Slashdot Mirror
Why Tesla Really Needs a Gigafactory
Hodejo1 (1252120) writes "Tesla has already put over 25,000 cars on the road with more to come and, presumably, most will still be running well past the 8-year battery warranty. What would happen if it is time to replace the battery pack on an old Model S or X and the cost is $25K? Simple, it would destroy the resale value of said cars, which would negatively affect the lease value of new Tesla automobiles. That's a big part of the real reason why Tesla is building its own battery factory. They not only need to ensure enough supply for new cars, but they have to dramatically bring down the price of the replacement batteries low enough so owners of otherwise perfectly running old Teslas don't just junk them. The Tesla Roadster was not a mass produced vehicle, so the cost of replacing its battery is $40K. The economies of scale of a gigafactory alone will drop battery costs dramatically. Heavy research could drop it further over the next decade or so."
Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook
No!!!
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
I mean if Tesla (and I'm a fan) needs to built its own ecosystem from scratch inside which their cars make sense economically for their customers, doesn't that mean that they need to put in more money than they make>
Is this viable? Something sounds like the old fable of pulling yourself up by your own hair.
Curiously yours, crip.
even before the end of the battery life the battery would give diminished returns and it would hurt the resell value more then non electric cars.
I would never buy a used electric car for that reason.(until battery tech really improves)
I think that the battery life and resell value is one of the major hurdles for the full electric car. An electric car is pretty much a write off the moment you drive one off the lot.
Dear Tesla, Do we really need another unnecessary buzzword? Does 'gigafactory' mean 10^9 (or even 2^30) individual factories? Is that what you mean by economies of scale? If so then that's pretty cool and you can have your new word. Or do you just mean a really big factory? Because if so then making up a new word to make it sound cool is just lame, don't do it. That is all.
Hybrids are different since they can run on just the gasoline side. I just wonder how effective that is. In five years or so, when the owners of the first generation of hybrids face that battery upgrade, they might start selling quite cheaply. They key issue may be both whether they can run well (i.e. up hills) without battery assist and whether they'll be safe to drive. A lot of their stability depends on the weight of those batteries below the floorboard. Keep them in, and the weight will hurt gas mileage. Remove them, and they might actually get pretty decent mileage.
To cut down costs of replacing those batteries under warranty.
As long as the car isnt stored in a garage for weekend usage. "standard" usage will reach about 2/4 years before the degrade in mileage and performance warrants a replacement.
As a bonus, cut costs to customers outside of those warranties.
This is just Tesla's way of saving some money, 8 years life expectancy on a battery is high risk and they know it.
Their factory will only "drop battery costs dramatically" if it runs at full capacity. Its capacity is about 500,000 cars per year, while Telsa has only sold 25,000 cars in total.
Here in Quebec we have several "dynasties" of rich people who got tons of money from their parents. Like Pierre Karl Peladeau. The guy's a billionaire but does sweet fuck all with his money as far as I can tell. At least Elon is doing something with his money. I have no idea why his electric car brings up so much animosity with people though. The point is that here in Quebec we have surplus electricity, we have universities, we have electrical engineers, we have research into electric cars.
And we did fuck all with it. I wish we had one Quebecker with the vision of an Elon Musk. All we have is Guy Laliberte putting on a clown nose in space, and Pierre Karl going "full loon" in political mode. What a waste.
Mostly random stuff.
But now we hit the crucial point of electric cars. At some point, you have to pay a fortune and destroy the environment in order to put another, unrepairable, battery back into them.
This is the point at which two things can happen, if batteries are too expensive: People bin the cars and get a new one. People bin the cars and buy something else.
It's not like an iPad or something where this is a throwaway expense and the device goes out of fashion before it's required and replacement can be done on the cheap. WE HAVE NO CHEAP BATTERIES suitable for electric cars. It doesn't matter how huge your factory is, you just can't make the batteries that cheap. If you could, you wouldn't even need to make an electric car yourself, you could just make a living from the batteries alone and could have done many years ago before you sold the cars.
