Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he sees challenges in battery production next year that could hamper the electric car maker’s expansion plans for the next two to three years. After delivering the first batch of Model Y’s produced at the Berlin plant to customers, Musk told the plant’s employees that Tesla was being held back by numerous challenges and faced “advanced” issues with orders exceeding production.
The billionaire entrepreneur said Tesla faced difficulties with chips last year and will continue to experience some shortages this year. Challenges in the coming years will be related to battery production and its supply chain, including raw material sourcing, he said.
Musk said: “Last year, there were a lot of supply chain challenges in terms of chips… There are still some chip shortages this year, and I think next year there may be challenges in battery production.”
In the next two to three years, Musk said, the concerns will be about the megawatt-hours of battery production, the supply chain and the speed at which battery materials are mined and refined. In part, the focus will be on how many terawatt-hours of batteries Tesla can produce each year.
“We roughly calculated that it would take about 300 terawatt-hours to turn the world into a sustainable energy economy. That’s basically a lot of batteries,” Musk said.
The world’s richest man later said Tesla’s goal of “delivering 20 million vehicles a year within 10 years” was ambitious, but not impossible.
At the Tesla shareholder meeting in October last year, Musk made a bold statement, claiming to achieve the goal of delivering 20 million vehicles a year and having more than 100,000 employees worldwide by 2030.