Cheaper Cybertruck 4680 battery in the cards as LG is set to achieve what Tesla promised on Battery Day

Tesla is currently able to produce a bit over 3,000 Cybertrucks a month, with its 4680 battery being one of the bottlenecks.

The EV maker recently informed reservation holders that it will delay a cheaper version of the electric pickup. The new "late 2024" timeline moves the goalposts from Elon Musk's "next quarter" release of the non-Foundation series Cybertruck that he teased during the Annual Shareholder Meeting.

There, Tesla's CEO also said that the Cybertruck team aims to cut its production costs by 20% but the 4680 cells it makes in Texas still cost more than what Tesla's own suppliers are able to produce them for.

Enter its prospective 4680 battery supplier LG, whose CEO now claims that it will be able to make the cells much cheaper, about what Tesla promised way back during Battery Day in 2020.

Elon said that Tesla is now trying hard to reach 4680 battery cost parity with suppliers by the end of the year. The inability to reach that goal faster is one of the reasons that the automaker parted ways with its battery chief Drew Baglino and the 4680 production facility manager during its spring round of layoffs.

The biggest holdup for lowering the cost of the 4680 battery that goes into the Cybertruck is the so-called dry electrode coating, precisely what LG now claims it will master by 2028.

While Tesla's previous battery head confirmed for Sandy Munro that the Cybertruck 4680 battery cells are done with the dry method, the company is obviously not yet able to ramp production enough to achieve sufficient economies of scale.

LG, on the other hand, is so confident that it has cracked the dry electrode coating code, that it will start pilot production later this year, and is gearing up for mass commercialization of the technology in 2027. "Among battery competitors, LG is the top," informed the head of LG Energy Solutions, and added that this is because the company started researching the dry coating technology 10 years ago.

LG's solution can be applied both to the anode and cathode, and will result in 30% lower 4680 battery costs, he said, all the while production facilities and energy expenditure can be cut in half.

Tesla recently sued one of its suppliers, which it accused of stealing trade secrets about the dry production method. It in turn got access to them by acquiring Maxwell Technologies, but Maxwell's method is apparently very difficult to scale.

So far, Tesla has only achieved a rather modest 4680 battery cost reduction coming simply from the larger size of the batteries, all the while its 4680 cells offer have middling energy density and slow charging curve.

For the other 30% needed to hit Battery Day goals, Tesla will either have to achieve a manufacturing breakthrough, or rely on companies like LG and Panasonic to supply it with cheaper 4680 batteries, with the respective loss of tax credits that will now go to suppliers.

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