Tesla battery drive train day is tentatively planned for April, 2020. Tesla would describe the challenges reach 2000 gigawatt-hours of batteries every year.
If that level of batteries was only for making 100 KWH cars then it would be 20 million cars per year. This would more likely be 10 million cars, one hundred thousand semi-trucks and storage products.
Elon said that Tesla is still a few months from being feature complete with self-driving. Feature complete self-driving means that you have a good chance of the human driver not being required to intervene from driving from one location to another across local streets, intersections and highways. There would need to be further improvements for the self-driving to get regulatory approval.
Autonomy will enable high volume and high margin business.
The Fremont, Berlin and Shanghai gigafactories will enable local production of model 3 and model Y.
The Plaid powertrain will come out later this year. Elon describes it as like-alien technology.
Brian Wang is a prolific business-oriented writer of emerging and disruptive technologies. He is known for insightful articles that combine business and technical analysis that catches the attention of the general public and is also useful for those in the industries. He is the sole author and writer of nextbigfuture.com, the top online science blog. He is also involved in angel investing and raising funds for breakthrough technology startup companies.
He gave the recent keynote presentation at Monte Jade event with a talk entitled the Future for You. He gave an annual update on molecular nanotechnology at Singularity University on nanotechnology, gave a TEDX talk on energy, and advises USC ASTE 527 (advanced space projects program). He has been interviewed for radio, professional organizations. podcasts and corporate events. He was recently interviewed by the radio program Steel on Steel on satellites and high altitude balloons that will track all movement in many parts of the USA.
He fundraises for various high impact technology companies and has worked in computer technology, insurance, healthcare and with corporate finance.
He has substantial familiarity with a broad range of breakthrough technologies like age reversal and antiaging, quantum computers, artificial intelligence, ocean tech, agtech, nuclear fission, advanced nuclear fission, space propulsion, satellites, imaging, molecular nanotechnology, biotechnology, medicine, blockchain, crypto and many other areas.