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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."
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.
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...
I understand that they are making these primarily for cars, but does Tesla have any plans to make consumer-friendly Lithium-ion batteries for general use? Seems like they could easily make these, and drive down the costs of these things pretty dramatically. Looking quickly on Google, general-use batteries seem to run hundreds of dollars. I'd be interested in one for various purposes if it dropped down into a $50-$100 range.
Aside from the PowerWall / PowerPacks, I think that'll be left to Panasonic and I'm betting it may be written into their agreements.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
... 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
100% of your products can't be loss leaders.
Typically that makes them an excellent buy as a consumer. I don't care how they stay in business, if only all my products that I buy had this value per dollar spent I'd be much happier. Personally all that means for me is I would stay away from investment.
Man replied: "Not really, since in any scenario where that source didn't exist, neither would we. So it was pretty much guaranteed via the anthropic principle"
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Laptop, not flashlight.
Ok, if you want to be pedantic, laptop AND flashlight battery.. Not to mention e-cigs, bluetooth speakers, and a zillion other things the nearly ubiquitous 18650 is used for.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
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?
"Why, the fax-machine ain't nothin' but a waffle-iron with a phone attached!"
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.
I understand that they are making these primarily for cars, but does Tesla have any plans to make consumer-friendly Lithium-ion batteries for general use?
It seems unlikely. Panasonic agreed to create the 2170 form factor specifically for Tesla. Tesla likes have large numbers of smaller, cylindrical cells because they can build packs out of them that give them finer control and better cooling than the large monolithic cells you seem to be referring to (very imprecisely). They're just a little bit bigger in both dimensions than an 18650 in order to improve the power density of the packs, while not losing the aforementioned advantages.
Because it's a custom Tesla-specific cell form factor, it's very likely a Tesla-exclusive contract as well. Panasonic is making these in a Tesla factory for Tesla, and nobody else. So when you start seeing advertising for Panasonic 2170 cells on Alibaba, don't try to buy them. They'll be fake. You're unlikely to see any real new 2170 bare cells on the open market. What you may see are used ones coming from someone buying a wrecked Tesla and tearing apart the battery pack. What you'll probably see is a noticeable drop in the price of 18650 cells. Tesla will be transitioning the Model S and Model X to redesigned packs with the new form factor (whether or not they announced it—it's just how they roll). That will significantly reduce worldwide demand for 18650s. Unless some cartel behavior comes into play, prices should fall.
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
You're an order of magnitude off there, chief. That would be a hearing-aid battery. They're actually making 21700 cells. Tesla sometimes calls them "'21-70", but omitting the dash and concatenating the numbers makes no sense.
No big deal, I suppose, just a little typo... I still look forward to buying a $350,000 (3350 eur) Tesla Model 3, with its impressive 21 mile (3460km) range and 1550 mph (25kph) top-speed.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
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.
Sorry that's bullshit. They're not selling at a loss!
I don't care how they stay in business
Perhaps you should. Selling below cost initially is how monopolies are created. A company can sell at a loss for a while if they know this means driving off the competition. They don't need to drive everyone off, just diminish the ability for any competition to arise to the point that they can charge a premium for a substandard product. They would be betting on the ability for them to undercut any future competition later with greater volume (lower margins) and/or some reserves in resources to outlast the competition in a price war. This might not apply to electric cars exactly since this is not the kind of fight that a small company like Tesla can win against the likes of Ford and GM.
What is another tactic, and more likely one that Tesla could employ, is the ability to sell at a loss now knowing that the customer will likely return to them for services in the future. If this means selling another car in the future then perhaps there is nothing wrong with that. If this means selling critical parts like a battery then this might be a problem. Tesla would be in a position to overcharge for the battery to make up for a loss on the initial sale. If customers somehow feel compelled to continue using an electric car then Tesla would be in a position to also overcharge for the next vehicle too.
If Tesla is able to sell below costs because of government incentives, like subsidies or lowered taxes, then you are paying for this below cost pricing even if you are never a Tesla customer.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. You are going to bear the costs in some way.
What bothers me most is when the below cost pricing is due to government interference. In that case I'm paying for some rich guy to buy a new car when I can't afford my own. This is a subsidy that takes from the poor and gives to the wealthy. All energy subsidies do this really, take from the poor to further enrich the wealthy. I'd rather I be able to keep my money, perhaps then I can afford some new windows on my house. If you want to see people saving the environment then we need to stop these subsidies so people like me can buy some new windows, attic insulation, or even just a new pair of wool socks, and not have to spend so much on heating.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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?