
First look inside Tesla's gigafactory - moadkid
http://www.rgj.com/story/money/business/2016/03/18/get-sneek-peak-inside-teslas-reno-area-gigafactory/81978520/
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Too
More like a first look _outside_ Tesla's gigafactory. With one or two photos
of a generic shelf of boxes inside.

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mchahn
There are two reasons for home batteries that I can think of. One is battery
backup for power outages. How much market is there for that? It can't be large
enough to justify Musk's humongous investment.

So that leaves the purpose of buffering solar energy collection. This
dovetails with his cousin's Solar City outfit, which is growing like crazy.

I have a Solar City installation. I have no need for a battery because
California makes my power company take excess juice I produce and give it back
to me when I need it. The power company is effectively a big battery.

So batteries are only needed in states that don't make power companies do
this. There has been a trend of states, like Nevada itself, taking back these
laws. This is because it is considered a tax on homeowners who don't have
solar.

Is Musk betting on the long-term demise of these laws?

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abalone
I'd agree that utilities ought to handle most of the energy storage problem,
if only to realize economies of scale. But, two points:

1\. Battery backup for homes could actually be a huge market. If you're
looking at two homes, one is $500,000 and the other is $503,500 and outage-
proof, which one would you buy? It's a nice feature at a relatively small
price.

2\. At the launch event Musk stressed the benefits of grid independence for
the 3rd world. He drew an analogy with cell phones, where cell phone
proliferation basically leapfrogged and obsoleted landline deployment. So in
places where there is poor or no electrical grid they might jump straight to
solar and batteries. (I don't know if he actually expects the 3rd world to be
a significant customer base, but that's what he said.)

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fukusa
30 potential trackers on a single page and even the video player is a tracker.

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ChuckMcM
It is a newspaper, those things which so fear being killed by the web have
become some of the worst actors on the web. Sad really. Definitely gives the
privacy badger something to play with while visiting the site.

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Theodores
That wasn't much of a tour. That is a large box in the middle of nowhere with
some people walking about, cheesy backing track added. Why do people bother
with such piffle!

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forgetsusername
> _Why do people bother with such piffle!_

The Model 3 is to be unveiled at the end of the month, so Tesla is ramping up
the buzz. It's their way of saying, 'See? Everything is on track!" I wouldn't
be surprised if the Model 3 unveiling is just an image.

It's funny that people think the company spends no money on marketing. They're
just good at modern marketing.

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BinaryIdiot
> I wouldn't be surprised if the Model 3 unveiling is just an image

Forget your "/s"? They're going to have a running Model 3 at the announcement.

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forgetsusername
> _They 're going to have a running Model 3 at the announcement._

I guess we will see. The battery swap was also a "running" demonstration.

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mikeash
Yes? And then they built a swap station and it's in operation right now. They
haven't rolled out any more because demand isn't there. Superchargers are good
enough for most. But if you're implying that they hacked together a demo but
don't have it actually working, that's not so

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Roritharr
Demand? They haven't even rolled out a sensible businessmodel for the swapping
stations that includes what happens if you receive a faulty or just old
battery with less capacity.

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mikeash
Why would they be stocking old or faulty batteries?

It's not something where you share with other people. You stop in and get a
charged battery from Tesla. On your way back home, you stop again and get your
original battery back, now charged.

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theoh
The usual argument that predicts problems with the quality of the batteries is
based on Gresham's Law.

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mikeash
How would that apply here?

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theoh
If batteries gradually lose their capacity over time, it would be in the
interest of customers to look for an opportunity to swap an old battery for a
new one, and never swap back. Even if Tesla operates the battery swap system
fairly, there's a cost associated with this because they end up holding the
bad/old batteries.

Typically, though, the argument is that both customers and dealers will hang
on to valuable good "money" (batteries) and thus the batteries likely to be
exchanged will be of low quality.

So the model you describe is one in which each customer just alternates
between a few batteries that essentially belong to them. It should address the
quality problem, but at the expense of complicating the business of the
battery depot. Treating batteries as a non-fungible commodity is a big step.

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mikeash
I see why this would happen in a hypothetical scenario where batteries are
shared freely and people just pick new ones up at will, but that's not what
we're discussing.

The only potential for trouble I see with Tesla's actual setup is people
abusing the loaner batteries during their trip. And the batteries are so
difficult to abuse I don't think it's a real problem.

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theoh
"What we're discussing" is a system which is not in the end being rolled out,
but Tesla, at an early stage, did mention precisely the issues I brought up.

There was to be the option to keep a newer battery received in a swap (for a
fee) but also, somehow, always the possibility of getting your original
battery back. How that would actually work if the original battery is in
someone else's car half way across the country is left as an exercise!

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/06/21/tesla-90...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/06/21/tesla-90-second-
battery-swap-tech-coming-this-year/)

~~~
mikeash
They mentioned them in the context of how they're solved, though.

Gresham's Law is about things which are fungible in some contexts but not
others. If Tesla charges you a fee to keep your borrowed battery then they're
never fungible so it doesn't apply.

How it works to always get your original battery back seems obvious to me:
they don't put it in other people's cars, they hold on to it for you. If you
decide to keep the newer battery, then your original is no longer yours, and
you can't get it back anymore.

This whole thing seems like a lot of fuss about problems which are pretty
easily solved, and are solved.

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ChuckMcM
I think it was very smart of them to switch to a more modular plan. The
original idea of just building it all at once seemed really crazy to me, not
only would it lock down a bunch of capital, it takes time to develop the
organizational skill to build stuff like this. Looking at Google's first data
center and their later ones, so much learning in there.

The other question is how much was this "strategic threat" and how much actual
plan. Something I still wonder about but if they actually start making
batteries there it will answer that question too.

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digler999
Glad the newspaper photographers figured out how to cooperate with Tesla
instead of trespassing and assaulting[1] them.

[1] [http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2015/10/29/misdemeanor-
charges...](http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2015/10/29/misdemeanor-charges-
filed-against-journalists-tesla-altercation/74848080/)

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vc98mvco
It looks like a typical factory.

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moadkid
Imagine the Model S autosteering around the factory and showing you around :D
! The future is already here.

