According to Bloomberg, a BYD executive in China told state media that the company is ready to supply Tesla with Automotive Batteries. “We are good friends with Elon Musk, and we are preparing to supply Vehicle Battery to Tesla,” Lian Yubo, executive vice president of BYD Group and dean of the Automotive Engineering Research Institute, accepted the host of “CGTN” on June 8 Qi Yingchun revealed in an interview.
This is the first official confirmation of the rumor, with news that BYD was supplying Tesla with Automotive Batteries as early as about a year ago. In August 2021, a reporter from China Youth Daily learned from a number of people familiar with the matter that BYD will supply Tesla with the “blade” Automotive Battery in the second quarter of 2022.
Additionally, Tesla models that will be equipped with these batteries have already entered the C-sample testing phase, the sources said. A few days later, BYD denied rumors of supplying Tesla with “blade” batteries, claiming that the company never told the media it would do so.
During its third-quarter 2021 earnings call, Tesla announced that it will use iron-based batteries in standard Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in all markets around the world. This confirms Elon Musk’s earlier statement and finally outlines the company’s direction in this regard.
Linked to Tesla’s announcement came news in October that the company would buy lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries from BYD. According to media CLS sources, a US manufacturer has signed an agreement to supply 10 GWh of LFP cells. An industry insider close to BYD said: “The information I received is that BYD has received an order of 10 GWh from Tesla.”
The source said the order from Tesla is because BYD already has a factory in Lancaster, California, which greatly simplifies the process of supplying batteries to Tesla’s factory in the United States.
The BYD factory has an annual installed capacity of 1 GWh, but the production line can be continuously expanded to meet rapidly growing demand. Tesla has a plan for rapid global expansion, increasing capacity by 50% each year, so it makes sense to buy as many batteries as possible.