Posted on 02/26/2014 8:56:24 PM PST by ckilmer
No automaker has quite the momentum that Tesla Motors enjoys today. It sells every car it builds easily, with customers queuing around the globe. It's considered the best car for sale in America by several critics, and Wall Street has bought into Elon Musk's vision with a fervor rarely seen outside riverside baptisms. And yet everything Tesla stands for today and wants to accomplish in the future rides on a single stubborn, expensive piece of technology — the battery.
Today, Tesla revealed its grand plan for tackling that weak spot, a $5 billion plan to build the world's largest battery plant, dubbed the Gigafactory — one that would power the company from start-up to an auto industry player with 500,000 vehicle sales a year.
Even with all the attention it's received to date, Elon Musk's firm remains a small timer as far asglobal automaking goes. Tesla plans to build 35,000 Model S sedans from its California factory this year; Ford typically builds that many F-Series pickups in about 20 days. All of those cars will rely on lithium-ion battery cells shipped from Asia, where Panasonic and other suppliers control most of the world's supply. While researchers have spent decades hunting for better ways of storing electrical energy, none has emerged as an alternative — and at the moment, there's no technology on the horizon that's better or cheaper.
The price of those cells has been the major reason the Tesla Model S and all other electric cars cost far more than gasoline-powered ones. A few automakers have built their own battery plants in the hopes of driving down costs and ensuring supplies, with Nissan's $300 million Tennessee plant the largest in the United States to date. But none have been built to the scale Tesla would need to supply hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year; the company already uses a third of all electric vehicle battery production.
In its outline, Tesla says by the time the plant goes online in 2017, the plant to lower its battery costs by 30 percent — which coincides with its plan to launch a third "affordable" all-electric model for roughly $45,000. Three years later, Tesla expects the Gigafactory would produce enough batteries for Tesla to bolt into 500,000 vehicles a year, more lithium-ion battery power than the rest of the world built last year.
The cost for doing so: roughly $5 billion, with Tesla providing up to $2 billion and current battery supplier Panasonic and other partners providing the rest. Tesla says it has narrowed the potential sites for the plant and its 6,500 jobs to four states: Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The company also said today it would raise $1.6 billion to help pay for the plant and developing new models.
When Tesla launched, many executives and critics questioned whether it could ever survive building expensive vehicles limited by battery range and recharging times. If Tesla can open its Gigafactory as planned, and meet the goals it's set, those critics will finally have their answer.
ping
No automaker has quite the momentum that Tesla Motors enjoys today. It sells every car it builds easily, with customers queuing around the globe.
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But some people right here said no one or few would buy it....
Hmmmm
That solar and wind energy production shown better be a token just for show, because if they are going to rely on that for their production, the initial investment will be out of line with the returns, unless they can get the taxpayers to cover it.
It’s a darned cool novelty, but hundreds of thousands per year? Not very likely.
Gigafactory have big carbon footprint.
People have been predicting their demise for years...
Obviously they were wrong...Some won’t admit it...It’s to be expected...
BTW, these vehicle are not for everyone...It’s not a Camry...
That's right, and that's why you won't be seeing hundreds of thousands of them being sold every year.
They've got a nice niche, and it could be wise to expand production, but their plans are far too ambitious, barring some new energy storage technology.
There are many ways a business can fail. Over-expansion is one of them.
Well, at least it appears there’s no free government money involved.
Considering the new lower cost models planned, I would not bet on it.
This is really good news for 6500 people looking for jobs and potential advances in baterry technology. Not to mention locating a major industry in the US instead of Asia.
They are building a 5 billion dollar factory. How many people can get that far.
Yep...
It’s a small production plant, relatively speaking. It doesn’t make hundreds of thousand of cars every year, so it’s not surprising that every car might sell.
I wouldn’t buy one myself. However, if somebody came up with a hydrogen car that I could fill with distilled water and plug it in to allow the separation of hydrogen from oxygen, I’d certainly consider that if it was affordable.
They predicted TV would never be a success. They are the modern day George Amberson Minifers.
Lithium doesn’t grow on trees.
They just may do exactly what they are planning to do. They may just do it slowly and SUCCEED.
Yea, and if someone has a breakthrough in storage tech, then they will have to open more.
Bringing jobs to Americans, with the economy the way it is, the people behind this have balls of steel.
Sulfur batteries are cheap and they are getting close to the recharge ability and energy storage of lithium. In a few years, we might be able to start phasing out lithium.
Nikola approves.
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