Tesla's new Austin-built Model Y with 4680 battery is already seeing impressive charging rates

Tesla's v3 Superchargers can charge at more than 1000 miles per hour

The newly built Model Y 4680 battery packs are seeing an impressive and positive (pun intended) charging speed.

According to Twitter user The Kilowatts, they were able to charge their new Model Y from 0% to 97% in just 52 minutes.

The Kilowatts’s Ryan Levenson took delivery of an Austin, Texas-made dual-motor Model Y, which is built with Tesla’s highly anticipated 4680 battery pack.

Levenson rents out electric vehicles he owns on Turo and maintains them. Levenson shared on Twitter that he drove the new Model Y three miles past its 0% state of charge. He noted that there was no effect on the vehicle’s acceleration.

“0% -> 97% in 52 minutes for our MIT (made in Texas) Dual Motor Model Y,” Levenson writes on Twitter.

“Plugged in at 12:25 am with 0 miles of range remaining (actually drove 3 miles beyond 0 with seemingly no impact on acceleration). Unplugged at 1:17 am with 270 miles of range.”

0% -> 97% in 52 minutes for our MIT Dual Motor Model Y

Plugged in at 12:25 am with 0 miles of range remaining (actually drove 3 miles beyond 0 with seemingly no impact on acceleration)
Unplugged at 1:17 am with 270 miles of range. ?? pic.twitter.com/q4Yef2uKKe

— The Kilowatts ?⚡️ (@klwtts) July 1, 2022

Levenson noticed that by plugging into a V3 supercharger, the vehicle almost immediately ramped up to the 250kW charging rate, which is much different than Tesla’s current battery packs that take time to ramp up to the 250kW rate.

“For anyone trying to analyze the charge curve here, it seems quick but what I find most interesting is the almost immediate jump to ~250kW unlike the ramp up to 250kW we’re used to and from there it slowly tapers down throughout the charge cycle.”

Tesla’s currently listing the Model Y dual motor configuration to have a total of 279 miles of EPA-rated range.

Being able to drive past 0% state of charge is interesting. Tesla purposely builds in a little buffer to err on the side of caution when estimating the remaining range.

Tesla does software lock the range on its vehicles to prevent them from losing all of their charge and damaging the battery.

In order to meet manufacturing efficiencies, Tesla has previously shipped vehicles with larger batteries and software-locked them if an owner bought a model with a shorter range.

Although the owner can only access the portion of the battery that they paid for, they actually receive a couple of hidden benefits.

The car can be charged to "100%" every day without any ill effects since the battery itself is not charged to 100%, only the portion the owner paid for.

Another advantage of such models is that the owner can buy and unlock the additional range at a later date if they choose to.

In 2019, during Hurricane Dorian in Florida, Tesla remotely extended the ranges on such vehicles so they could escape Dorian’s path.

They also provided Tesla drivers with free supercharger access and force-charged the Powerwall batteries to full power so they would be ready in case of a severe power outage.

Tesla’s battery day event back in September 2020 unveiled some pretty impressive technologies coming, but Tesla has yet to share in-depth data on what we can expect in real-world scenarios.

Tesla's Battery Day

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Musk Teases New Model for Early 2025 That Will Use a Mix of Next-Gen and Current Platforms

“We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025”. This was one of the key sentences that were part of Tesla’s deck shared on Tuesday directly before its financial results.

Since Reuters’ report a few weeks ago saying Tesla had “scrapped” the highly expected cheaper model— which Elon quickly denied on X —retail and institutional shareholders started asking for more details on Tesla’s product roadmap for 2024 and beyond.

In the earnings conference call, Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla expects to launch the next model in “early 2025, if not late this year”.

“We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. “

Over concerns of temporary production halts to update the factories for these new models, Musk said that Tesla will produce new models with certain aspects from their next-generation platform and current models. This will reduce the number of changes needed on production lines and allow Tesla not only to ramp up production faster but also to get the vehicles to market quicker.

Model Y Redesign

Tesla appears to hit that their next-gen vehicle will be less “next-gen” than they were initially aiming for, but to get a new vehicle out the door by late 2024, the process would already have to be in motion. Tesla may likely be referring to the redesigned Model Y, which is expected to reuse many parts from the new Model 3. Earlier this year, Tesla said that the redesigned Model Y will not be released this year, so it makes sense that they’re looking to speed up that production.

Tesla CEO concluded by saying that these measures will allow Tesla to reach a capacity of over 3 million units. Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles in 2023. However, this year they’re ramping up Cybertruck production and introduced the new Model 3 into new markets.

And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.

Tesla reported on Tuesday its earnings results followed by a conference call where it teased its upcoming Robotaxi and its next-generation platform saying its “purpose-built Robotaxi product will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy”.

Earlier in the day, Tesla announced the new Performance variant of its sedan Model 3 with deliveries in the United States starting already next month. The new version starts at $45,490 (after applying the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit) and goes from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds.

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Tesla on FSD: Close to License Deal With Major Automaker, Announces Miles Driven on FSD v12

On Tuesday Tesla reported its earnings results followed by a conference call that brought several updates on the company’s roadmap for future vehicles, autonomous driving, Optimus and much more.

While answering a question from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney about updates on the licensing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon Musk said they’re talking to one major auto manufacturer and there’s “a good chance” the company signs the first deal before year-end. However, he went on to say that it would probably be three years before the necessary changes are integrated into the car.

I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year

Brings Benefits to Tesla

The technology would require other automakers to start using the same cameras and hardware as Tesla, meaning that Tesla may not only generate money from licensing FSD but also from selling the hardware itself. However, there would be other benefits as well. When licensing FSD, Tesla would likely own the data gathered with the system well, further helping them with data and edge cases that need to be solved to reach full autonomy.

people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars… Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja commented pointing out that future partners “take a lot of time in their product life cycle” resulting in a gap between the deal signing and the arrival in the market of Tesla’s FSD software.

Miles Driven With FSD

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles that have been driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.

Tesla said it will continue to increase its “core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months” adding that in the first quarter, it completed the transition to hardware 4.0 with China now receiving the upgraded FSD computer and cameras.

Over the weekend, Tesla reduced the price of FSD dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada.

Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.

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