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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."
Yes.
The biggest individual cost for electric cars seems to be the batteries. Elon wants to replace combustion based vehicles with electric. He will need tens to hundreds of Gigafactories to meet demand, plus is also prioritising Powerwalls. I highly doubt the general purpose battery market is on the radar yet.
... energy that has been fabricated by minerals and ores extracted by, and processed in plants powered by, fossil fuels.
God: "No, you can't get past the fucking 2nd law."
Does that include fossil nukes, hydro-fossilized or geothermalized petroleum plants?
We *can* phase out fossil fuels, just not yet but we can cut our usage drastically. We had to use other energy sources to kickstart our use of coal & oil; this is not different just on a much larger scale.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
For products where your relationship with the producer ends at the point of purchase (and you don't much care whether or not you will continue to be able to buy that product in the future), that makes sense.
For a lot of the more complex products (in particular cars, software, computers), however, the value of your purchase will depend strongly on its manufacturer's continued ability to exist and support that product.
i.e. if you bought a Pebble watch last month, you're probably not too happy that Pebble called it quits this month, since that means you won't be getting much in the way of support or updates in the future, and your watch might stop working entirely.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Same corporations, day in day out.
Sometimes the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" comes from some small handful of active companes, as they bring their breakthroughs into public use. Sometimes it has been AMD, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, and so on.
Right now Tesla is big, as they finally bring the battery breakthroughs Slashdotters have been lamenting as "always N years off", to market, for electric cars and energy storage for taking houses off the grid and onto self-generated renewable energy.
Remember all the lamenting, just yesterday, about how the price breakthrough in photovoltaic solar would be useless because of the cost of storage (for night and dark weather periods) and voltage conversion? Remember how I pointed out that voltage conversion has already succumbed to Moore's Law and the battery breakthroughs were just about to come on line?
The future came today. Look out, grid utilities!
C'mon, editors, *dig* a little! The Web is a big place, cast your story nets a l'il bit wider...
The editors don't dig. The slashdot users dig and the editors chose. IMHO they were right on to post this one.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If you bought a "smart watch", you have bigger problems than the company that makes them going out of business.
You are welcome on my lawn.