Tesla and Panasonic Have Reached an Agreement On the Gigafactory

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Tesla and Panasonic Have Reached an Agreement On the Gigafactory

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 29, 2014 @06:20AM from the go-giga-or-go-home dept.

cartechboy writes: Tesla's been pretty quiet regarding its upcoming gigafactory lately, but that's about to change. It seems the Silicon Valley startup has reached an agreement with Panasonic in regards to the gigafactory, and Panasonic's going to end up having skin in the game. While the electronics giant was originally skeptical of Tesla's battery factory, it now isn't just on board, it's actually going to participate in the construction of this new facility. It's reported that Panasonic will invest 20 billion to 30 billion yen (194 million to $291 million at current exchange rates), and supply fabrication machinery necessary for cell production. That means Pansonic could end up footing the bill for $1 billion of the total $5 billion anticipated investment required for the gigafactory to get off the ground. If things continue to move forward, the Gigafactory should be online by the end of 2017.

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What makes this a gigafactory? by Panspechi · 2014-07-29 06:23 · Score: 1

Will it be that much bigger than the other factories out there? Or is it just marketing that everyone regurgitates?
1. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by i+kan+reed · 2014-07-29 06:28 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The point, at least according to Musk, is that no one was actually competeting on economies of scale with respect to batteries. His allegation is that his cars need it, and everyone else dependent on rechargables can benefit too.
  As to the truth of the matter, the number of people both qualified to understand the question properly(industrial engineers with expertise in battery manufacture) and the time to investigate the situation, probably already work for one of the companies.
  None are journalists. So we get to eat our press releases and like it.
2. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Mr+D+from+63 · 2014-07-29 06:30 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Its much bigger than a megafactory, that's all I can tell you.
3. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by erice · 2014-07-29 06:42 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Its much bigger than a megafactory, that's all I can tell you.
  Yes, but is it 1000 times bigger or 1024 times bigger? That's the important part!
4. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by timeOday · 2014-07-29 06:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Which part do you find suspect? Tesla wants to make a major launch of a $35K all-electric car, which will require a huge number of batteries, above and beyond the current supply. The word "allegation" sounds as if you think the new Telsa model won't use batteries? Or that there's already enough production to support the new Tesla model, presumably going straight into a huge hole in the ground? Or what?
5. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Game+Genie · 2014-07-29 06:50 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  1000. 1024 would be a Gibifactory.
6. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Spy+Handler · 2014-07-29 06:50 · Score: 2
  
  cos the factory makes cars that run on 1.21 gigawatts at 80mph.
7. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by AikonMGB · 2014-07-29 06:59 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Actually, a gibifactory would be ~1073.74 megafactories; you are mixing scales :) </pendantry>
8. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by i+kan+reed · 2014-07-29 07:00 · Score: 1
  
  I say allegation because my own information regarding international battery production capacity is limited, and I wasn't in any position to deny the GP's suggestion of a marketing agenda.
9. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by compro01 · 2014-07-29 07:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  According to Tesla, it will have as much production capacity as all current li-ion battery factories combined.
  The giga does have some meaning, as the factory has a planned production of 35 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year.
  
  --
  upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
10. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by TWX · 2014-07-29 07:03 · Score: 1
  
  I suspect that the name is also a bit of an homage to Back to the Future, but given that Musk is of South African origin and didn't move to North America until three years after the movie came out, I'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth to be sure.
  
  It would also make sense that since SI prefixes are fairly well known and since Giga- is the largest that most consumers are familiar with and associate as being large, it's a way for them to name a plant so that it has obvious technological associations, while still allowing for growth (Terafactory, Petafactory) as both the need for manufacturing capacity and the public's understanding of bigger SI prefixes change.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
11. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by TWX · 2014-07-29 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  Good. Then it won't accidently time-travel when it's borrowed to attempt to escape from terrorists that are unhappy about their pinball machine...
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
12. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by mdsolar · 2014-07-29 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than an olfactory.
13. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:16 · Score: 0
  
  Or pedantry even. :)
14. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by mdsolar · 2014-07-29 07:16 · Score: 1
  
  jigawatts
15. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by dougisfunny · 2014-07-29 07:19 · Score: 1
  
  I imagine Terafactory would only cause more confusion between tera and terra.
  