And the problem is there for all manufacturers, all end-users, all producers. We just don't have that kind of energy capacity that cheap yet. Except, possibly, in liquid form.
When these batteries start dying, the cars won't even get as far as the second-hand market. Nobody will touch them. They will be destroyed (recycled) rather than sold on. Now factor the cost of that battery over 8 years... chances are it comes in at about the same (with charging costs) as just using petrol all that time ($40k buys a LOT of petrol...). We honestly haven't saved anything. But done so at great expense.
And, historically, even battery "breakthrough" that I ever heard of resulted in pretty much zero commercial success (mainly because they never achieved anywhere near as much as they promised they would). And every battery "breakthrough" that I did witness as successful was done literally overnight without almost any fancy scientists telling us how great they'd be - laptops just started to come with NiMH, and then Li-Ion batteries - and then I saw a LiPo battery in a product - and at the time you'd never even heard of them. Even back in the early days of rechargeable batteries, they just appeared on the market out of nowhere and then stayed there for years while dozens, if not hundreds, of alternate ideas were given air-time and resulted in nothing because their improvements never actually materialised.
I'm not saying there's not something on the horizon. But the amount of battery chemistry changes that have commercialised successfully can, literally, be counted on your fingers. And the amount of "battery research" that resulted in nothing, where we were told they'd be the next big thing in 5-10 years time? Innumerable. I can remember being told that aerogels were the future of batteries... have yet to see one.
This is, as far as I can see, a face-saving exercise. Nobody has managed to build a better battery. Many of the electric cars of the last decade literally use laptop cells to do so - just stacked differently. And yet we've had proven commercially-viable electric vehicles since the 60's at least (anyone over 30 in the UK knows the sound of the milk-float).
They bet the whole show on someone, somewhere, building a better battery and - pretty much - selling at a loss hoping it would arrive if they just sold enough cars. And now that bubble is starting to collapse in on itself. Nothing has really changed in battery technology. Nothing looks likely to in the immediate future. So all they can do is ramp up production and hope there's enough lithium to use it.
And who gets the bum end of the deal - the first adopters who, to be honest, I have little sympathy for as they made the same predictions / gamble on batteries as Tesla have. Give it a couple of years and they will have a very expensive paperweight that can't even get them down the road and it'll be cheaper to buy something else entirely.
I'm not completely anti-electric. Hell, I was pricing up all-electric scooters/mopeds/motorbikes only the other day. They are viable. In the time it would take me to kill them, I would save enough in petrol to buy them all ove
I'm in the market for a Tesla. If it takes D batteries, I'm all set. I can get those at Costco for cheap.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I know there is some criticism of the Tesla demo of the robot battery swap but the idea is sound. By taking the battery ownership and distributing it amount uses you create range, optimum care conditions, and on demand premium batteries for specific conditions. The cost of the battery can be distributed over the its life and depreciated by a business.
Just think, if they came out with a battery big enough for a car. Bam I'd get 2 teslas
Everyone I know gave me tons of shit about leasing a new car. I still think a lease was the right decision.
Others may disagree, but in my opinion until battery prices come down (or the technology has a mega-improvement), electric cars are more of a service than an asset.
My Leaf is amazing. It's like driving a spaceship ... completely silent, smooth as silk, no transmission, acceleration like there's a rocket strapped to your ass ... damn near zero maintenance, and it costs about 1/10th per-mile to drive as opposed to my gas-guzzling "Canyonero" SUV.
IN FACT, the amount of money I USED to spend in a month, just buying gas for my old car, is $80 less than the monthly lease payment on the Leaf (and of course, I knew this going in, which is why I did it).
The battery is by far the most expensive single part of the car. In fact, when you look at it, you're really sort of buying a very expensive battery with some car-shaped accessories. The fact that the battery WILL fail as a matter of scientific certainty, and that we can even know more or less exactly when that will happen, makes me not want to own one of these.
