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Tesla Gigafactory Begins Production (reuters.com)
Thelasko writes: Right on schedule, Tesla's Gigafactory has begun production of battery cells. The fact that the factory has opened on schedule has surprised many critics of the company. Reuters reports: "Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc has started mass production of lithium-ion battery cells at its gigafactory in Nevada along with Japan's Panasonic Corp, the company said on Wednesday. The cylindrical '2170 cells,' which will be used to power Tesla's energy storage products and the new Model 3 sedan, have been jointly designed by Tesla and Panasonic, its longstanding battery partner. The gigafactory will initially produce battery cells for the company's Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 energy products, Tesla said. The factory is expected to drive down the cost of battery packs by more than 30 percent, the company has said. At peak production, the gigafactory is expected to employ 6,500 workers and create between 20,000 and 30,000 additional jobs in the surrounding regions, Tesla said."
Am I the only person here who took this long to realize that Tesla cars are powered by what amounts to a shitload of flashlight batteries wired up in a tub?
It's actually an excellent system for a low price. The cells are insulated and have a cooling system so as to maintain a optimal temperature. Furthermore, as cells age and get a open/short or bad cell, the pack rewires itself around the trouble allowing it to gradually fail gracefully unlike simple packs. Finally tesla and the government want these to be cheap so they offer massive subsidies and car companies like tesla sell them at a loss so as to not turn people off with a 30 thousand dollar price tag (like it would be marked up for general purpose at a typical company). It's a good deal for the money given today's tech.
The name Gigafactory comes from the factory’s planned annual battery production capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh). “Giga” is a unit of measurement that represents “billions”. One GWh is the equivalent of generating (or consuming) one billion watts for one hour—one million times that of one kWh. https://www.tesla.com/gigafact...
Sorry that's bullshit. They're not selling at a loss!
A slow clap for the person who doesn't realize the difference between "selling units at a loss" and "company undergoing a super-rapid scaleup involving building some of the largest buildings on the planet operating at a loss".
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
Indeed. Tesla has some of the most advanced battery packs on the market. It's pretty dang impressive being able to make a car with that much mass of lithium ion batteries with decade-scale lifespans operating in outdoor conditions and has an order of magnitude lower rate of fires per mile traveled than gasoline vehicles.
Also, as for how they're wired up, in case anyone is curious: individual cells are wired up in parallel "bricks" in large numbers, so that if one cell dies, it has little effect on the brick as a whole (contrast with a laptop battery with 18650 cells just in series - if one goes, the battery is dead). The bricks are connected in series into "sheets" to raise the voltage, and the sheets in turn are connected in series to make up a pack. At least that's how they did it with the Roadster; I assume the Model S is individual. Within each brick, each cell is in its own isolated can; the goal is to prevent propagating failures.
The climate control issue took some time to get right. Early Roadsters suffered from fairly high parasitic drain when the vehicle wasn't plugged in, but they refined the climate control algorithm so that they could more properly maintain the pack temperature without wasting energy. Key to maintaining cell longevity are three main factors: charge/discharge rate, depth of discharge (upper and lower), and temperature. Getting temperature right is very important. As for the other two, the cells aren't charged to their full capacity when the vehicle is at "100%", they're at 90-something percent (at least they were with the Roadster). And on your average drive you only use a very small percent of the pack capacity, so in practice it's an extremely shallow depth of discharge. Both normal driving and overnight charging are low current applications per cell; only fast charging and track duty are relatively high current (but even still you're talking at least half an hour to charge or drain most of the pack).
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?
What are you talking about? What "materials"? I certainly hope you don't mean "lithium", because if so it only exposes how little you know about how lithium is produced. Salar lithium, the current preferred source, isn't "mined", it's produced from brine pumped up in salt flats, sun dried, and the individual salts separated from each other. The undesirable salts are left on the surface. Every year, most of the salars flood, taking the salt with them.
There are various potential lithium sources which are mined, and in the future at times they may prove to be more economical than salars or fill in for an abundance in demand that salars cannot meet. But the ultimate lithium source, the effectively inexhaustible one, is the oceans, and that again just goes back to a brine process. Last I checked (which was long ago), oceanic lithium recovery prices were estimated at about 5x as much as typical salar recovery prices. But even a price like that would hardly impact overall lithium battery prices; it's still cheap, and they just don't use that much lithium.
For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?