Aly Song/Reuters
- Tesla slid 6% on Tuesday as investors await the company’s closely watched Battery Day.
- The Battery Day presentation, which is scheduled to take place at 4:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, is expected to highlight upcoming battery innovations that Tesla is working on.
- Goldman Sachs highlighted in a note last week six items the firm is expecting Tesla to focus on at the event.
- Tesla CEO Elon Musk did caution in a tweet on Monday that the company doesn’t expect the innovations it announces later Tuesday to enter high-volume production until 2022.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Tesla slid 6% in regular trading on Tuesday as investors anticipated its upcoming Battery Day presentation scheduled for 4:30 p.m. ET.
The presentation will be solely focused on Tesla’s innovations in battery development. Tesla CEO Elon Musk cautioned in a tweet on Monday that the developments announced during the event won’t reach high-volume production until 2022.
Additionally, according to the tweet, many of the innovations announced later Tuesday will mainly impact the Roadster, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi models.
“The extreme difficulty of scaling production of new technology is not well understood. It’s 1000% to 10,000% harder than making a few prototypes. The machine that makes the machine is vastly harder than the machine itself,” Musk tweeted.
In a note published last week, Goldman Sachs highlighted six key topics it expects to be front and center at Battery Day.
1. "Expanding battery cell capacity."
"Tesla has stated in the past that it was supply constrained at the cell level, and we believe that expanding capacity will be important as the company plans to ramp production of products such as the Model Y, Cybertruck, Semi, and Megapack."
2. "Reducing battery cost to under $100 per kwh."
"We believe that reducing pack cost to less than $100 per kWh is a key metric for investors ... Tesla could discuss how it is planning to reduce cost further, including with less cobalt ... Tesla could also discuss manufacturing its own battery cells"
3. "Tesla's battery efficiency lead."
"We believe that Tesla's overall lead in battery efficiency (e.g., miles of range per kWh of battery capacity) and its ability to improve on these metrics through over-the-air (OTA) software updates could be a topic at the event."
4. "Durability of the battery and battery end of life."
"We believe that Tesla could provide an update on the lifetime and lifecycle of its batteries. Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated in April 2019 that its next generation of battery packs were being designed for a million miles of operation ... We believe that improving battery degradation is an ongoing effort at Tesla and further improvements could help increase the residual values of Tesla vehicles."
5. "Increased charging speeds (and decreased charging time)."
"We believe that future charging improvements could come from a next generation Supercharger, battery and or electrical architecture changes, and/or from software updates to optimize charging rates."
6. "Supplying batteries and powertrains to other OEMs."
"Tesla's CEO Elon Musk commented in July 2020 on Twitter that the company is open to providing its batteries and powertrains to other OEMs, and we believe that this may be discussed at the battery day. Recall that Tesla had historically done this, but stopped several years ago."
Investors can tune in here to watch the event virtually.