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Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by tgtweak on Thursday December 06, 2018 @09:53PM (#18624740)
I believe it (the Tesla battery plant) was built as a joint venture with Panasonic giving the IP and tooling and Tesla operating the plant. They're using a custom cell format also, away from the ubiquitous and standard 18650.

LG, Panasonic and Samsung make almost all the lithium ion cells used today so it doesn't seem odd that Tesla would license one of their technologies to start. The r&d savings would be in the billions.

Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by jsight on Friday December 07, 2018 @01:42PM (#18630292)
The 2170 (or 21700) batteries used in the Model 3 were not invented for the Model 3 originally. AFAIK, they predate the development of that vehicle.
Re:Tesla's giant battery saved $40M during its first year, r... by solarkraft on Friday December 07, 2018 @09:04PM (#18633404)
They might not have invented the format, but they are fairly certainly using chemistry optimized for their cars.

Not sure whether Panasonic does it for them but the way I hear them talk about it they seem to have quite a bit of R&D in house.