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Tesla Plans To Build World's Biggest Battery Factory
Submitted by Joao Peixe via OilPrice.com,
Tesla is set to announce a plan this week to build the world’s largest battery factory. The plan will include the involvement of Panasonic and other partners, and it will be so big that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk is calling it a “gigafactory.”
The motivation for building the factory is multiple. Tesla has struggled to secure a reliable supply of batteries, and building a large facility will allow it to be able to build its own – a step towards vertically integrating Tesla’s electric vehicle business. Tesla could also sell batteries to other EV companies, as well as sell batteries for storing energy storage from renewable sources. This would provide alternative revenue streams for a company that has thus far focused solely on the luxury car market.
The impact on the EV market could be huge. Tesla’s factory, which could cost $2 billion to $5 billion, would be able to churn out 30 gigawatts of production capacity each year. The gigafactory would not only be the largest battery plant in the world, but would more or less equal all global output combined. This could dramatically lower the cost of producing lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, typically one of the costliest components. Bringing down battery costs will be key to making electric vehicles affordable for the mass market.
But the implications could go beyond the EV market. Renewable energy that is intermittent has been searching for a way to capture and store energy to be used in off hours. Tesla’s gigafactory could bring down the cost of energy storage, allowing solar energy to be discharged at night and wind power to be used during calm hours. SolarCity, of which Elon Musk is the largest shareholder, would purchase Tesla batteries for its solar systems.
The location of the gigafactory has not yet been announced, but Musk said it would include lots of solar and wind to power it, leading many analysts to assume somewhere in the southwest U.S., such as New Mexico.
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Lithium Catalyst: This Week Is Tesla Lithium Battery Gigafactory Week.
Tesla brings the spotlight to the Lithium Battery industry and Lithium as strategic commodity. Numerous reports have shown that further rapid production development by Tesla Motors is impossible without the advance in production of Lithium Batteries. Only economy of scale can bring the cost benefits allowing Tesla Model E for electric cars mass market to happen. Tesla Model X roll out was affected as well due to the shortage of Lithium Batteries. Elon Musk replies to the challenge in style with the announcement of the Lithium Battery Gigafactory with still mysterious partners involved and a lot of rumours about the talks with Apple.Lithium batteries mass production means much lower prices and it will be the new long awaited catalyst for Tesla Motors and Electric Cars market in general. Situation will be even more interesting with serious development of Lithium Power Storage Batteries for Wind and Solar industries. Elon Musk's foundation of Solar City helps to bring this story up to the scale as well.
AutoGreenBlog reports:
It means that only Tesla's Gigafactory will take all Lithium supply allocated today to Lithium Batteries and the production of high purity Lithium will have to double. Industry insiders know that Nevada in no way is able to produce even any close amount of Lithium required, so it will be taken from international market.
Lithium ETF LIT is breaking out to the upside after the long consolidation phase and double bottom reversal in 2013. We are finally reaching the stage we were writing about for years here, when security of Lithium Supply will become the main priority not only the price. Companies like Ganfeng Lithium from China were quietly rumping up its production facilities to meet upcoming Lithium demand and acquiring strategic stakes in Lithium developers like International Lithium with projects in Ireland, Canada and Argentina. ILC.v has waken up recently in the market and we will monitor the developments next week. Junior miners with solid Lithium projects and access to the Capital with strong strategic ties to Lithium industry end-users will be the beneficiaries of this new Bull stage in Lithium market.
http://sufiy.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/lithium-catalyst-next-week-is-tesla....
Hydrogen will continue to be deep sixed. Lobbyist fought to make the Deatomizer to be illegal since it is also used in Nuclear Bombs and is therefore a national security problem according to them. Plus why do you think we took over Afghanistan, they have the largest deposits of Lithium Ore in the world valued at over 1.5 Trillion unrefined.
WSJ has a huge piece on hydrogen cars today. I love the mention that it takes one hour to charge a Tesla per 29 miles. And a hydrogen car can be refuled in 8 minutes. Tesla lawsuit for this mention?
TESLA - Rare Earth minerals versus Hydrogen one of the most available elements on earth. Who will win?
The rare earths are not that rare but they are a bitch to work with...
Hydrogen in its diatomic form is basically non-existent on earth....
It's just like dilithium crystals from star trek then.
Not quite that bad...
But if your source of H2 is water, you ain't ever going to get back what you put in....
That is one factory I wouldn't want to have built in my community.
I love ZH.
Here's the ZH mantra for years: "waah, teh corporashuns have moved manufacturing jobs overseas, Americans are lazy, there aren't any manufacturing jobs so Free Shit Army and kids live in the basement, waah!"
Now a company wants to build a huge factory in the Southwest, and the consensus seems to be "waah, Tesla is going to shit skittles out its unicorn ass and this is all unicorn shit."
Nothing is ever going to satisfy you people.
Are you telling me there won't be any subsidies involved?
Oh yeah, lithium batteries to store windmill/solar power, much less conventional power for peak? I don't think so. Nobody thinks that can be done economically. Not to mention the failure modes would be spectacular!
Of course it could be done anyway, with enough greenie wienie Obamabux funding it.
Let's do the math. 30 gigawatt hours per year of batteries would be made. The US grid alone has got some thousands of gigawatts being consumed even off peak. So the entire factory output of batteries produced in a year, if added to the grid would power it for like, a few minutes?
In the long run we'll have to move to a different type of energy source (i'm talking 100+ years here). Natural gas, oil, even coal will have come and gone within a century or 2. Then what? Fossil fuels will be but a blink in the history of humanity (that is if we make it after the fuel sources dry up).
Stopped reading at
30 gigawatts of production capacity each year
To the author(s):
Try again when you understand the difference between GigaWatts (GW) and GigaWattHours (GWh) and why it only makes sense to measure battery production in the latter.
He may have understood one basic thing. It is no the electric car as a concept that matters but its power source that provides the energy.
One can convert an internal combustion engine (ICE) car into an electric (E) one for less than $5000-$7000 ( a service provided by experts ICE to E car in the service motor shops ), the only special thing needed is the car battery, everything else readily available, even from you local junk yard. It is actually it is surprising how easy is to change a car form ICE to E driven.
Now how many ICE cars are there on the road and how an imaginative mind can tap into that market, this is the questions one should ask.
Only one man ever walked on water, and it wasn't Elon Musk.