The start of production at Tesla plant Grünheide was postponed again
End of 2022, beginning of 2023, now 2024: the start of battery production at the Tesla site in Grünheide is delayed even further
. While up to now it was more a matter of general location decisions, there are currently probably also technical problems with the new process of dry-coating the electrodes. According to experts close to Tesla, mass production is not expected to start before 2024.
This report comes from the Handelsblatt, which refers to several experts close to the company. According to the report, the test facilities are already running successfully, but the scrap would simply still be too large for large-scale production. So far, the main reasons given for the delay were the sharp rise in energy costs and US President Biden's subsidy programme. The production machines already ordered for Grünheide were diverted to the Gigafactory in Texas because the US government's tax credit programme provides high premiums for the purchase of an e-car if the most important components were manufactured in the USA.
Tesla's 4680 cells, which are to be used in the Model Y and in the Tesla Semi e-truck that recently went into production, are to be manufactured in Grünheide. They have a higher energy density than the 2170 cells. For various reasons, they can be produced more cheaply than the previous standard cells, among other things due to the coating process of the electrodes. Unlike the wet coating process, which requires energy-intensive ovens and a large clean room to dry the applied paste, the ovens can be omitted in the dry coating process and the clean room can be much smaller.
The figures prove that there is huge leverage here: for the production capacity of 50-gigawatt hours per year planned in Grünheide, the savings amount to about 1.7 billion euros, according to the experts! So it pays to optimise the process and to postpone the start of production. The building permit still lasts until 2025, but if it takes even longer, this deadline can be extended.