I literally gave you a Google search result in which every single article talked about the topic. And (for the third time!), I'll repeat: "If you want to keep asserting something against all very accessible facts, then by all means, cite Tesla's fictional Chinese partner.... I'm waiting."
How many times are you going to dodge that? Let me take a wild guess: you're going to respond yet again, without a name for the fictional "Chinese partner".
* Crystal meth
* Fixing up your trailer
* Sleeping with your cousin
* Adding another confederate flag sticker to your pickup
* Not graduating from high school
Come on, there's loads of other things you could be doing apart from racist trolling on Slashdot.
Literally every article on the subject says the exact same thing: Tesla's GF3 is the first fully foreign owned auto factory in China and they were granted an exception for this. Tesla has no Chinese partner in the project. Period. Google it. If you want to keep asserting something against all very accessible facts, then by all means, cite Tesla's fictional Chinese partner.
Or to put it another way: if you don't believe that GF3 is fully foreign owned (by Tesla), by all means, go ahead and name their (fictional) Chinese partner.
Tesla was granted an exception to WFOE rules. I'm not sure why you're having trouble following links or using Teh Google. 2022 is when the rule change goes through and applies to everyone.
And foreign automakers operating in China disagree with you about whether this rule change effectively prohibits them from starting new factories in the country.
BEIJING — Electric car producer Tesla will build its first factory outside the United States in Shanghai, becoming the first wholly foreign-owned automaker in China.
Chapter III Fuel Vehicle Vehicle Investment Project Article 11 It is forbidden to construct the following fuel vehicle investment projects (not sold in China) Except for investment projects for sale of products): (1) Newly built independent fuel vehicle enterprises; (2) Existing automobile enterprises build fuel vehicle production in the category of passenger cars and commercial vehicles ability; (3) The existing fuel automobile enterprises are relocated to other provinces as a whole (included in the national level) Development planning or projects that do not change the ownership structure of the company); (4) Investing in fuel automobile enterprises that are specifically publicized by the industry management departments (enterprise) Except for investment projects in which the original shareholder invests or converts the enterprise into a non-independent legal entity)
Existing ICE automakers are pushing back against the rules, calling them impossible to meet.
China has made it clear what it expects its future to be, and it's electric. Not "several decades from now", but "very soon".
LOL. Tesla has several dozen people at the VP level or higher. The average executive changes jobs every 3-5 years. At a high-stress company like Tesla with frequent changes in needs, you should expect significantly shorter.
If you're going to freak out every time a person at the VP level or higher leaves Tesla, you're going to be freaking out a lot. But all means, please don't let that stop you. I love the ever-so predictable lows and highs in this stock. Good buy points wouldn't be so easy to come by if not for people like you.
"Loose cannon" is probably a fair label. That said, anyone who ever actually watched the Joe Rogan interview could clearly see that Musk has almost no experience with smoking pot.;) That interview was great for cracking jokes, of course.
That said, when it comes to China, it's clearly not about Musk; it's about much bigger issues. 4,5% of China's new car sales last year were electric - far higher than the US. China has now issued rules to make it almost impossible to build a new factory for making ICE vehicles in the country. Tesla's Gigafactory 3 is a statement of what they view as their electric future (cleantech is a key part of Xi Jinping Thought). They're also using it as a showcase for their ability to turn around major foreign projects quickly. All of their coverage has included clips of Musk talking about how amazed he is with how fast companies can get things done in China, and Shanghai in particular.
Tesla, being one of the world's most controversial "story stocks", invariably attracts a lot of attention to everything they do, and as a result pretty much everyone in the business world is watching how this project turns out. Which is exactly what they want. There's no question that Tesla has gotten some serious preferential treatment there - being the first foreign automaker to get to fully own a plant in China, getting a really rapid turnaround on the project, getting billions of dollars in uncollateralized loans, having Musk meet with premier Li Keqiang as if he were some sort of foreign diplomat, etc, etc. China wants this project, and they want to show off with it.
This is the same Russian company that's been plugging its "Our robot keeps trying to escape its lab!"
If the very obviously fake "accident" isn't enough, just listen to how they described Autopilot:
“After the clash the robot was pushed aside and fell. The car continued to move and stopped fifty meters away from the accident. The passenger who was in the car while driving explains that he decided to try a self-driving mode (Full Self-Driving Capability) and chose an idle area for this test.”
