4680 Battery Cell

The 4680 is Tesla's large cylindrical lithium-ion cell, a rechargeable battery that uses lithium ions to carry the charge, and its name gives its size: 46 millimeters across and 80 millimeters tall. Tesla revealed it at Battery Day on September 22, 2020, where Elon and Drew Baglino, then Tesla's senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, presented it. The strategy was to make the cell bigger, make it cheaper to build, and make the battery part of the car's frame instead of a tray riding underneath.

What is the 4680 Cell?

The 4680 is a steel can a little larger than a D-size flashlight battery, and Tesla designed it to be built by the hundred million. The plan was to make it the standard cell across Tesla's newer vehicles, starting with the Cybertruck and moving into some Model Y cars, with the Cybercab and the Semi set to follow. The goal was a cell cheap enough, and made in enough volume, to bring down the price of an electric car.

Why the 4680 Cell Exists

Tesla's earlier small cylindrical cells, the 18650 and then the 2170, had reached their limits. Past a certain point, a small cell costs more for every bit of energy it holds, and building millions of them is slow. So Tesla designed a bigger cell that holds more energy per can, which means fewer cans to make and connect for each car. Tesla set its targets against the older 2170 cell.

The cell targets were 5 times the energy, 6 times the power, and 16 percent more range, part of a Battery Day plan to cut the cost per kilowatt-hour of Tesla's batteries by 56 percent. The cell's own design was to deliver 14 of those 56 points; cheaper cell factories, new anode and cathode materials, and building the cells into the car's structure were to deliver the rest.

How it Works

The first idea in the design is a "tabless" electrode. Instead of a couple of tiny metal tabs carrying current out of the rolled-up foil, the foil connects to the cap along its whole length, which cuts internal resistance and helps the cell shed heat, so it delivers more power and lasts longer. The second and third ideas are the materials: a silicon-rich anode, which is the negative electrode and holds more lithium thanks to the silicon, and a high-nickel cathode, which is the positive electrode and uses little cobalt, the most expensive metal in it. The fourth idea is the structural pack, where the cells are bonded into a strong slab that is part of the car's frame rather than a tray bolted underneath. The Cybertruck's pack shows it off best, at roughly 123 kilowatt-hours.

The dry-electrode process cannot be seen from outside the cell. Conventional electrodes are coated as a wet slurry and then baked dry in long, power-hungry ovens, but Tesla's process presses dry powder into film and skips the solvent and the ovens, the most energy-hungry step in battery making.

The Economics of the 4680 Cell

The payoff is meant to show up in the cost per kilowatt-hour. Tesla runs a 4680 line with 40 gigawatt-hours of installed capacity at Giga Texas, beside its own cathode plant there and a lithium refinery near Corpus Christi. Battery supply has long limited how many cars Tesla can build, and making its own cells gives it more control over volume, margin, and exposure to tariffs on imported cells.

Current Status of 4680

Every new production line starts gradually, as Elon says: the more new parts and steps, the longer the ramp, and the 4680 had many new steps. The production count shows the climb.

The first 4680-equipped cars were delivered in April 2022 at the Cyber Rodeo opening of Gigafactory Texas. Giga Texas built its 50 millionth cell in June 2024, and Tesla's plants passed 100 million cells that September. The step that mattered most for cost came next: in its fourth-quarter 2025 update, released January 28, 2026, Tesla said it was making both the anode and the cathode with the dry process in Austin and had begun building packs for some Model Y cars with its own 4680 cells.

What Comes Next

The 4680 has powered every Cybertruck since deliveries began in 2023. Tesla's newer dry-electrode cells are going into some Model Y cars built in Austin, and Tesla expects to extend them to the Cybertruck, the Cybercab, and the Semi through 2026 and 2027. In its first-quarter 2026 update, Tesla also reported ramping its own lithium refining, cathode production, and lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells, a lower-cost chemistry, so the 4680 is now one part of a supply chain Tesla runs from refined lithium to finished pack.

The Bottom Line

Tesla built the 4680 to make electric cars cheaper by changing how a cell is made. Both electrodes are now made dry in Austin and the cell is going into Model Y packs, so the open test is its cost per kilowatt-hour at volume.