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Elon Musk Breaks Ground on Tesla's Shanghai Factory (cnbc.com)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong celebrated on Monday the ground breaking of the electric automaker's first non-U.S. factory. From a report: "China is becoming the global leader in electric vehicle adoption, and it is a market that is critical to Tesla's mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy," Musk said, according to a company statement coinciding with the ceremony for the Shanghai factory. In Twitter posts before the event, Musk said that the factory will produce "affordable versions" of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles for the Greater China region, and that the plan is to "finish initial construction this summer, start Model 3 production end of year and reach high volume production next year."
According to the company, the so-called Gigafactory in Shanghai "will allow Tesla to localize production of Model 3 and future models sold in China, with plans to eventually produce approximately 3,000 Model 3 vehicles per week in the initial phase and to ramp up to 500,000 vehicles per year when fully operational (subject to local factors including regulatory approval and supply chain constraints)."
According to the company, the so-called Gigafactory in Shanghai "will allow Tesla to localize production of Model 3 and future models sold in China, with plans to eventually produce approximately 3,000 Model 3 vehicles per week in the initial phase and to ramp up to 500,000 vehicles per year when fully operational (subject to local factors including regulatory approval and supply chain constraints)."
Chinese battery tech has proven to be reliable and robust in harsh use cases such as commercial vehicles. Buses and taxis running them hard every day, that sort of thing.
With a battery made up for many, many cells it's not necessarily the case that you want the highest quality, because that pushes the price up a lot. It can often be better to over-provision and accept a slightly higher failure rate among individual cells.
For example Kia and Hyundai have both released 64kWh usable capacity cars with lifetime, unlimited mileage battery warranties. Most other manufactures only offer 8 years and 100-120k miles. They don't state the full capacity of the batteries, only the amount they guarantee is available when new and for warranty purposes. The full capacity is probably a trade secret, as it depends on LG's manufacturing capability and how much they need to over-provision to offer the lifetime warranty.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Musk gave away all of Tesla's patents years ago. Do you really think he cares that China might want to steal the IP?