The Texas Made Model Y Update Is Here!
In today’s post, the new Model Y from Giga Austin is rolling out, Elon Musk issues a warning over Tesla Q2 results and GigaFactory production has increased across the globe. So let’s get going.
The Texas Made Model Y is Here
A small number of customers from the Tesla Model Y waiting list have begun taking delivery of the brand new Model Y produced at the GigaFactory in Austin Texas. This is the first time that a customer, and not a Tesla employee, has received the vehicle.
These are the first Tesla vehicles to be manufactured with the company’s in-house designed 4680 battery cell and structural battery pack. As we’ve known for a while, this particular variation is something Tesla calls the Model Y AWD - that’s the first time for the Model 3 or Model Y that the company has included a dual motor power train with a battery pack that is not considered “long range.”
This new version of the Model Y is still not available for order from the Tesla website, but we’ve been seeing Model Y reservation holders who live near the Austin area now receiving the option to convert their order from the Model Y Long Range to the new Standard. The only significant difference between the two being a 50 mile reduction in maximum available range on the new car.
That seems wrong, because the Texas Model Y has the newest generation of battery cell, and we know the 4680 is a high performance, nickel based battery that is, in theory, supposed to allow for increased range. But Tesla says that this is all part of their plan - in a press release from April, the company writes, “We have chosen to put a lower energy battery pack in Model Y AWD, resulting in a lower range, acceleration, and price point.”
They claim this makes the car more accessible, but realistically they’ve only shaved 3k off the retail price, and it’s still a $60,000 car. What they are really saying is that the company still doesn’t have enough production volume of the 4680 battery to support a long range option at the moment.
Not that that necessarily means it’s a bad car, the specs are still competitive with the rest of the EV industry, they’re just not outstanding. But that hasn’t seemed to dampen the enthusiasm from the proud new owners of these Texas Model Y’s.
Spoken Reviews on YouTube gave us a very thorough walk around video of his new car that basically shows us the new Model Y looking 99% exactly the same as the previous Model Y. The only obvious difference being a new cargo cover under the hatch back window so that people can’t see your stuff, which is a nice thing to have, especially if you live in San Francisco, I hear the window smashing there is just out of control.
We can also see pretty clearly from Spoken Review’s film that the Texas Model Y is very well put together - it does not suffer from any of the uneven panel gaps or misaligned body parts that we’ve seen plenty of from the California made cars. So far so good.
On top of some close up views, Spoken Reviews has gone above and beyond to hook us up with some finer details of the new Model Y. For example, we now have some insights into how this new structural battery pack charges at one of Tesla’s V3 Superchargers. One point that was made early on was that it might not matter that the new 4680 Model Y has a lower range, because the new batteries could recharge faster. So far at least, that has not been the case.
Spoken Reviews monitored his first charging session from 9% left in the battery, up to 97%. He recorded that the car instantly peaked at 206 kilowatts of power drawn from the maximum of 250 available from the Supercharger. After a few seconds though, the power dropped below 200 and settled around 80 kilowatts for most of the charging session. He noted that the time to charge from 9% to 20% was just 3 minutes, and he was able to reach 50% charge in 12 minutes. But hitting 80% took 34 minutes and hitting 97% charge was 50 minutes total.
So again, that’s not a bad result, it’s fine - nothing impressive though. It is very likely that Tesla is throttling the charging speed with software, just to make sure they’re not pushing the new cell too hard, too fast. We’ve seen them do the same thing in the past, the charging speed of the 2170 battery packs in the Model 3 and Y was increased over time by firmware updates.
Our boy even went ahead and had his Model Y weighed and figured out that it is 4,220 lbs with no passengers or cargo - which is a couple hundred pounds lighter than the regular Model Y Long Range. Which would make sense for a car with a smaller battery pack. Just how much smaller you ask? Well Spoken Reviews gave us a look at his Tesla phone app, which includes the designation “50D” below the name Model Y - and in Tesla nomenclature that would stand for ‘50 kilowatt hour battery pack with dual motors’.
So, according to my math, that would mean that the Texas Model Y has a battery pack that is about 66% the size of the California Model Y’s 75 kilowatt hour pack, while achieving about 85% of the range. The 200-ish pound weight savings would contribute some of that, but I believe that is proof that the new battery architecture is in fact more efficient than the previous battery.
So, while the new Texas Model Y is still pretty unspectacular, it definitely is still a very promising sign of things to come. There will be a day when Tesla fully unleashes the capabilities of this new battery and I’m feeling pretty confident it will live up to expectations at that point.
Elon Calls for Rally to Recovery
According to internal emails sent by Elon Musk to Tesla employees, the company will need to “rally hard to recover” from what he’s calling a “very tough quarter”.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Tesla’s production numbers are down in Q2 - with the Shanghai China factory serving as their primary global export hub, they lost a major piece of infrastructure to the city’s three week shutdown. Just how much of a downturn that adds up to, we don’t know. And it has yet to be seen if investor confidence can withstand one bad quarter or if whales just start dumping stock at the first sign of a downturn.
But Elon’s message was not all doom and gloom. In his first email, Elon waxed poetically about the importance of the work that Tesla is doing, writing, “We actually build great, real products that people love and make their lives and the world better. That is so profound. It is an honest day’s work that you can feel in your heart. Whatever else is going on in this messed-up world, know that at least what you are doing is pure goodness and that I have infinitely more respect and admiration for you than the richest person on Wall Street.”
So that’s a pretty nice pep talk to get from your boss, and I’m sure it makes the call to rally their efforts a bit easier to digest.
It’s probably no coincidence that last week Elon was saying he had a bad feeling about the US economy, and then on Monday morning the stock market began crashing like a freight train running off a cliff. Meanwhile Joe Biden is laughing straight into a recession. So, things do look pretty bleak. BUT Elon does still maintain his optimism for the future, he seems to genuinely believe that things can get better and he’s usually pretty correct with his broader predictions - he gets the details wrong all the time - but his macro forecasts generally hold true.
GigaFactories Continue to Ramp
If there is one undeniably positive sign for Tesla’s future it is their strength in manufacturing, and that shows no signs of slowing down.
Tesla’s original factory in Fremont California, which was built by General Motors back in the 60’s, just hit its highest daily production rate ever in that 60 year history.
During a recent staff meeting at Tesla, Elon Musk was recorded saying, “We are now the biggest car factory in North America. That’s pretty sick.” And then he went on to say, “We also recently exceeded the number of cars produced from when it was a Toyota and GM factory, and I think we even have the potential to beat that number by 50%.”
It seems like Elon expects efficiency to improve when Tesla moves vehicle production at Fremont over to 4680 cells and structural battery packs, but he noted that is at least a year away, if not two years. He specified that Giga Texas needs to hit volume production before they start to retool Fremont for structural packs.
Over in Shanghai we have more good news on production volume - the GigaFactory has reportedly returned to 100% capacity utilization. That means we are back to where we were in March before the city wide shutdown.
Production at the factory resumed in late April, but only with a limited number of employees who were only able to work a single shift and had to unfortunately live and sleep in the factory to comply with local regulations. Then in May, a second shift was added that allowed for production to continue around the clock - though again, still in a closed loop - by this point Tesla had shelled out for a dormitory for them all to sleep in. And now, as of June 11th, it looks like Tesla has been able to exit the ‘closed loop’ system and return fully to normal operations. Obviously knock on some wood that this whole thing doesn’t just play out all over again, but as of right now, things are good. Tesla still expects to ramp up and expand their Shanghai production to reach double the output of the factory compared to pre-shutdown numbers.
Over at Giga Berlin we have Elon Musk’s confirmation that the factory has reached a run rate of nearly 1000 cars per week. This is a very good sign, as a thousand cars per week is about the level that we had expected Giga Berlin to be at around this time and those predictions were made prior to the extreme turmoil that has hit Europe and world as a whole.
And in another very positive sign we have just seen that recruitment efforts at Giga Berlina are ramping up, as the factory looks to add another 500-600 employees per month to their workforce.
The figures come from our old friend, Brandenburg’s regional economy minister, Joerg Steinbach, who said at a press conference on Monday that Tesla is actually working to recruit workers who have recently been laid off at other German automakers.
Steinbach also revealed that the staff count at Giga Berlin has reached somewhere between 4,100 to 4,500 people - by comparison, Tesla employs about 10,000 at Fremont, so Giga Berlin is already half the strength and growing fast.
As for Giga texas, all that Elon would say is that the new factory is, quote, “spooling up”. But acknowledged that production capacity for the Model Y at that factory is still limited by the company’s ability to supply 4680 cells and structural battery packs.
