A 10-year review of Elon Musk and his new projects 1:21
(CNN) -
Elon Musk ended Tesla's big battery event Tuesday night with big promises about the price of future Tesla cars and the announcement of a new, ultra-fast version of the current Model S.
After reviewing improvements to Tesla's battery designs and manufacturing advances that could result in huge reductions in battery costs, Musk promised a $ 25,000 electric car that would be available in about three years.
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That would be a lot cheaper than any car Tesla has made so far.
Musk has a history of sometimes breaking his promises, or even failing to deliver at all.
Years ago, Tesla promised a $ 35,000 electric car, the Tesla Model 3, but even then, the Model 3 was only available at that price for a short time.
Autonomous driving
Musk also promised on Tuesday that the $ 25,000 car would be capable of fully autonomous driving, a difficult feat because the sensors and other equipment required for even partially autonomous driving are expensive.
And even while touting the company's ambitious future plans, he admitted that the company's fully autonomous driving software experienced unforeseen challenges, causing a "fundamental rewrite" of the "full software stack," though he did not spell out when that occurred. rewriting.
In previous years, Musk had even predicted that Teslas equipped with the company's "Full Self Driving" hardware would be capable of autonomous "coast-to-coast" travel by the end of 2017.
Its self-imposed deadlines, however, have been repeatedly delayed.
Tesla Model S "Plaid Mode"
Musk also announced that Tesla is already taking orders for the new three-engine Tesla Model S with "Plaid Mode," a version capable of producing 1,100 horsepower.
This car will be able to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than two seconds and run a quarter mile in less than nine seconds.
Costing about $ 140,000, the Model S Plaid will have a top speed of 200 miles per hour and will be able to go 520 miles on a full charge, according to Tesla.
By comparison, the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon drag is capable of going from zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds and running a quarter mile in 9.65 seconds, according to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles.
Customers can order the Model S Plaid now, Musk said, and the first ones will be delivered late next year.
The name Plaid Mode, like the slightly slower Ludicrous Mode available on the current Model S, is taken from the film Spaceballs, a 1987 Star Wars parody directed by Mel Brooks.
In Star Wars, when spaceships entered "hyperspace" and traveled faster than the speed of light, the movie screen would fill with extended rays of starlight.
In Spaceballs, a spaceship could go so fast that beams of light turned into squares.
Battery upgrade
During the lengthy presentation, Musk and Andrew Baglino, Tesla's head of powertrain development, detailed the improvements the company has made to the design and manufacturability of the batteries.
These advances could lead to massive reductions in battery costs per kilowatt hour, a measure of a battery's energy-holding capacity, they said.
With improved battery cell designs and simplified manufacturing processes, Tesla hopes to achieve "terawatt hour scale" battery manufacturing.
One terawatt hour equals 1,000 gigawatt hours or one trillion watt hours.
Tesla achieved an annualized output of 20 gigawatt hours at its Nevada battery factory in 2018, according to the company's website.
At that rate, it was already the world's largest battery production factory, says Tesla.
By 2022, the company aims to produce 100 gigawatt hours per year and, by 2030, 3 terawatt hours.
Musk and Baglino also predicted that in the future, Tesla's batteries would be fully recyclable, so there would no longer be a need to extract lithium.
Manufacturing capacity
Musk spent much of the evening talking about manufacturing, a topic that he frequently discusses extensively.
"Tesla aims to be the best manufacturer of any company on Earth," he said.
Ultimately, Tesla expects to make 20 million vehicles a year, Musk said, a number higher than all passenger cars sold in the United States last year.
Tesla delivered more than 90,000 cars to customers in the last quarter
By comparison, the Volkswagen Group, with brands like Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and others, sold 11 million vehicles worldwide in 2019.
Despite Musk's focus on the issue, Tesla has struggled with making high-volume, good-quality cars.
The company scored very low in JD Power's most recent initial quality survey.
And the company's initial struggle to assemble its entry-level Model 3 eventually led to the cars being assembled in a tent outside the company's factory in Fremont, California.
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Musk also described a new engineering structure for future Tesla cars in which the car's front and rear frame would be made from a single aluminum alloy casting.
These would be attached to the battery pack which, in itself, would form an important part of the structure of the car.
"This is the way all the electric cars of the future will be built," Musk predicted.
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