The Maxwell Technologies battery technology is allegedly 10x cheaper to manufacture due to no oven or liquids and as a result, and also lighter. Elon says the "holy grail" of batteries is being able to develop an automotive grade battery at <= $100/kWh. The Maxwell tech looks to be below that, but we'll find out specifics on the upcoming Battery Investor day.
Fingers crossed that the rumours are accurate. There are a lot of "coming soon" battery improvements that aren't nearly as impressive when (if) they finally arrive.
Be lovely for one to actually live up to them.
For the Tesla Semi and Cybertruck to not be huge loss leaders for Tesla, they have to have made a fundamental breakthrough in battery cost. I'm anxious to see what they come up with.
Maxwell made ultracapacitors not supercapacitors. Elon has stated that those weren't useful at all for Tesla, but their dry battery electrode manufacturing process stands to be the holy grail. This is what I was referring to.
