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Enlarge / Gaze upon Tesla's new battery cell, but don't despair. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Tesla / Getty Images)

Tesla’s “battery day” Tuesday revealed a surprising amount of information about projects the company has kept under wraps. The presentation described changes and improvements to just about every aspect of its battery packs, with big-picture implications for the claim that a $25,000 Tesla vehicle would be possible in about three years. (See the previous coverage from Ars’ Timothy Lee for more on that.) But it wouldn’t be a Tesla announcement without vague timelines, and it was a little unclear which improvements are ready to go now—and which ones they’re just expecting to succeed in the next couple of years.

Without specific numbers or concrete details, assessing the announcements takes a little guesswork. But we can compare all this to other industry trends and to published research to get some idea.

Battery in a can

Let’s start with two things Tesla claimed already exist at its pilot production plant: its new cell design and some improvements in manufacturing. Tesla got off the ground using existing and commonly available cylindrical 18650 lithium-ion cells, while most EVs have been built with flat pouch or prismatic cells (more like the thin batteries in phones and laptops). In a cylindrical cell, long sheet-like anodes, separators, and cathodes are sandwiched, rolled up, and packed into a cylinder-shaped can. The cathode and anode sheets each have one skinny “tab” that connects to the positive and negative terminals of the battery can.

Enlarge / A Nel/Nikola refueling pump is shown in a 2019 publicity photo. (credit: Nikola Motor Company)

Shares of hydrogen truck startup Nikola plunged 26 percent on Wednesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was struggling to find partners to build a planned network of hydrogen fueling stations. Nikola's stock closed at $21.15 on Wednesday, a decline of 57 percent from the $50 peak reached on September 8, the day Nikola announced that GM would design and manufacture its Badger pickup truck.

Shortly after the GM deal was announced, the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research revealed that Nikola founder Trevor Milton wasn't telling the truth at a 2016 event when he claimed that the Nikola One truck on the stage "fully functions." Nikola now concedes that the truck never worked and that a promotional video of the truck was made by rolling it down a hill.

Nikola argued that this was old news because Nikola is no longer marketing the Nikola One and has a working prototype of the Nikola Two. But the revelations threw the company into chaos and forced Milton to resign on Sunday.