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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."
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.
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.
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!
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.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
> 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.
Welcome to research. Many research projects, even really successful ones, just end up with a gain of knowledge, but no commercial value. Research projects that actually change the world are few and far in between. That's why it is called research, and not development.
Just read the history of Lithium batteries. Most of the big steps were made at universities in research projects: the use of Lithium, the intercalation, the reversible chemistry, improved electrolytes, chemistries etc. Some steps came from commercial laboratories. All major improvements were the result of research projects.
that warranty on the miles driven on the battery doesn't cover the degradation of the battery.
it covers damages to the battery but not if your battery can hold a charge or not in the Tesla warranty its pretty clear listed.
so when your car loses its charge take a hammer to the battery pack and hope you destroy some cells for a free replacement.
Your opinion is that batteries don't make incremental improvements, but only revolutionary improvements once in long while when a completely new battery chemistry comes along.
Your opinion is completely wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
There is a problem or two with hydrogen fuel cells, which is why everybody who played with the idea before long shelved it, or put it on the back burner "for later", sort of like fusion power.
1) They are phenomenally expensive.
2) They require exacting thermal management.
3) You can't just "turn them on" with a click like an electric motor, or even with a handful of seconds cranking like an internal combustion engine.
4) No practical way to store the fuel.
5) Kids, they don't last forever any more than internal combustion engines or batteries do.
"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.
Those are mostly all wrong. And indeed they didn't shelve the idea, the companies that have had hydrogen cars on the road for years and years have had great success with it; they just haven't pushed to build infrastructure, because the needs the different storage devices vary widely and it is still unclear which technologies will be most competitive.
3 is especially funny. Better go tell all those BWM owners their cars start slower than a hand crank... they'll probably laugh at you while turning the key to "on" and driving away.
Hyundai actually has a mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell car (well, SUV) now, and Europe is building out limited infrastructure. Even people who want to build the infrastructure are slightly hesitant because everybody is worried that new technology will be ready "soon" that will make them look silly with the old tech. But the build-out is starting anyways.
The European infrastructure project is being supported on the automaker side by BMW, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, and on the hydrogen supply side by Air Products, Copenhagen Hydrogen Network, ITM Power, Linde and OMV.
That is actually all news from last spring, kids.
30 minutes? After driving for a couple of hours, I'm ready to take a 30 minute break and stretch my legs...
Hydrogen? Seriously? 45 years ago, when I was little, they were saying Hydrogen was only 30 years away, and would roll out demo cars to prove it. I think they just said the same thing last week.
I used to think the same thing, until I actually looked at the engineering realities regarding hydrogen. It's the lightest and smallest element on the Periodic Table, so it will migrate through steel, making it brittle as it goes. The only way to make hydrogen in the industrial quantities needed is with steam reforming of petroleum based hydrocarbons (check Wikipedia if you don't believe me). Then there is the energy density and storage nightmare of hydrogen which isn't even nearly as good as current gen car batteries.
And that is just to replace the current fuel in an internal combustion engine (not so efficient) with a lower density fuel (even worse efficiency). Now a fuel cell, where the fuel is converted directly into electricity is promising, except that to produce the amount of power needed to drive a vehicle would require an oxidation rate right up there with a controlled explosion trying to go uncontrolled.
And you still haven't gotten away from using petroleum, or the wars,corruption and crime involved in dealing with it. So, hydrogen isn't really looking too good now, is it?
I would think that just changing the power generation method for a hybrid from an IC engine to a micro-turbine generator, with it's higher efficiency, flex fuel capability, fewer and more reliable parts, would provide the fast recharge capability that you say you want. In fact, some companies are starting to do this already. Neil Young's LincVolt was such a conversion, by H Line Conversions in Wichita, KS.
But I think that, except for niche applications, the end of life for the internal combustion engine is in sight. It has to be over-sized and over-built for performance use, and can't compare (favorably) to microturbines for power generation. They are expensive, complicated, dirty, and require an expensive and violently fought over fuel.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
Because Elon Musk.
He's got what plants crave, judging from replies to my posts where I asked the same thing.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Hydrogen's fine. To stop it leaking and floating off you just need to attach it to some carbon. Chains of 8 atoms are good, give or take a few.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Actually it does. According to this thread http://www.teslamotors.com/for... Tesla will replace it if the capacity drops below 70%. People have already hit 75,000 miles and are reporting only a few % loss in capacity.
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What the hell is a Gigafactory?
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons