Tesla reportedly working on its own battery cell manufacturing capability

Automaker Tesla is looking into how it might own another key part of its supply chain, through research being done at a secret lab near its Fremont, Calif., factory, CNBC reports. The company currently relies on Panasonic to build the battery pack and cells it uses for its vehicles, which is one of, if not the most significant component in terms of its overall bill of materials. Tesla is no stranger to owning components of its own supply chain rather than farming them out to vendors as is more common among automakers – it builds its own seats at a facility down the road from its Fremont car factory, for instance, and it recently started building its own chip for its autonomous features, taking over those duties from Nvidia.