Tesla Battery Supply To Ease Up Within A Year

Tesla battery supply is still constraining production, but is projected to ease up within a year.

On a conference call towards the end of 2013, Tesla Chairman, CEO, Chief Product Architect, yadda yadda yadda Elon Musk noted that production was being held back primarily by limited battery cell supply, but that it would be clearing up in the second quarter half of 2014 thanks to a renewed partnership with Panasonic for a massive heap of battery cells. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, because I had the impression that supply would be close to demand by the summer… or at least the fall or winter. Apparently, I remembered this wrong, as I thought it was supposed to be cleared up closer to the middle of 2014.

In the call earlier this week, Elon noted that supply would slowly get up to demand in the coming year. In other words, it’s still a long way off, but progress is being made.

I understand this probably isn’t Tesla’s fault. But it’s disappointing nonetheless. This of course means that people have to wait longer to get their Teslas, which means that it will be longer before other people are exposed to these wonderful electric cars and maybe even electric cars in general. Furthermore, it means that electric car demand will look lower than it actually is, if you go by electric car sales… which is pretty standard, especially for those who don’t follow the electric car industry closely.

Let’s hope the “within a year” estimate is on target at least. If battery supply doesn’t smoothen out quickly, it could surely delay the Tesla Model X (further delay it, that is) and the “sort of affordable” Tesla that is supposed to come out after that. Here’s hoping the situation improves faster than expected… or, at the least, not slower than expected!

Image Credit: Tesla