Tesla Gigafactory

Since Tesla confirmed its intention to announce locations for 3 to 4 more upcoming Gigafactories to produce batteries and electric vehicles, a lot of regions have been very excited about to potential opportunities.

While CEO Elon Musk was asked a few times to confirm where those new factories will be located and he refused, he now disclosed that they will be ‘close to the end customer’ and have ‘very high headcount’ around the factories.
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As we reported earlier this month, new building permits at Tesla Gigafactory 1 were acquired for a first new section of the plant in 2017 and new satellite images showed construction starting on the north side.

Now a flyby of the battery factory gives us our first good look at the new section.
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Earlier this year, Tesla reached over $1 billion in construction spending on the Gigafactory in Nevada, according to building permits. Despite the large investment, the current structure, which hasn’t changed much so far this year, only represent a fraction of the planned final building.

We now learn that they are working on adding another expansion to the building with a new section.
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Tesla surprised its shareholders earlier this year when they wrote in their quarterly letter that they plan to announce 2 or 3 more Gigafactories by the end of the year.

Considering the ‘Gigafactory 1’ in Nevada is one of Tesla’s biggest and most important projects, it was surprising that the company would build 2 to 3 more, but now CEO Elon Musk said that it will “probably be 4”.
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Nevada’s Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison recently went on a trade mission to China to promote tourism and his “biggest takeaway” from the mission is surprising: touring Tesla’s Gigafactory was a “near-constant theme” brought up by Chinese industrial spies tourism officials.

Hutchison says that he plans to bring it up to Tesla officials in order to set up tours of the battery factory.
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You know that everything having to do with Tesla is being looked under the microscope when spilling a few gallons of cleaning solvent makes it to Reuters with the headline “Chemicals spill at Tesla battery factory, no serious injuries“.

Tesla confirmed that as part of their safety protocols, they called the authorities after “a drum of standard construction cleaning solvent” was spilled on the loading docks at Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, which prompts the reports.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other company officials have talked about building a Gigafactory to manufacture batteries and electric vehicles in China for the past 3 years and while they have been several reports of finalized plans, they have all been shut down.

A new one came this week after a report in the Southern Metropolis Daily, citing multiple sources, claimed that Tesla had struck a deal to build a factory without a joint-venture in China’s Guangdong province. The company denied the report, but without necessarily denying that a factory is coming to China.
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Tesla and Panasonic are expected to soon significantly increase battery production at the Gigafactory in Nevada in order to produce not only batteries for the Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2, but also for the Model 3.

Panasonic will hold a hiring event in Reno this week as it seeks to hire 2,000 workers at the battery plant this year alone.
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Three years into the project, Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada is now more than 2 months into its first battery cell production. The factory is also now producing both Powerpack 2 and Powerwall 2 battery packs for stationary energy storage to use those new cells and finally, it is preparing for the start of Model 3 production with new battery cell lines and drive unit production lines.

While it’s starting to become a real producing factory, it’s still very much in construction and we now get a new look at the latest progress.
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Tesla and Panasonic are not the only two companies working at ‘Gigafactotry 1’ in Nevada. Tesla set up the battery factory to house several suppliers who are part of the supply chain of li-ion batteries.

A new supplier announced its part of the production line and released rare new pictures from inside the plant.
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While it was widely reported that Tesla received $1.3 billion in incentives from the state of Nevada to build its factory east of Reno, the automaker has only received a small fraction of that amount and the rest is gradually being unlocked as tax credits as Tesla reaches job and investment requirements under the agreement.

The company passed its latest audit of the project and unlocked $11,567,061 in transferable tax credits.
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With the confidence of a well-oiled pizza shop, Elon Musk “seriously” said that Tesla could deliver a more than 100 MWh Powerpack project to Australia in 100 days – or it will be free.

The promise is a clear show of confidence from the CEO in Tesla and Panasonic’s new battery production at the Gigafactory in Nevada.
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Tesla’s former Vice President of Supply Chain Management, Peter Carlsson, has officially launched his new startup called North Volt along with another former Tesla supply chain executive, Paolo Cerruti, and financed by Swedish investors.

The executives plan to build their own Gigafactory for li-ion batteries in Europe – possibly Sweden or Finland. They have the ambitious goal to bring down the cost of batteries below $100/kWh.
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Nevada State Treasurer Dan Schwartz has been a strong opponent of the deal that brought electric vehicle maker Faraday Future to the state. He went as far as calling it a “Ponzi scheme.”

Schwartz is turning up the scrutiny on the company and dragged Tesla into it by calling for an audit of the deals they made with Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED).
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The news that Tesla is looking at not only one location but possibily 3 more locations for Gigafactories got a lot of countries, states, and regions quite excited this week. Some European countries had already launched efforts to attract Tesla after they announced last year that they would be looking for a location in Europe to build another massive factory to manufacture both batteries and vehicles.

Now that the number of plants went up, the US could apparently also get another Gigafactory.
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For those of us who believe that the entire automotive industry is rapidly transitioning from being powered by fossil fuels to electricity, it becomes important to transfer any asset from one to the other not only from an environmental standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint.

We have reported before on a growing movement to divest from fossil fuels – now reaching over $5.2 trillion – but the question is where do you reinvest that money? What is the new petrol?

The minerals used to make batteries are obvious contenders, but there are a lot of different kinds of batteries using all different minerals. Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada is alone expected to double the global battery production over the next year and therefore, it could create a resource boom.
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Recent studies show that average electric vehicle battery cost dropped 80% in 6 years down to ~$227/kWh. It’s exciting progress for the electric vehicle industry, but it’s still not enough to make long-range electric cars affordable.

You need batteries significantly below the average – battery cell and pack cost – in order to achieve the price point for mass market appeal and that’s what Tesla is trying to do with the Gigafactory. The company was aiming for at least a 30% reduction from its battery cost before the Gigafactory and it now claims a “35% cost reduction” in a new promotional video.
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The Gigafactory 1 in the Nevada desert is central to Tesla’s strategy. It’s seen among supporters as Tesla’s main advantage by securing low-cost battery supply that will enable ramping up production of long-range and affordable electric vehicles.

But it’s seen by detractors as a Potemkin village – no more than an empty shell with little chance of ever seeing any significant production of battery cells.
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As Tesla and Panasonic started battery cell production at the Gigafactory in Nevada last month, the company acquired several new building permits to continue expanding its already massive battery factory.

The addition and modification of 9 permits in January pushed the total construction cost of the plant passed $1 billion. 
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Elon Musk may be a workaholic, but in his spare time he’s quite fond of video games.  His first programming project was a Space Invaders-style game and he’s recently tweeted about his enjoyment of Blizzard’s Overwatch.  So how better to appeal to him than by building a video game recreation of Tesla’s Gigafactory?

That’s what a team of Lithuanians thought, anyway.  41 gamers spent two days building and livestreaming a mockup of Tesla’s Gigafactory inside Minecraft, a “sandbox” videogame which lets players build an almost infinite variety of structures inside a virtual world.

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Things are getting busy at the Gigafactory this month. Tesla and Panasonic have confirmed the start of battery cell production. Volume production of Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2 are set to start as deliveries of the home battery pack are being confirmed in the first few markets and more Powerpack 2 projects are being announced.

That’s all being done while the battery plant is still under construction and Tesla released this week new drone footage showing the progress.
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