ability to tightly align promises with engineering and supply chain execution seems to be slipping

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#489

Tesla is actually starting to make cathodes in house via a dry process, which is why they are no longer buying cathode material from this supplier. Typical sloppy reporting from Electrek.

Vertical integration only makes sense if you're actually ramping output

Re: Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99%

#490
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I've realized that "Chinese subsidies" are psychologically useful for people outside China to believe in, as cope to handwave away their own failing industries. Solar panels aren't really subsidized in China either.

China has a plan. It subsidizes technology that it sees as important. There's nothing wrong with that per se. It'd like me saying that Barry Bonds only won the home run records because he used steroids. It wasn't entirely the steroids but I'm sure they certainly didn't hurt.

> There's nothing wrong with that per se.

Contemporary western capitalism would disagree. You can never subsidize technology cleanly, only an organization of people working with that technology. We would usually denounce that as "picking winners" in our system.

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