Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been hyping a potential battery day for quite a while now, and it looks like we should see it happen within the next few months — Musk said on Twitter that September 15 is the “tentative date” for the “Tesla Shareholder Meeting & Battery Day,” which will include the usual shareholder meeting as well as a tour of the automaker’s cell production system for the batteries that provide the power for its vehicles.
The so-called “Battery Day” has already run into a few delays, after originally being planned for April of this year. It’s been bumped to May, and subsequently June, but Musk’s latest timeline of September seems a lot more realistic, given the current state of global affairs due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, as well as Tesla’s own complicated issues with its handling of COVID-19, local government shutdown orders and employee health and safety.
Battery day has been modified from an earlier event planned to also include a powertrain component, but Musk made the switch to keep the focus more narrowly on the work Tesla has been doing to improve its battery performance and output. The Tesla Model S recently became the first and only electric vehicle to achieve a 400-mile-plus EPA certification rating for range, and Tesla has reportedly been working on new, lower-cost and long-lived electric battery technology that Reuters reported earlier this year Tesla plans to introduce to its China-made Model 3 vehicles either later this year or early next.
This would be the first significant event Tesla has hosted since its Cybertruck unveiling in 2019. Anything the automaker does with respect to its battery technology will draw a lot of attention, given that it’s likely the company’s most important competitive advantage in terms of continuing to win more customers away from internal combustion fuel vehicles.