With gas cars, you buy them doing calculations about repair cost and resale value that simply do not apply to the situation with electric cars. It's damn unlikely (unless I get in a wreck) that ANY repairs will ever be needed on my Leaf other than the big one ... the battery will eventually go, and at that point I might as well buy a new car.
Which is why leasing electric cars is the way to go, until the battery technology has a massive improvement, or the cost comes way down ... or some car company figures this out and makes interchangeable batteries with a leasing program for the battery. I'll happily own the car if I don't have to own the battery too!
Currently, Tesla's EV batteries have remarkable longevity. Everybody talks about replacing them, but you really don't need to. Tesla Roadsters (lithium-ion) and 1st-generation RAV4 EVs (NiMH) are still on the roads with their original battery packs and much less range degradation then expected, the 2nd generation RAV4 EV has an 8 year/80k warranty on its Tesla-manufactured batteries, the Model S has an 8 year/125k warranty on its batteries, and both are going strong after a couple of years and are expected to last substantially beyond their warranty. My understanding is that most people in the EV community expect these cars to be fairly easily able to go 10-15 years on their original batteries, albeit with reduced range.
I think we can reasonably expect the Tesla-produced EVs to provide reasonable range for over a decade and for 150k miles. After a decade or 150k miles, assuming electric vehicles will continue to be mass produced at the same rate they are now and are not rarities, resale value of these 10 to 15 year old cars will already be greatly reduced due to other factors, as they are with decade-old gas cars. There will be wear and tear on the body and interior, weather and paint damage, dents, issues with the electrical and HVAC systems due to age. Even if battery packs are $8000 or even $5000, folks will still be wondering whether it's worth it to replace them, much like engine replacements are reasonably uncommon in older gas-burning cars due to other wear and tear. At some point between 12 years and 20 years, 150k and 200k miles, the battery pack will actually die, and that's pretty close to the average lives of gas burning cars. That's *without* the gigafactory.
I'm elated that Tesla is working on producing cheaper, higher-capacity, more performant batteries, to bring the costs down on their cars and make the EV experience better. But longevity? It'll be nice for sure, and I certainly look forward to cheaper and longer-life EV batteries, but things are good enough today that I'm just not sure that's the biggest issue Tesla has to deal with. There's a lot of FUD in the non-EV community about EV batteries, when in fact, long term reliability on Tesla's existing packs has been quite good.
So, you're telling me someone who can afford to drop $70,000 on a car is going to want to be seen driving it 8 years later? Sure, there's probably a handful of people who scraped together their pennies to buy their Model S, but by and large it's a toy for the rich who will trade in and replace it for a newer model long before the battery is ever a problem. Hey, it works for Apple with their iDevices.
I'm not entirely convinced "economy of scale" even applies much to Lithium Ion batteries. Their cost these days is largely related to mining and processing the materials that go into them. Sure, Tesla will be able to stabilize their supply of batteries and squeeze out profit that would've went to a middleman, but unless they've developed Star Trek-style replicator technology, they're not getting the prices out of the "WTF?!" zone anytime soon.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I think more than a few of the "big" car companies have shifted focus (back?) to hydrogen fuel cells. In the near future at least, the whole recharging "issue" is what bothers the big guys.
Very few Tesla owners are going to drive their $70 - 100,000 car across the country, take it to the Grand Tetons, do a tour or great Civil War historical sites in the South.
But people that buy cars from Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota... They use their cars for things other than tooling around town from wine bar to chic noshing establishment.
Sure, Tesla now has a cross-country "Super Charge" network, but Americans are impatient, and 30 minutes is too long. The liklyhood of breaking the boundaries that prevent faster charging in the near future are slim.
"Back in the day" when a "road trip" was an adventure, people would have had no problem with a 30 minute super charge, they would have plugged in and had a picnic lunch. Think "Airstream Culture". Those were the days when travel was exciting, now people just want to get the fuck where the are going and plug in to the nearest Wi-Fi.