  --
  This is not the funny you're looking for.
16. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:26 · Score: 0
  
  "Assertion" is likely a better choice for a NPOV. This is Wikipedia, right?
17. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by i+kan+reed · 2014-07-29 07:29 · Score: 1
  
  It's not a matter of neutrality, so much as personal ignorance. I hate pretending to know things that I don't.
18. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Garfong · 2014-07-29 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  Given Tesla's eco-friendly marking, this would probably be a bonus for a TeraFactory.
19. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by idji · 2014-07-29 07:37 · Score: 1
  
  go and look at the PICTURE on TFA and you will see they want to make 35GWh/yr (35 GIGAWATT HOURS PER YEAR) of cells by 2020. So Gigafactory is quite appropriate.
20. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:41 · Score: 0
  
  I prefer pendantry. You get to decide metal composition, chain length, stone type, size and color, and you even can assign arbitrary religious meaning to them.
  These are my favorite sweet ass pendants.
21. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Immerial · 2014-07-29 07:44 · Score: 2
  
  And even more confusion for folks from Boston. They would wonder why they would make a Terrahfactory... it's not even close to Halloween yet!
22. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by TWX · 2014-07-29 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  Given how many residents of Boston are already scared of the places in contention for the new factory, I don't see a problem with this...
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
23. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by DanielRavenNest · 2014-07-29 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  > I suspect that the name is also a bit of an homage to Back to the Future, but given that Musk is of South African origin and didn't move to North America until three years after the movie came out, I'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth to be sure.
  Back to the Future 1 did 45% of it's box office gross internationally ( http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m... ). I assume South Africa had movie theaters in 1985. Most reasonably developed countries did.
24. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by DanielRavenNest · 2014-07-29 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  It could also refer to the price of the factory, which will be well over a billion dollars.
25. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Kremmy · 2014-07-29 07:55 · Score: 0
  
  That would be an example of retroactive continuity.
  The standards people being MAD because their SI prefixes were being used 'incorrectly'.
  But the fact remains, bits and bytes were never metric units to begin with.
26. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-07-29 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but is it 1000 times bigger or 1024 times bigger? That's the important part!
  I'm not sure we're familiar with the size of the Ancient Greek Gigantes with such precision.
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
27. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · 2014-07-29 08:06 · Score: 1
  
  it's a way for them to name a plant so that it has obvious technological associations
  It actually has obvious mythological associations, but feel free to limit yourself to physical units. In common speech, "megas" meant nothing more than simply "big", while "gigas" meant "a Giant". I guess the obvious English adjective would be "effing huge".
  
  --
  Ezekiel 23:20
28. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Splab · 2014-07-29 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  Thank god for that, imagine having to deal with imperial bits and bytes vs. metric bits and bytes!
29. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 08:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I believe you are on the wrong site, then
30. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 08:16 · Score: 0
  
  You, incorrectly, assume that it was released internationally the same year.
31. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by EvolutionInAction · 2014-07-29 08:25 · Score: 2
  
  So? They weren't SI units, but they used SI prefixes (wrongly.) Now the SI has made SI units based on the old ones that do conform. They even threw in some binary units for the times that they are actually useful. You're just pissed because it turns out people respect the SI more they do grumpy old computer geeks.
32. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by mrchaotica · 2014-07-29 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  The grandparent AC was trying to say that "allegation" has a negative connotation compared to "assertion," so the latter would be fairer to say.
  
  --
  "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
33. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 09:06 · Score: 0
  
  I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to work with the imperial 8.3 bits to the byte...you would just get used to it.
34. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by i+kan+reed · 2014-07-29 10:31 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, I totally wasn't being fair. I didn't have that as a main priority. Articulating things perfectly is quite hard.
35. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 10:38 · Score: 0
  
  And petafactory would only serve to ensure it was shut down by the Helen Lovejoy's of the world. Won't somebody please think of the children? Because peta sounds like pedi. Ok. Goodnight folks.
36. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 10:49 · Score: 0
  
  Sorry; I meant to mod you up, not down.
37. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by SpzToid · 2014-07-29 11:59 · Score: 1
  
  So next time login and write your comment, to un-do the mod. You cannot accomplish that writing as an AC.
  
