During a presentation about the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, Dean Haymore, from Story County Commission, said that Tesla purchased an additional 1,200 acres of land adjacent to their battery factory under-construction near Reno. According to Haymore, the new purchase made last week more than doubles Tesla’s land at the site and the company is looking to purchase another 350 acres. Expand Expanding Close
There has been a lot of uninformed banker-speak in the media about Tesla’s battery including by Bloomberg here. The problem is these folks don’t understand the new market that Tesla is opening up.
But I’m also turning to Bloomberg for the first smart analysis and that’s not surprisingly from Solar City’s Lyndon Rive (who happens to be Elon Musk’s Cousin – perhaps you noticed the accent?).
The complaints have been that the battery wall doesn’t make economic sense – that for the average household to go off the grid with these combined with solar (or wind), it would be incredibly expensive.
Last week, Tesla unveiled their new battery packs for residential, commercial and utility scale use. During the event, Elon Musk talked about the “Powerwall”, a battery pack aimed at residential and small commercial projects, and the “Powerpack”, for bigger commercial and utility scale projects. Trademark fillings revealed today that Tesla obtained multiple trademarks for the use of the word “Powerwall” related to the sale, leasing, installation and monitoring of battery packs, but they also obtained the trademark for “Superpack”, which wasn’t mentioned during the presentation.
There is a lot of interesting info from a talk that Elon Musk gave at the CPUC last week. Of particular note, Musk gave some spec estimates for the mass market “Model E” vehicle expected to be released in 2017 with batteries coming from the Gigafactory. In the video above he says the car will have a 200 mile range and be 20% smaller than the Model S. Therefore the battery will need to have about 80% of the energy of the current Model S (Musk’s words). To be clear, since Tesla uses the constant sized 18650 cells (and looks to continue to do so) physical size and Watt-hours are fairly constant.
So given that a 60kWh Model S has a range of around 200 miles (EPA 208), that means that the Model E would need to have a battery around 80% the size of the Model S or 48kWh.
That’s still about double what leading ‘mass market’ electric cars have today. The Chevy Spark EV, with a range of 82 miles has a 21.3 kWh battery. The Nissan LEAF which has a 75 mile EPA range rating has a 24 kWh battery. The Chevy Volt has a 16kWh battery while the BMW i3 is 18.8.
Tesla cancelled its $49,000 40kWh battery Model S before it got an EPA estimate but most guesses were that it would get around 150 miles. Add another 8kWh to the battery and take off 20% of the overall car size and 200 mile range seems doable.
Musk also mentions that besides the 20% drop in price, he expects economies of scale and other innovations to drop the price another 30% on the battery alone helping to get the Model E to around 50% the cost of the Model S at $35,000.
Love this idea: You carry around a little Motor/battery pack and pop it on any bike. Rubbee is taking pre-orders on their Kickstarter page.
Specs:
Installs in 1 minute
25km (15 mile) /charge with a 2 hour recharge.
25km range
Top speed: 25Km/hr
6,5 (kg)/13,2 (lb)
Battery pack: 14,4V/ 20Ah/280Wh
The Rubbee Drive system fits every standard bicycle tyre from 16 in to 29 in (700c). Smaller tyre sizes may interrupt a smooth operational use. Width of the bicycle tyre may vary between 20mm to 60mm. Expand Expanding Close
