Tesla wants $1.6bn to help fund $5bn top secret Gigafactory Tesla Motors has released a smattering of details about its planned battery "Gigafactory", although it was hardly the in-depth announcement people were expecting. Elon Musk's electric carmaker said the massive plant would be getting $4bn to $5bn of investment in the next six years, around $2bn of which Tesla itself is …
Do we REALLY want more batteries of this type?
Surely a better investment would be developing better battery technology, less prone to catching fire...
Although surely it is better that Apple and Tesla team up on building batteries than putting iCrap into teslas, I am considering getting a Tesla for my next car in a few years, but would not if they filled it full of Apple..
> ".. Surely a better investment would be developing better battery technology..."
Perhaps but they already have technology which appears to (mostly) work in getting folk from A to B so this seems like a natural choice.
A "better" investment might be pursuing R&D in tandem (and perhaps ole Musky is already doing so).
"A "better" investment might be pursuing R&D in tandem (and perhaps ole Musky is already doing so)."
I don't think "better" comes into it. You need a production plant to sell something soon, otherwise investors can't see the point in continuing to bankroll R&D. Looking at the Teslamobiles, there's a lot of sense in churning them out with relatively inferior batteries now, because the vehicle will outlast the first fit battery and there's the chance to put in whatever is state of the art in five to seven years time at the midlife battery change. The alternative is to wait for however long before you think that battery tech has achieved some arbitrary level of suitability, which is always a few months away.
Lithium batteries are several times LESS likely to cause a fire in a car than petrol according to this ( http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/01/economist-explains-19 ) article, the technology is being developed and refined constantly so it should become safer still.
The main issue is when the casing is breached, lithium will ignite spontaneously but other causes such as overheating from rapid charging or discharging can be mitigated by smarter control systems.
The article here mentions Nevada being a potential site for the factory, Nevada seems a good bet as there is already some production of lithium there from brine pools. Might be worth looking at the shares
of Chemetall Foote mining company.
Let's say they invent a new battery that is 2x more efficient tomorrow. Should they built a plant to produce that, or continue to wait because they think they can do better....someday.
If you look at the curve of battery development over the years, it moves VERY slowly. It is very unlikely there will be a big breakthrough around the corner that will make them wish they hadn't built their factory to produce LiOn batteries.
The curve of battery development over the years is becoming distorted lately, because only recently has the case to move away from fossil fuel as portable energy source become so lucrative. Whilst combustibles were relatively cheap, plentiful and had the existing distribution in place there was no urgency to go to electrical cells.
Now with the climate thing going on and the oil industry dove has returned to the ark with an olive branch, there are stupendous rewards waiting for the battery breakthrough. A serendipitous CERN discovery would be my bet.
"Apple is likely to have had battery consumption in fiscal 2013 of around 3MWh, based on its reported sales of 71 million iPads and 150 million iPhones and some rounding up for laptop use. Tesla's cars sucked up a little over half that number at 1.75GWh"
Eh?
Yeah, it seems globalization has managed to what it was intended to do: drive the cost of Western labour down to Chinese prices (in part by raising the cost of Chinese labour) while dramatically increasing the volume and relative % of money flowing to the top 1% of individuals. All it took to make America competitive on the international labour market again was massive nation-wide unemployment and doubling the wealth gap.
This is a clear victory for the free market and tea party voters everywhere.
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