“There was nobody there, no men, no cars. I switched this Tesla into a self-driving mode and it started to move. And wow! A robot on the track! I thought the flivver would come round, but it bumped straightly into the it! I am so sorry, the robot looks cute. And my sincere apologies to the engineers”, said George Caldera, a Tesla passenger.
Does it need to be mentioned that Autopilot doesn't even remotely work this way? You can't "activate it as a passenger", it's not activated from the screen, the first time it's activated you have to go through confirmation steps, you can't activate it without being in the drivers' seat with your hands on the wheel, you can't activate it from a stop, and it has to be in an area where there's clear road markings.
Exactly. I've been waiting for some layoffs related to production for quite some time. There's just not that much of a market yet for them to accumulate that large of a F9 fleet. And in the future they want to be switching to Starship / Super Heavy with large dispensers; Starship is designed for full, long-term reuse, unlike F9, whose upper stage is expendible, and whose first stage is designed for only a relatively limited number of reuses.
A telling factor is that Tesla has made it clear that even for the Chinese market, high-end Model 3s, and all Model S and Model X, will be made in the US and exported to China. Only low-end Model 3s and Model Ys will be made in China.
Even in China, "Made in China" is not seen as a mark of quality. Affluent Chinese generally prefer imports to domestic goods.
I think AmiMoJo is confusing "warranty length" for "battery lifespan". It's a common fallacy when looking at low-volume EV production where people assume that all vehicles have similar profit margins and you can do a feature-for-feature comparison to determine manufacturing costs, properties, longevity, etc from this. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of manufacturers lose money on their EVs (and freely admit to this) or earn only de minimis margins, so things like warranty length (aka warranty costs to the manufacturer) are mostly unrelated to the actual longevity.
Tesla has a 20% (and rising) margin on the Model 3 (see its earnings reports). Hyundai has a barely over breakeven margin on even its Ioniq EV (which has a much smaller battery than the Kona).
Internal shorts are always fatal for li-ion cells, regardless of the type. You should never have an internal short. You can't say "The problem was due to internal shorts causing abnormal swelling". Any sentence about li-ion failures ends when you get to the "internal short" problem.
You're confusing cause and effect. The swelling - something most pronounced in pouch cells, as they do not mechanically resist it - caused the shorts. Normally swelling does not cause shorts, but two different types of manufacturing defects caused the swelling to cause short circuits. The first one was due to an insufficiently small packaging to handle worst-case swelling. The second was due to sharp protrusions which punctured the membrane during the flexure that occurs during swelling. Neither would have happened in cylindrical cells, because cylindrical cells resist swelling.
Pouch cells are just not as mechanically durable as cylindrical cells. Any list of battery cell type advantages and disadvantages will tell you this. I'll repeat: pouch cells are the junk of the li-ion battery world.
For example, the cylindrical ones will swell just as much if they don't have proper venting
They do not. Cylindrical cells mechanically resist most swelling from normal operation. Venting is only from abnormal operation, e.g. short-induced overheat.
If they are made poorly and short out they are actually more dangerous than the defective Samsung cells you link to,
All li-ion cells will fail severely in the event of a short. Shorts are self-propagating (a small short through the separator burns itself into a larger short just from the heat of the arc alone). What determines the consequence of a short at the cell level is mainly the electrolyte, although the rest of the cell's composition matters as well. There are electrolyte options that are entirely non-flammable, but there are performance tradeoffs.
Pouches should vent safely too if properly designed. Your own article notes that. That's what makes the Samsung debacle such an epic screw-up.
Samsung's two back-to-back failures were both due to swelling (for different reasons), something that is minimal in cylindrical cells. Not due to "a failure to vent".
I'm curious to know what you think the alternative is.
I'm not saying that there's a better alternative for phones. I'm saying that phone batteries suck. You don't want your car made like a cell phone when it comes to its power source. You tried to defend pouch cells in cars by bringing up cell phone batteries. That's not the sort of comparison you want to be making.
The fact that cell phone batteries suck isn't exactly a closely kept secret.
As for being "junk", maybe you think call cell phone batteries are "junk" or something
Absolutely they are. Cell phone batteries are terrible. The whole lot of them.
And remember that aforementioned swelling problem? Yep. (both types of failures were caused by swelling during operation, albeit for different reasons). Pouch cells are what you choose when you want something cheap and easy to make, but durability and reliability are not at the top of your concerns list.
Fully disagree with your second paragraph. Panasonic is generally considered the leader in tech and price per kWh. Check out, for example, the Munro teardowns; they've studied all of the cells on the market used by all major EV manufacturers, and put Panasonic way out in front. Panasonic's cells have simultaneously the lowest-cobalt of the cobalt-bearing EV chemistries (lower than the cobalt targets of most manufacturers next-gen cells), yet the among the highest energy densities, and are around $100/kWh (and falling). GM has stated that their cells from LG for the Bolt cost $145/kWh. None of this should be surprising; Panasonic makes over half of the world's EV kWh.
As for cylindrical vs. pouch cells, cylindrical cells are simultaneously more gravimetric energy dense, easier to cool, lower thermal expansion, greater durability, and offer much higher redundancy. Pouch cells are the "junk" of the li-ion battery world. They swell heavily and offer almost no mechanical resistance against damage.
The slowest Model 3 (including the upcoming base SR) is faster than the WRX STI 310 HP. 0-60 variously reported as 5,7 or 5,8s, vs. 5,5s for Model 3 SR ($35k w/o PUP), 4,5s for Model 3 LR AWD ($51k w/PUP), and 3,3s for Model 3 P ($62k). Not counting tax credits. And the standard feature list isn't even remotely close to comparable. Particularly if you want to compare to vehicles with PUP.
As for your "piece of shit" remark, Teslas consistently perform highest in Consumer Reports owner satisfaction surveys, but thanks for playing!
LG isn't Chinese; it's Korean. But I agree with your general point; Chinese li-ions have seen widespread use, and while they're generally not "top end", they're perfectly fine. Any differences vs. Panasonic will be compensated for with a higher cell count.
You're right - I'm everywhere. I'm everyone. Nothing happens without my nod; all that transpires is due to the sheer force of my will. I am a shape shifter. I live in the cracks. I'm watching when you least expect it. I live in the shadows of your darkest fears. In your weakest moments when you are naked and vulnerable, I'm there. Watching, waiting, posting. I live through you all, within you, and beside you. I am the breath on the back of your neck, the breeze in your hair, the moisture in the air.
On the other hand, it's quite possible that the cheapest versions of the Model 3 will be cheaper in China than in the rest of the world. Labour and supplier costs are certainly lower there than in Fremont.
Battery cell costs are an open question. Panasonic isn't going to be as closely involved there as they are with Tesla's US operations; Tesla plans to use predominantly Chinese cell suppliers.
Slashdot Mirror
I literally gave you a Google search result in which every single article talked about the topic. And (for the third time!), I'll repeat: "If you want to keep asserting something against all very accessible facts, then by all means, cite Tesla's fictional Chinese partner. ... I'm waiting."
How many times are you going to dodge that? Let me take a wild guess: you're going to respond yet again, without a name for the fictional "Chinese partner".
Examples:
* Crystal meth
* Fixing up your trailer
* Sleeping with your cousin
* Adding another confederate flag sticker to your pickup
* Not graduating from high school
Come on, there's loads of other things you could be doing apart from racist trolling on Slashdot.
Do you have anything better to do than racist trolling?
Literally every article on the subject says the exact same thing: Tesla's GF3 is the first fully foreign owned auto factory in China and they were granted an exception for this. Tesla has no Chinese partner in the project. Period. Google it. If you want to keep asserting something against all very accessible facts, then by all means, cite Tesla's fictional Chinese partner.
I'm waiting.
Or to put it another way: if you don't believe that GF3 is fully foreign owned (by Tesla), by all means, go ahead and name their (fictional) Chinese partner.
Tesla was granted an exception to WFOE rules. I'm not sure why you're having trouble following links or using Teh Google. 2022 is when the rule change goes through and applies to everyone.
And foreign automakers operating in China disagree with you about whether this rule change effectively prohibits them from starting new factories in the country.
Cough.
Seriously, google it.
As for your PDF:
Existing ICE automakers are pushing back against the rules, calling them impossible to meet.
China has made it clear what it expects its future to be, and it's electric. Not "several decades from now", but "very soon".
LOL. Tesla has several dozen people at the VP level or higher. The average executive changes jobs every 3-5 years. At a high-stress company like Tesla with frequent changes in needs, you should expect significantly shorter.
If you're going to freak out every time a person at the VP level or higher leaves Tesla, you're going to be freaking out a lot. But all means, please don't let that stop you. I love the ever-so predictable lows and highs in this stock. Good buy points wouldn't be so easy to come by if not for people like you.
"Loose cannon" is probably a fair label. That said, anyone who ever actually watched the Joe Rogan interview could clearly see that Musk has almost no experience with smoking pot. ;) That interview was great for cracking jokes, of course.
That said, when it comes to China, it's clearly not about Musk; it's about much bigger issues. 4,5% of China's new car sales last year were electric - far higher than the US. China has now issued rules to make it almost impossible to build a new factory for making ICE vehicles in the country. Tesla's Gigafactory 3 is a statement of what they view as their electric future (cleantech is a key part of Xi Jinping Thought). They're also using it as a showcase for their ability to turn around major foreign projects quickly. All of their coverage has included clips of Musk talking about how amazed he is with how fast companies can get things done in China, and Shanghai in particular.
Tesla, being one of the world's most controversial "story stocks", invariably attracts a lot of attention to everything they do, and as a result pretty much everyone in the business world is watching how this project turns out. Which is exactly what they want. There's no question that Tesla has gotten some serious preferential treatment there - being the first foreign automaker to get to fully own a plant in China, getting a really rapid turnaround on the project, getting billions of dollars in uncollateralized loans, having Musk meet with premier Li Keqiang as if he were some sort of foreign diplomat, etc, etc. China wants this project, and they want to show off with it.
I'll repeat: says who?
Look, I know it's never fun to get called out on BS, but it's happening. You're being called out to source your claim. Do so.
This is the same Russian company that's been plugging its "Our robot keeps trying to escape its lab!"
If the very obviously fake "accident" isn't enough, just listen to how they described Autopilot:
Does it need to be mentioned that Autopilot doesn't even remotely work this way? You can't "activate it as a passenger", it's not activated from the screen, the first time it's activated you have to go through confirmation steps, you can't activate it without being in the drivers' seat with your hands on the wheel, you can't activate it from a stop, and it has to be in an area where there's clear road markings.
Says who?
Exactly. I've been waiting for some layoffs related to production for quite some time. There's just not that much of a market yet for them to accumulate that large of a F9 fleet. And in the future they want to be switching to Starship / Super Heavy with large dispensers; Starship is designed for full, long-term reuse, unlike F9, whose upper stage is expendible, and whose first stage is designed for only a relatively limited number of reuses.
I'm loving this. Why say something yourself when you can make Google assert it as a fact for you? ;)
A telling factor is that Tesla has made it clear that even for the Chinese market, high-end Model 3s, and all Model S and Model X, will be made in the US and exported to China. Only low-end Model 3s and Model Ys will be made in China.
Even in China, "Made in China" is not seen as a mark of quality. Affluent Chinese generally prefer imports to domestic goods.
I think AmiMoJo is confusing "warranty length" for "battery lifespan". It's a common fallacy when looking at low-volume EV production where people assume that all vehicles have similar profit margins and you can do a feature-for-feature comparison to determine manufacturing costs, properties, longevity, etc from this. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of manufacturers lose money on their EVs (and freely admit to this) or earn only de minimis margins, so things like warranty length (aka warranty costs to the manufacturer) are mostly unrelated to the actual longevity.
Tesla has a 20% (and rising) margin on the Model 3 (see its earnings reports). Hyundai has a barely over breakeven margin on even its Ioniq EV (which has a much smaller battery than the Kona).
Internal shorts are always fatal for li-ion cells, regardless of the type. You should never have an internal short. You can't say "The problem was due to internal shorts causing abnormal swelling". Any sentence about li-ion failures ends when you get to the "internal short" problem.
You're confusing cause and effect. The swelling - something most pronounced in pouch cells, as they do not mechanically resist it - caused the shorts. Normally swelling does not cause shorts, but two different types of manufacturing defects caused the swelling to cause short circuits. The first one was due to an insufficiently small packaging to handle worst-case swelling. The second was due to sharp protrusions which punctured the membrane during the flexure that occurs during swelling. Neither would have happened in cylindrical cells, because cylindrical cells resist swelling.
Pouch cells are just not as mechanically durable as cylindrical cells. Any list of battery cell type advantages and disadvantages will tell you this. I'll repeat: pouch cells are the junk of the li-ion battery world.
They do not. Cylindrical cells mechanically resist most swelling from normal operation. Venting is only from abnormal operation, e.g. short-induced overheat.
All li-ion cells will fail severely in the event of a short. Shorts are self-propagating (a small short through the separator burns itself into a larger short just from the heat of the arc alone). What determines the consequence of a short at the cell level is mainly the electrolyte, although the rest of the cell's composition matters as well. There are electrolyte options that are entirely non-flammable, but there are performance tradeoffs.
Samsung's two back-to-back failures were both due to swelling (for different reasons), something that is minimal in cylindrical cells. Not due to "a failure to vent".
I'm not saying that there's a better alternative for phones. I'm saying that phone batteries suck. You don't want your car made like a cell phone when it comes to its power source. You tried to defend pouch cells in cars by bringing up cell phone batteries. That's not the sort of comparison you want to be making.
The fact that cell phone batteries suck isn't exactly a closely kept secret.
Absolutely they are. Cell phone batteries are terrible. The whole lot of them.
And remember that aforementioned swelling problem? Yep. (both types of failures were caused by swelling during operation, albeit for different reasons). Pouch cells are what you choose when you want something cheap and easy to make, but durability and reliability are not at the top of your concerns list.
Fully disagree with your second paragraph. Panasonic is generally considered the leader in tech and price per kWh. Check out, for example, the Munro teardowns; they've studied all of the cells on the market used by all major EV manufacturers, and put Panasonic way out in front. Panasonic's cells have simultaneously the lowest-cobalt of the cobalt-bearing EV chemistries (lower than the cobalt targets of most manufacturers next-gen cells), yet the among the highest energy densities, and are around $100/kWh (and falling). GM has stated that their cells from LG for the Bolt cost $145/kWh. None of this should be surprising; Panasonic makes over half of the world's EV kWh.
As for cylindrical vs. pouch cells, cylindrical cells are simultaneously more gravimetric energy dense, easier to cool, lower thermal expansion, greater durability, and offer much higher redundancy. Pouch cells are the "junk" of the li-ion battery world. They swell heavily and offer almost no mechanical resistance against damage.
The slowest Model 3 (including the upcoming base SR) is faster than the WRX STI 310 HP. 0-60 variously reported as 5,7 or 5,8s, vs. 5,5s for Model 3 SR ($35k w/o PUP), 4,5s for Model 3 LR AWD ($51k w/PUP), and 3,3s for Model 3 P ($62k). Not counting tax credits. And the standard feature list isn't even remotely close to comparable. Particularly if you want to compare to vehicles with PUP.
As for your "piece of shit" remark, Teslas consistently perform highest in Consumer Reports owner satisfaction surveys, but thanks for playing!
White.
LG isn't Chinese; it's Korean. But I agree with your general point; Chinese li-ions have seen widespread use, and while they're generally not "top end", they're perfectly fine. Any differences vs. Panasonic will be compensated for with a higher cell count.
You're right - I'm everywhere. I'm everyone. Nothing happens without my nod; all that transpires is due to the sheer force of my will. I am a shape shifter. I live in the cracks. I'm watching when you least expect it. I live in the shadows of your darkest fears. In your weakest moments when you are naked and vulnerable, I'm there. Watching, waiting, posting. I live through you all, within you, and beside you. I am the breath on the back of your neck, the breeze in your hair, the moisture in the air.
Cheers!
On the other hand, it's quite possible that the cheapest versions of the Model 3 will be cheaper in China than in the rest of the world. Labour and supplier costs are certainly lower there than in Fremont.
Battery cell costs are an open question. Panasonic isn't going to be as closely involved there as they are with Tesla's US operations; Tesla plans to use predominantly Chinese cell suppliers.