Tesla Gigafactory For Electric Car Batteries

November 12th, 2013 by Zachary Shahan

If you didn’t catch our live blog of Tesla’s 3rd quarter financials Q&A, one of the most interesting segments of that was when Tesla CEO, Chairman, and Product Architect Elon Musk discussed building a gigafactory for electric car batteries.

A questioner actually got the discussion going, asking if the Tesla team had thought about building its own battery cell plant in order to deal with the battery supply challenges it is having.

Elon replied that they were exploring a lot of different options, but he did mention that they might build what he called a “gigafactory” with partners in North America.

Later on, the topic came back up, and Elon said that it wasn’t the time to discuss this, but he then went on to say quite a bit about it. He said that it would be super green, solar powered, and huge. As Chris DeMorro at sister site Gas2 adds, it would also include a battery recycling program, natch.

There were a lot of other interesting points made in the Q&A, so jump back over there for more.

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Tags: Tesla, Tesla batteries, Tesla battery factory

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

Marion Meads

I sure hope that Elon Musk’s gigafactory would be able to outdo what Envia is already doing. Envia will supply the next generation of ultracheapo high density fire safe battery for GM’s next generation EV and plug-ins, perhaps placing a vehicle with a 300 mile range that costs only $20K. I am hopeful that Tesla would be able to best that one, and everyone would be a winner.

http://enviasystems.com/innovation/
- Bob_Wallace
  
  When we actually see Envia batteries operating electric cars we will be able to make the sort of claims you are now making. (Or disprove them.)
  Envia has yet to make its appearance on the world’s stage. Let’s withhold our applause to see if they show up for the show.
  - Marion Meads
    
    I was not the one claiming, I am just presenting what Envia has advertised in their website. I will of course apply the same terms with Tesla’s vaporware gigafactory. Let us just talk about batteries for now as is the topic. Let’s hold our applause as who will be the first to really deliver the $125/kWh batteries by end of 2015. I hope it is Tesla.
    - Jouni Valkonen
      
      The point of vaporware is to have fancy website that can be used for selling vapor to the venture capitalists. We do not have any ideas how far away Envia is from commercial product and it Envia battery may be economically unfeasible altogether.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Envia is partially owned by GM (not a controlling interest).
        
        A GM executive let slip some months ago that GM was track testing a “200 mile range” EV battery.
        
        Yes, there are many web sites with nothing to back them up, but it appears that some of the battery sites are producing product, or close to it. How good a product they will have is yet to be determined.
        
        Aquion, EOS, Envia, Ambri, and a few others seem to have something other than CGI and a spiel like that spinning cone solar panel thing.
Marion Meads

Some battery chemistries are more flammable than others, and some battery packing are more prone to fires and explosion than others. Tesla should advertise that they have addressed these overhyped issues, otherwise it would be a blackeye to EV revolution.
JamesWimberley

Economies of scale are hugely important as drivers of cost reductions. The first-tier Chinese PV manufacturers make panels in plants of over 1GW annual capacity. Example: http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/11/jiangsu-shunfengs-acquisition-suntech-top-540-million-dollars/ If they are working 5000 hours each year, that makes one 200W panel every four seconds. Imagine the next step up to one per second.
- Jouni Valkonen
  
  Economies of scale are especially important in battery production. Tesla has suggested that the gigafactory will do everything from the raw materials under the same roof. This offers very significant potential for cost improvements as today battery production is very complex chain of subcontractors. My guess is that if Tesla gigafactory happens by 2016, they can push the cost of batteries to $125 per kWh even if we do not assume new improved battery chemistry.