Tesla super factory set up in the desert ,or cut down power battery costs
July
www.diecastingpartsupplier.com
2016-08-04 10:18:46
It's Tesla Motors' biggest bet yet: a massive, $5 billion factory in the Nevada desert that could nearly double the world's production of lithium-ion batteries.
Tesla officially opened its Gigafactory last Tuesday, a little more than two years after construction began. The factory is about 14 percent complete but when it's finished, it will be about 10 million square feet, or about the size of 262 NFL football fields. That will make it one of the largest buildings in the world.
The factory is key to the future of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla. The 13-year-old electric car company, which has never made a full-year profit. It also runs Tesla Powerwall, a solar energy storage business for homes and businesses.
The company says making its own lithium-ion batteries at the scale the Gigafactory will allow will reduce its battery costs by more than a third.
Tesla unveiled the Model 3 at the end of March. Within a week, more than 325,000 people had put down a $1,000 deposit to reserve the car. After seeing that level of demand, Tesla moved its production plans forward. The company now says it will make 500,000 vehicles per year by 2018.
To meet that goal, Gigafactory construction is proceeding at a furious pace. Inside the factory, Tesla's partner, Panasonic Corp., is installing machines in sealed, humidity-controlled rooms that will start making battery cells before the end of this year.
Tesla says the factory will be producing 35 gigawatt hours of batteries by 2018. That's the equivalent to the entire world's production in 2014. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said the factory has the capacity to produce 150 gigawatt hours if it needs to.
Analysts say bringing battery production in-house, instead of buying batteries like General Motors Co. and other major automakers do, can help bring down costs, but also leaves Tesla exposed. If the Model 3 is delayed, for example, Tesla will have extra batteries on its hands and no way to recoup its costs.
"They could be left with a lot of excess capacity in the near term," said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst with Navigant Research. Abuelsamid says there's also the possibility that advances in battery technology in the longer term could force Tesla to make expensive new investments.