  --
  You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
38. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by rtb61 · 2014-07-29 12:18 · Score: 1
  
  Still a hugely high risk proposition in the continually updating battery field. A major battery break through of substantially different technology will cripple that investment. Global research on battery technology has never been higher, a bit of Government focus via forced patent sharing and fiscal contribution could push it along even faster.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
39. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by quenda · 2014-07-29 14:48 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but is it 1000 times bigger or 1024 times bigger? That's the important part!
  Thats what I keep telling the USB standards committee.
  A micro-B connector should be 15 nanometres wide. But they whine that this would cause mechanical problems.
40. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by quenda · 2014-07-29 14:49 · Score: 1
  
  According to Tesla, it will have as much production capacity as all current li-ion battery factories combined.
  So, are there currently a billion factories?
41. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 16:59 · Score: 0
  
  It is said that when this factory is at full capacity it will produce the same amount of cells as being produced now - in all the factories of the world combined.
42. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 20:30 · Score: 0
  
  According to Tesla, it will have as much production capacity as all current li-ion battery factories combined.
  The giga does have some meaning, as the factory has a planned production of 35 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year.
  tanx
  http://thepc-pro4.blogspot.com/
43. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-30 00:39 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is the vast amount of computer code and documentation that uses kilobyte=1024. In fact even today most memory manufacturers use the power of 2 notation. Pick a random datasheet for a DRAM chip, a microcontroller, an EEPROM or flash memory and I guarantee they will use powers of 2 and the "old" words like gigabit or the "MB" suffix.
  It would have made a lot more sense to define new words for powers of 10. Kibibyte = 1000 bytes etc. Only hard drive manufacturers would have been mildly annoyed, until they realized that they didn't have to print "1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes" on the label any more.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
44. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by lsatenstein · 2014-07-30 04:54 · Score: 1
  
  Will this factory battery be able to replace my car's lead-acid wonder? My car's battery has survived 7 subzero winters of -20F and 7 100F summers, and occasionally being drained when we forgot to turn off the headlights.
  
  --
  Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
45. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by lsatenstein · 2014-07-30 04:56 · Score: 1
  
  According to Tesla, it will have as much production capacity as all current li-ion battery factories combined.
  The giga does have some meaning, as the factory has a planned production of 35 gigawatt-hours of batteries per year.
  This is a great investment, Robotics galore, people only for telephone and emails. And the best part, just when the site gets to be profitable, new technology will come along and make that investment a major flawed decision.
  
  --
  Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
46. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by Friggo · 2014-07-30 05:44 · Score: 1
  
  No
47. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by lucien86 · 2014-07-30 22:12 · Score: 1
  
  The allegation is true. It doesn't take a genius to work it out. - The problem with electric cars is that they are too expensive, and most or all of that extra cost is in the batteries. Cheaper and bigger batteries with a smaller & lighter physical footprint = cheaper electric cars. Simple!
  
  --
  Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
48. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by EvolutionInAction · 2014-07-31 15:18 · Score: 1
  
  That defeats the entire purpose of the SI. The prefixes are fixed. They have definite meaning, and that meaning is constant through all units. All the units have the same base. Any violation of that and we might as well be using Imperial.
  So no, it wouldn't 'make more sense.' The SI did the only thing they could. They adopted the units, and even went out of their way to make new prefixes to cover the binary byte use cases.
  Yeah, it means a lot of old documentation is now wrong. But there's only one way forward if we want a sane system of measures.
49. Re:What makes this a gigafactory? by pr0fessor · 2014-08-01 08:24 · Score: 1
  
  Gigashadow? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
50. Re: What makes this a gigafactory? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-08-01 11:57 · Score: 0
  
  Then what the hell are you doing on /.?
New Mexico by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 06:33 · Score: 0

So does this mean they aren't coming to Albuquerque? I was looking forward to having them out here.
1. Re:New Mexico by pavon · 2014-07-29 07:12 · Score: 1
  
  No, nothing in this article says anything about the site selection which is still pending, just that it will be a joint venture between Tesla and Panasonic rather than Tesla going alone as was previously believed.
2. Re:New Mexico by quenda · 2014-07-29 15:05 · Score: 1
  
  I think they want to keep it in the United States for tax reasons. And not paying protection money to the drug cartels.
I blame Obama if this fails. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 06:36 · Score: 0

He blew up the Solyndra factory with a drone stroke to protect his Chinese masters, why not another?
1. Re:I blame Obama if this fails. by Guspaz · 2014-07-29 07:11 · Score: 2
  
  I'm amused at the mental image of something being destroyed by a "drone stroke".
2. Re:I blame Obama if this fails. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 08:20 · Score: 0
  
  Like Gaza?
3. Re: I blame Obama if this fails. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 10:43 · Score: 0
  
  Two more years for the next presidential debates.
4. Re:I blame Obama if this fails. by Guspaz · 2014-07-29 11:25 · Score: 1
  
  *woosh*
5. Re:I blame Obama if this fails. by syockit · 2014-07-29 11:58 · Score: 1
  
  In electronical systems equipments, something akin to a stroke would be a system failure. A drone stroke is the one you see when drone suddenly coming down crashing to the ocean, with the owner claiming that it was all intentional
  
  --
  Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
6. Re:I blame Obama if this fails. by Guspaz · 2014-07-29 16:25 · Score: 1
  
  I was thinking of a different meaning of the word "stroke".
Can't Wait! by Motard · 2014-07-29 06:49 · Score: 1

I, for one cannot wait for the opportunity to purchase a brand new Tesla Giga. I hope it will cost less than the Model S. I also hope it will be a smartphone, because I already have a vehicle.
1. Re:Can't Wait! by amorsen · 2014-07-29 06:52 · Score: 1
  
  Personally I am much more excited about a gigatesla than a Tesla Giga.
  
  --
  Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
And then there were nine by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 06:51 · Score: 0

when the Giggerota factory moves to mainland China after not too long. Mitt Romney says.
Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 06:54 · Score: 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2NLQvCZ5zI&feature=youtu.be
1. Re:Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 06:58 · Score: 0
  
  Yep, all cultures are exactly morally equivalent, and we should not ever look at any other culture as barbaric or malformed.
2. Re:Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:21 · Score: 0
  
  Oh come on, you really think Americans are above goatfucking?
3. Re:Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by onkelonkel · 2014-07-29 07:33 · Score: 1
  
  There is a "No True Scotsman" joke in here somewhere, but I just can't seem to find it.
  
  --
  None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
4. Re:Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:47 · Score: 0
  
  Clearly not all of us.
5. Re:Hamas Forces Having Sex With Goats by angel'o'sphere · 2014-07-29 08:54 · Score: 1
  
  I assume that is because 'the true scotsman' is a fallacy, or in lay men terms: there is no true scotsman ...
  Except for Sean Connery, obviously!
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
TMI by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 07:18 · Score: 0

Living in Reno, the thought of the Gigafactory being built here gives me a mild chubby.
Cell and battery production in same plant by Animats · 2014-07-29 07:22 · Score: 5, Informative

The Tesla/Panasonic plan gets cell and battery production back into the same plant. The battery industry has, for a while, had a model where cells were made in one country (usually Japan, Taiwan or S. Korea, or at least with machinery from there) and assembled into device-specific battery packs near where the end device was produced (usually China or the US.) For the Chevy Volt, the cells come frm LG Chem in Korea, and the battery packs are assembled at the Brownstown, MI Battery Assembly plant.
There's no good reason to do it that way now that the era of cheap labor in China is over. As a rule of thumb, labor has to be 4x cheaper to justify offshoring. The coastal provinces in China have reached that level with respect to US/Japan wages.
Done right, this isn't labor-intensive. Brownstown has only 100 workers in a 400,000 square foot plant, and they're doing battery assembly, which is the more labor-intensive part of the operation. Tesla claims to need 6,500 employees for their 10 million square foot plant, but they're probably counting construction-phase employees.
1. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 08:25 · Score: 0
  
  Plus all that pollution would just wash out into the Sea of Cortez, where it wouldn't hurt anything.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
  Nope, nothing at all.
2. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by jfengel · 2014-07-29 08:38 · Score: 1
  
  There's no good reason to do it that way now that the era of cheap labor in China is over.
  
  I really don't know much about that; can you amplify a bit? I mean, economics said that it should happen some day, as all that money washing into China should eventually translate into demands for higher pay, but there were plenty of places to squirrel that money away rather than pay workers. And there were a LOT of potential workers.
  So what finally caused the labor rate to rise enough? I gather that the goal was to establish dominance in some kinds of manufacturing so that we'd have to re-establish the industry from scratch, raising the threshold for bringing manufacturing projects back here. Did the achieve that, or what?
3. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 09:19 · Score: 0
  
  yes they achieved it, not just china but lots of asia and the BRICS have almost eliminated large swathes of manufacturing sectors
4. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by Salgat · 2014-07-29 09:33 · Score: 1
  
  China taking advantage of outsourcing afforded it the ability to provide rural workers with low wage factory jobs. As more rural workers transitioned to these factory jobs, a middle class started to develop. This eventually led to internal demand for the products they were producing (since you had enough people with low but decent wage jobs), which ultimately results in China having a strong enough middle class to create jobs for their own demand, not just the demand of other countries. China is arriving at the point where they can start manufacturing higher end goods/services that can be sold within their own country, just like 1st world countries.
5. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 10:06 · Score: 0
  
  There still are plenty of potential workers but the supply and demand shift is starting to occur and it feeds on itself. It used to be that supply was so much greater than demand that the supply had literally zero bargaining power.
  Now there is some bargaining power within the supply of labor i.e. labor can find a different job and a job is no longer "take it or leave it". Combine that with the idea of "work experience" and you have wage increases. The wage increases change the type of work that is profitable to offshore (more skilled labor tasks) which drive further wage increases.
  You go from textiles (lowest skills) to electronics (still low but higher level of skill) to some more knowledge based industries. Less investment occurs in the lower skill trades because there are better countries to do that manufacturing in and once again, you have average wage increases. Much like the USA, this doesn't mean every worker is employed. It just means that if you had to hire X thousand employees to do something you will need to provide a higher wage than before.
  Wages have been gradually rising in China. Its not like wages rose overnight. What has happened is that the wage rate has reached a critical point where it is no longer a "no brainer" to offshore to China and a lot of the other nations with cheaper labor rates don't have the necessary infrastructure and political stability to absorb the demand for higher tech, high investment, projects.
6. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by floobedy · 2014-07-29 11:24 · Score: 1
  
  The amount of capital there has increased a lot over the last few decades. That implies fewer workers relative to capital, and higher wages for workers.
  
  but there were plenty of places to squirrel that money away rather than pay workers.
  When there's a scarcity of workers relative to capital, then workers have bargaining power. They can leave a job which pays too little for a job which pays more. It makes sense (ie is more profitable) for companies to pay more, otherwise they cannot attract enough workers to run their equipment. Competition among workers for jobs pushes wages up, when capital is abundant, just as competition between firms for customers lowers prices and pushes wages back down.
  Companies in the US and western countries have always paid the lowest they can to their workers. Google has to pay $100k per engineer. If they paid only $50k, then all those engineers would go elsewhere and google would be no more. Labor is scarce in silicon valley, because there's more money than engineers. The relative scarcity of labor is what pushes the price of labor (wages) up everywhere, and is the only reason labor makes more than bare subsistence ($2/day) in any country. In countries where there is no capital (no factories, no investment money, etc), there is no labor scarcity relative to capital, and people actually make bare subsistence wages ($2/day).
7. Re:Cell and battery production in same plant by AmiMoJo · 2014-07-30 00:33 · Score: 1
  
  Panasonic have highly advanced robotic factories. I took a tour of their "lights out" plasma TV factory and it was quite incredible. I imagine this new gigafactory will be mostly automated.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Interesting process by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 09:19 · Score: 1

Their process is on slide 3
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf
Interesting that the electrolyte goes in after winding.
Seems tricky to get the distribution even inside the coil.
I guess they have built one or two before.
It will be interesting to see how they push down the pack cost.
I'd bet on fewer, bigger cells.
Or maybe a matrix with small cells filling the holes between big ones.
Looking forward to being able to by cells for home projects.
1. Re:Interesting process by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 15:29 · Score: 0
  
  Looking forward to being able to by cells for home projects.
  
  As far as I know, Tesla's battery packs are assembled out of individual 18650 Li-ion batteries, thousands of them.
  18650 batteries are as common as dirt online.
How "giga" can it be if it's July 2014, by mark_reh · 2014-07-29 09:43 · Score: 0

they haven't started building it yet, and it is supposed to be up and running in 2017? They're still talking about financing. Nope, NOT giga, or not ready in 2017.
What is needed by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 09:45 · Score: 0

is to continue building MULTIPLE factories.
Once you have built one, you might as well build several more, since it is obvious that these batteries will be needed.
Re:can we wait until 2017? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 09:56 · Score: 0

Are you running your home on free energy? Please post here the blueprints because tomorrow I have some free time and I want to put this in place.
Re:can we wait until 2017? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 10:37 · Score: 0

I dare you to make less sense.
Investment opportunity by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 11:29 · Score: 1

"You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" (Bob Dylan 1965 for youngsters). Which means that improvements in cost or performance of batteries will yield an enormous payback. Battery improvements will come about both by manufacturing efficiencies and technology advances. So despite some failures of the initial start-ups batteries are an excellent investment opportunity both for companies like Panasonic and individual.
Lexx by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-29 12:34 · Score: 0

I always think of Lexx and the GigaShadow's meat eating factory in the Cluster when I hear this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lexx_episodes
While we are on the silly names by dbIII · 2014-07-29 18:57 · Score: 1

Forget all that - just give us a Ghiblifactory. Little electric cars are not the ideal future. Instead give us a cat bus running along the top of power transmission lines :)
i expected by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-30 06:45 · Score: 0

a higher end company - panasonic is a "just good enough" company