Slashdot Mirror
Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory
First time accepted submitter Mikenan writes Tesla has finally decided that it will build its battery "gigafactory" in Nevada, sources say. "That's a go, but they are still negotiating the specifics of the contract," a source within the Nevada's governor's office told CNBC Wednesday afternoon. The source noted that it could be a week before the deal is official. Nevada is planning a press conference Thursday in Carson City.
Now we know why Nevada was chosen.
CARson City.
Makes total sense.
WTF is a "gigafactory?"
Is it somehow different than any other kind of factory? Or is it a made-up word designed to satisfy some narcissists ego?
It's the opposite of a nanofactory.
35 GWh/Year isn't fooling me!!!
That's only 4 megawatts!
Tesla is making over 25% profit on every car sold. All of that money is going into growth and expansion. While they get emission credits, they don't rely on them since they are shrinking.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I mean, I guess it's good that they're not manufacturing the batteries in China (batteries are heavy so I guess the shipping outweighs the labor savings) but it sounds like Tesla is just going to pocket a ton of tax credits and other stuff in exchange for putting a building of robot manufacturers in Nevada.
Say what you will, but the middle class needs work. We need something for the vast majority of people who aren't scientists, engineers or politicians to do. That used to be traditional assembly-line manufacturing. After that, it was the millions of people routing documents and reports around large corporations. This next wave of automation is going to put a real crimp on the middle class that it can't easily absorb. Unless people start paying full-salary wages for stupid stuff like rating cat videos or posting on social media, the traditional model of 2-kids-and-a-mortgage is out the window. For the low end, we need something like the steel mills and other factories that would employ thousands of workers in 3 shifts. And for the medium end, we need to preserve at least some of the "corporate drone" jobs. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it looks like there's nothing left for the middle of the economy -- it's going to split into ultra low end jobs like cleaning and food service, and high-end jobs like engineering, science, etc. (And I'm guessing management will reserve itself a place in the high end too.)
The problem is, without rolling back a lot of the benefits automation brings, I don't know how we're going to handle the next level of change.
Tesla has the car factor in CA and Elon has a major SpaceX factory there as well.
Betrayed?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Cucumber factory only has stem-removal jobs.
Bloom off the rose? There are few things that give me greater pleasure than seeing a leftist parasite howling because it's been deprived of it's host. Go Tesla!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
It's possible to generate 25% margin on each car, yet still have the company post a loss (Learn to read an Income Statement). All it requires is the company to re-invest all of that margin (and more) say... building a Gigafactory or other R&D or expansion activities. When you're in a growth phase like Tesla and your overriding objective is to scale the business, you would expect the company to be running on the edge of profitability, simply because every dollar in profit is a dollar that can be used to fund your expansion.
Well if California was actually betrayed by anyone, the first blame would have to fall at the feet of the state legislature, which failed to vote on the incentive package before the latest session ended. When the California governor promised Tesla the incentives the company responded with interest, and a few days after those incentives disappeared in puff of legislative smoke Tesla announced their decision to go with Nevada.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
When the topic first came up on Slashdot a number of people seemed to think offering such incentives was a bad idea. Maybe the California legislature agreed with that reasoning, but if they've made any statements about why they did what they did i haven't heard about it.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank