Innovation
More Silicon, Less Cobalt Is Musk’s Recipe for Cheaper Batteries
The key to Tesla’s promised $25,000 car is bringing down the cost of power.
Tesla vehicles at a charging station in San Mateo, Calif.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
At his first Battery Day event, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk said a lower-priced car will come in the next three years.
Reducing—specifically halving—manufacturing costs of lithium-ion batteries was the overarching theme of the event. That reduction will enable a cheaper model—a “dream from the very beginning,” Musk said. Tesla aims to eventually produce 20 million of these fully autonomous vehicles per year, but he didn’t give a clear time frame for achieving this goal. The battery innovations include the following: