Elon Musk and Tesla Plan World’s Biggest Battery Factory

[kristopher]

Elon Musk and Tesla Plan World’s Biggest Battery Factory
Announcement coming this week: The Tesla-Giga-Factory-SolarCity-Storage nexus

Eric Wesoff February 24, 2014

Last week EV pioneer Tesla Motors announced strong fourth-quarter results with record shipments and gross margin. Its investor newsletter also included a tantalizing paragraph:

Very shortly, we will be ready to share more information about the Tesla Giga factory. This will allow us to achieve a major reduction in the cost of our battery packs and accelerate the pace of battery innovation. Working in partnership with our suppliers, we plan to integrate precursor material, cell, module and pack production into one facility. With this facility, we feel highly confident of being able to create a compelling and affordable electric car in approximately three years. This will also allow us to address the solar power industry’s need for a massive volume of stationary battery packs.

....Musk also said that Panasonic, currently supplying hundreds of millions of cells to Tesla, would likely join in on the new factory. Samsung has been mentioned as a potential partner. I'll throw in Apple as a potential partner; computers and tablets need lithium-ion batteries (albeit in different form factors), and there's been talk of recent Apple-Tesla meetings.

The Tesla CEO envisions "a plant that is heavily powered by renewables, wind and solar, and that has built into it the recycling capability for old battery packs."

“It is going to be a really giant facility. [...] We are doing that something that’s comparable to all lithium-ion production in the world in one factory," said Musk in a previous earnings call....

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Elon-Musk-and-Tesla-Plan-Worlds-Biggest-Battery-Factory?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

[kristopher]

1. Kick

[quadrature]

2. Tesla-type batteries need cobalt, or not?..nt

[madokie]

3. We would have loved to have bought the Focus EV instead of the gas model

trouble is we're in a rural area where there are times where a 80 - 100 mile range would be a problem for us. I admit that 90 percent of our driving is less than that but we do still have to go to the City for classes for my wife and VA for me from time to time.

At my age I'm not sure I'll ever be an EV owner as much as I'd like to be. I'd like to think that might be possible but reality tells me probably not.

[joshcryer]

4. I called this:

http://election.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=641724

Disclaimer: I own Tesla stock.