Tesla Used A Third of All Electric-Car Batteries Last Year

cartechboy writes "We've heard about Tesla building this new gigafactory to produce battery packs for its electric cars. Heck, the company's current bottleneck is its ability to get battery packs for its electric cars. In fact, last year Tesla used a bit more than one-third of the auto industry's electric-car batteries, and that was with only selling 22,477 cars last year. Tesla is expanding its model lineup as quickly as possible with the introduction of the Model X crossover next year and a compact sports sedan in 2017. With the rapid expansion of its vehicle line, Tesla is going to need a crazy amount of battery packs, and quickly. Thus, the Silicon Valley upstart is building the gigafactory to engineer and produce battery packs in much larger quantities. If Tesla can remove the battery production bottle neck it's currently facing, the only question left will be market acceptance of a mainstream electric car."

Comments

Consumer acceptance?

[BoRegardless]

Let's see about the benefits.

No cooling water
No oil
No flammable liquid fuel
No brake fluid
No grease
No "fan" belts
No noise of consequence
No engine and drive train with 2000 parts
No internal combustion engine repairs/adjustments
Very low brake pad usage (unless you are 18 years old)

Re:Consumer acceptance?

[bgarcia]

No cooling water
No brake fluid

Don't go crazy. There is still brake fluid in an electric car. And they still have radiators of various types for cooling purposes.

Re:Consumer acceptance?

[kenaaker]

When I take my Focus Electric in for scheduled maintenance, it's amusing to watch the service rep trying to find something they can actually do. So far the only items have been tire rotation and software updates.

Re:Consumer acceptance?

[TomGreenhaw]

Our Tesla is almost a year old (about 12k miles) and the only things that have gone into the car is air in one tire (until they fixed it for free), electricity, and windshield washer fluid.

We did buy the maintenance plan (good for everything except tires for 8 years) and I'm sure it will need something, but so far its been basically nothing.

Re:Consumer acceptance?

[skids]

It has an electric motor. Those do wear out over time.

Brushless AC induction in this case. As long as they used durable chemicals in the windings and relgulate/cool it correctly, I'd expect the chassis to rust out before it needed more than a new set of bearings.

Not all Lithiums the same

[foxalopex]

It's an interesting article for perspective but somewhat inaccurate. The article fails to point out that not all Lithium batteries are the same. The Volt for example uses such a different battery chemistry that it tends not to catch on fire even when punctured. The one simulated in lab fire occurred from the battery coolant catching on fire after it had a chance to dry out. (Took about a week.) The trade off is that the Volt's battery has lower power density which means that it holds less power for a battery its size. The Tesla S uses laptop batteries which have great battery density but have the obvious trade-off of catching on fire when punctured. An Iphone uses a Lithium Polymer battery which has some of the highest energy densities of all Lithium batteries. The downside is they explode when punctured. In a small device like a phone or tablet this isn't a big deal but in a Car which this would give it some amazing range, if it crashed it would literally be a bomb on wheels.

Re:Not all Lithiums the same

[Zeromous]

>literally be a bomb on wheels

No it is neither literally, nor figuratively a bomb on wheels. It will catch fire though, with plenty of warning and safety features, if punctured. As I understand if you were in the Tesla when it caught fire in the battery packs, you probably wouldn't burn to death.

YGTBFKM

[Overzeetop]

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

"Right now, the ONLY thing that is preventing me from getting a Tesla is that I have to travel longer than 500 miles a few times a year, and renting a car for a week, three times a year is too expensive an option."

Renting a car for $500/pop three times a year is "too expensive" for a guy who has no problem dropping $90,000 on a car? I could see that the inconvenience might be a reason, but cost? We rented a mini-van a couple times a year for our family vacations because the sedan wasn't big enough. NBD.