So maybe the Big Guys have a point with hydrogen power cells that in reality are no more dangerous than 20 gallons of vaporized gas hitting a flame - if you're in an accident that punctures the tank and causes an explosion, your gone either way.
Random thoughts...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Since 2003 Tesla has (already) put over 25,000 cars on the road. Why, that is like, 2500 cars per year for TEN YEARS! Ford put out 2.5 million cars last year alone.
What Tesla needs to do is come out with a $10,000 car which can be recharged anywhere in the USA within the car's range of 200 miles. Until they do that they can go suck chunks as their business model won't work to overthrow the powerful gasoline engine, ever. Get to work on that...
"The zero to sixty time is 9.9 seconds, making it one of the worst accelerating cars sold today."
Only test car drivers and street racers do 0-60. I also own (lease) a Leaf and everything the poster says is true. Its a great car.
You might have a point, except owning a reliable car tends to tie in to other factors.
For example, the majority of people in the U.S. don't live in one of the big cities where mass transit is truly practical as an alternative to driving to get to and from work each day. Even for many who DO live in such cities, mass transit imposes too many limitations. (For example, if you work as some sort of on-site service technician -- for computers or copiers perhaps? A good, reliable vehicle may be a requirement to perform the job.)
When you purchase a vehicle brand new and finance it, you usually get a better interest rate than lenders will give you on a used one, for starters. And then, you have a consistent payment every month for the next 5 or 6 years, as you pay it off. That consistency is "key" for most people earning those "under 6 figure" salaries. Surprises like a cheaper, used car suddenly having a transmission failure outside the warranty period, are a much bigger problem to tackle.
When your new car, under a factory warranty, has a problem -- you're generally given a loaner to drive while it gets repaired. That means no interruptions with your work.
The trick is to buy only a new vehicle that offers a warranty as long as your financing period. That "3 year, 36,000 mile" stuff they used to sell everyone wasn't such a good value at all.
AMD designs chips for GlobalFoundries or TSMC to manufacture. Intel designs chips for Intel to manufacture.
This way, Tesla will be making batteries that work best for what they want batteries for. Other companies might have other priorities.
Now, the baker market is pretty big, so there are lots of mills that make flour that is good for them to use. Also, the market is very mature, so everyone knows what standards and prices to expect.
fixing carbon is hard. Ethanol amounts to a waste of good farm land, or bad farm land that could support livestock.
Ammonia would work well. We just need lots of electricity, heat, and an ecosystem of ammonia fuel cells.
Ammonia is much, much better than hydrogen. There are of course other ideas.
does a battery of that size even have enough electrons? Can a wire be made to carry that current from that battery?
i am curious how this factory will manufacture batteries more cheaply. does panasonic have secret plans on how to make a super efficient, giant production line, or will this factory be tons of existing, line production lines?
BYD's original innovations were to patent a variant of its chemistry, and design a production line that used human labor instead of expensive machinery. That worked when chinese wages were low. that would not scale up with factory size. I wonder how cheap BYD batteries manufactured in north korea would be...
I know several people who have been driving prius more than twice the battery warranty period without replacement. i recall Consumer Reports did a article on this too.
When I was car shopping ten years ago i was worried about expensive battery replacements. but that doesnt seem to be the case.
The article cited about the battery is over two years old and is discussing a guess at the cost of replacing the (hand made) roadster batteries... The 25k cars mentioned in the headline are mostly Model S which have a different battery and are presumably benefiting from Tesla's state of the art robotic manufacturing facilities.
What the hell is a Gigafactory?
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
seriously. hitler was a way nicer, better, more loving guy than tesla. it's very clear in historical accounts, biographies, statements from the man... it's really offensive that they're naming cars after him. he wanted to kill jews, homosexuals, people of color, polyamorous types, the dumb, the ignorant, the mentally ill, the autistic... the list goes on and on of who he wanted killed right then. he'd be incensed that gay people were driving cars with his name on them. and, their cars suck. they spend so much money on crappy, useless things and make it a horrible driving experience for all involved. tesla sucks. hardcore.