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Tesla, Panasonic Are Freezing Plans To Add More Battery Production Lines At Gigafactory (techcrunch.com)
Tesla and Panasonic are reportedly freezing their plans to add more battery production lines at Gigafactory 1, its massive factory outside of Reno, Nevada that is a cornerstone to the automaker's business. "The partners had planned to increase capacity by 50 percent next year, but financial problems have forced a rethink," reports TechCrunch, citing a report from Nikkei. "Nikkei also reported that Panasonic was suspending a planned investment in Tesla's automotive battery and EV plant in Shanghai." From the report: TechCrunch confirmed that Tesla is not adding more battery production lines and will instead focus its efforts on existing equipment. Tesla stressed that it will continue to make new investments as needed into the plant. However, the automaker noted that attention and investments might be focused on improving existing equipment to increase battery cell output.
As of November, Panasonic had 11 production lines operating at Gigafactory 1. Panasonic president President Kazuhiro Tsuga told Bloomberg that the company planned to add two more lines by the end of the year to bring total capacity up to 35 gigawatt-hours. The last number shared by Tesla is from July when the company reported an annualized run rate of 20 gigawatt-hours of capacity. It's not clear if those two production lines were added. "We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed. However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated," a Tesla spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
As of November, Panasonic had 11 production lines operating at Gigafactory 1. Panasonic president President Kazuhiro Tsuga told Bloomberg that the company planned to add two more lines by the end of the year to bring total capacity up to 35 gigawatt-hours. The last number shared by Tesla is from July when the company reported an annualized run rate of 20 gigawatt-hours of capacity. It's not clear if those two production lines were added. "We will of course continue to make new investments in Gigafactory 1, as needed. However, we think there is far more output to be gained from improving existing production equipment than was previously estimated," a Tesla spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
Panasonic ended up downgrading the demand from companies making electric cars.
But it's not like the demand for electric cars is getting any lower, interest is steadily climbing...
So even though Tesla loses some money from Panasonic, it probably is an indicator they have even a larger leg up on the electric car market than previously thought as car makers struggle to get near what Tesla is doing at scale.
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For cars and cell phones, energy density matters a lot. For stationary home and industrial scale installations, it matters much less. Are lithium ion batteries still the best choice for such applications? (For the purpose of this question, I'm only considering batteries. I am aware that there are many other industrial scale electricity storage technologies proposed or in use.)
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The initial plan was to produce 35GW when the Gigafactory 1 is finished. Right now the plant is far from finished, with only a fraction of the whole building built, and yet it is expected to reach 35GW this year and when finished to be at 3 times the originaly planned capacity - at 105GW, and on top of that to have enough space to produce battery packs for model 3 and soon Y, S and X, without expanding the plant size. All this is happening because of advancements in production efficiency and battery power density. So it's not surprising Tesla chose to optimize efficiency and density instead of adding new lines. Their recent purchase of Maxwell Technologies is also an indication of that. I don't get why everybody is acting surprised and spells doom and gloom.
For cars and cell phones, energy density matters a lot. For stationary home and industrial scale installations, it matters much less. Are lithium ion batteries still the best choice for such applications?
It depends on how you measure. If your primary consideration is TCO then yes. Otherwise, LiFePo4 is currently the best battery chemistry you can buy. It holds almost as much as LiPo, but it's as stable as NiMH, and it has as many charge cycles as Li-Ion. Unfortunately, it costs about twice as much as Li-Ion.
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