Battery Day Was September 22, 2020. The Deck Prints a 56 Percent Cost Cut.

A slide deck, a production rate, and an installed-capacity row are different documents. The September 22, 2020 deck states targets. The later shareholder updates state what the factories were doing in the quarter the letter covers. A capacity cell is not a count of cars built.

The company is Tesla. The truck that later letters tie to this cell is Cybertruck. Stationary storage is Megapack.

What’s confirmed

September 22, 2020: the deck

Tesla’s Battery Day presentation, opened as a PDF on October 20, 2026, prints SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 on the first page. A later page is headed BATTERY DAY. The plan page says “We Have A Plan To Halve The Cost Per KWh” and names five workstreams: cell design, cell factory, anode materials, cathode materials, and cell vehicle integration.

The cell page prints 46 MM, 80 MM, RANGE +16%, ENERGY 5X, and 6X POWER. The next cost page prints 14% and $/KWH REDUCTION, with the other four workstreams still listed. A factory page is headed “The Plan” and prints IN 2022, 100 GWh, BY 2030, and 3 TWh.

A silicon page says the company will use raw silicon “To Increase Range 20%.” A structural-battery page prints 370 FEWER PARTS, 14% RANGE INCREASE OPPORTUNITY, and 10% MASS REDUCTION.

Running cost pages print 32%, then 37%, then 49%, then a summary page that prints 56% and $/KWH REDUCTION, with 14%, 18%, 5%, 12%, and 7% also on that page. The following page, “Stacking Up The Benefits Of Tesla’s Vertical Integration,” prints 54% under range increase, 56% under dollar-per-kWh reduction, and 69% under investment per GWh reduction. The text extraction of that page does not keep the three columns in a labeled grid. This page states the totals the slide prints.

A product page says “Electric Vehicle Powertrains That Cost Less Than Combustion Engines” and prints $25,000 PASSENGER CAR. A later page, under “Extreme Performance and Range,” prints 0-60 MPH <2 sec, TOP SPEED 200 mph, 1/4 MILE <9 sec, HORSEPOWER >1100, and RANGE >520 mi. Those figures sit on a different slide from the $25,000 line. The deck ends with a forward-looking-statements page.

Label: The September 22, 2020 deck. “Halve,” 56 percent, 54 percent, 100 GWh, 3 TWh, and $25,000 are sentences and figures on those slides. A plan to halve cost is the plan page. The 56 percent is the summary page. This page does not decide that they are one arithmetic. The 5x energy, 6x power, and +16 percent range are the figures on the 46 by 80 millimeter slide. The deck does not, on that slide, print the words “form factor alone.”

What later Tesla updates print about 4680

The Q4 and full-year 2020 update says that in Berlin and Austin the company remains on track to start vehicle production “this year” with structural batteries leveraging in-house battery cells. That sentence does not print the number 4680. “This year” is the update’s phrase.

The Q1 2023 update says the company showcased 4680 cell production at its March 2023 Investor Day and that the production rate continued to improve sequentially in Q1. The same section says equipment installation for Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas continued in Q1 and remains on track. The capacity table lists Cybertruck as Tooling. That paragraph does not say the truck’s pack is a 4680 pack.

The Q2 2024 update says the company produced over 50 percent more 4680 cells in Q2 than in Q1 and continued to see cost improvements. It says that in July the company entered validation of vehicle testing for its first prototype Cybertruck produced with in-house dry-cathode 4680 cells, which the letter calls a major cost-reduction milestone once ramped. The same update says Cybertruck production more than tripled sequentially. The capacity row is Cybertruck >125,000, status Production, with the letter’s footnote that installed capacity is not the current production rate.

The Q4 and full-year 2024 update says: “Our in-house 4680 cell hit a production rate exceeding 2.5k Cybertrucks/week.” The Cybertruck capacity row in that update is again >125,000, status Production. The 2.5k figure is a cell production rate the letter states in Cybertrucks per week. It is not a delivery line. The Cybertruck page keeps Tesla’s delivery tables apart from that.

The Q4 and full-year 2025 update lists, under battery manufacturing, Texas, 4680, 40 GWh, status Production. The same footnote says installed capacity is not the current production rate. The battery section says the company has begun to produce battery packs for certain Model Ys with its 4680 cells, and that it now produces dry electrode for 4680 cells with both anode and cathode made in Austin. It says it expects domestic cathode material in Texas and LFP lines in Nevada to begin production in 2026. The Cybertruck row on the vehicle table is still >125,000, status Production. That row does not say 4680.

Label: Shareholder updates. “Over 50% more,” the July prototype, “exceeding 2.5k Cybertrucks/week,” and 40 GWh are the letters’ figures. A prototype in vehicle testing is not a statement that every Cybertruck shipped with a dry-cathode cell. “Certain Model Ys” is the Q4 2025 letter’s limit. The 2020 deck’s 100 GWh in 2022 is not a line in these updates. The 40 GWh cell is installed annual capacity in the Q4 2025 table. This page does not subtract one from the other.

The Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, searched October 20, 2026, describes a “new proprietary lithium-ion battery cell” and says the company is “piloting the development and manufacture of new battery cell technologies.” The passages retrieved do not print 4680. The number is in the quarterly updates above.

Claims and open questions

The deck’s halving plan, the $25,000 car, the 100 GWh and 3 TWh lines, and the performance-car figures are 2020 slides. The forward-looking page is on the deck. None of the updates opened here reports a dollar-per-kilowatt-hour result against the 56 percent slide, or a delivery date for a $25,000 car.

Spoken lines from the stage that are not on the slides, including any aside about a pilot plant’s gigawatt-hour rating, were not taken from a Tesla transcript this desk opened. The slides are the stage document used here.

The Q4 2024 rate, “exceeding 2.5k Cybertrucks/week,” is one sentence. The Q2 2024 letter’s “over 50% more” has no base number of cells. The Q4 2025 letter’s 40 GWh is a capacity row, and the letter says capacity is not the production rate.

On the map

Tesla is the company. Cybertruck is the truck record, including the capacity row and the recall populations. Megapack is storage, not this cell. The manufacturing lesson is the pattern. The companies map is the section.

Sources

Checked October 20, 2026.