

Elon Musk: Gigafactory will take battery production 'to another level' - cryptoz
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_25761219/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-gigafactory-will-take-battery

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andrewtbham
I listened to the Tesla conference call and Elon Musk said that he was calling
lithium and nickel mines in Canada, and they were surprised to hear from an
end user. The guy knows how to "think from first principles."

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shoeless
Why not Detroit? The labor force is there, the costs (real estate, labor,
taxes) must be considerably in favor of something of this scale, and it's in
line with the automotive industry. In that Michigan is hurting from the down
slide of traditional auto manufacturers, I would think it would endear Tesla
to the industry, or at least the workers.

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nkoren
Tesla doesn't need to endear themselves to the workers; they use robots
wherever possible. Detroit is home to powerful organisations (the unions)
which are famous for their resistance to automation; that, if nothing else, is
probably sufficient reason to steer clear of it.

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nkozyra
Battery & battery replacement cost is a big piece of ammo for people who fight
non-combustible automotive energy sources, so fantastic as always.

I'm interested to know what sort of contributions Musk & Co have been able to
make with regard to battery efficiency and longevity in their time with the
Tesla line. That, to me, is the big missing piece to take things from "sure,
it _could_ work" to "ok I'm ready to switch" for many.

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beltex
Some interesting snippets of info about batteries from Musk.

Battery form factor:
[http://youtu.be/pQupELupKWM?t=2m15s](http://youtu.be/pQupELupKWM?t=2m15s)

Apple Engineer asking about Tesla battery:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5HT9mj_4M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN5HT9mj_4M)

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transfire
I fear it might prove to be premature. Take for instance Japan Power Plus. If
their battery tech proves to be true, then in a few years lithium batteries
will be on the decline, and Elon will be caught holding the proverbial bag.
Even if Japan Power Plus proves to be a bust, there is so much research going
on in the field that it seems all too likely that some major new battery tech
is around the corner. If Elon can't convert his Gigafactory to that new tech,
he'll be hard pressed to recoup his $5 billion.

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nkozyra
This seems to imply that the factory would be unable to switch its operations
to new battery types, which I find somewhat unlikely.

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jacquesm
Agreed, battery manufacture is bulk chemistry. A plant typically consists of a
number of recyclable elements and a bunch that are specific to the technology
employed. If there would be a game-changing advance in battery technology
_and_ the economics would work out in favour of deprecating those parts of the
plant that are specific to the current process then I'm sure Elon Musk is
capable of doing the math.

And given that's he's not exactly stupid to begin with my guess would be that
he's ahead of some random comment on the internet by some significant number
of brain cycles, 5 billion $ cap-ex projects are usually not planned and
executed without a great deal of fore-thought.

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jusben1369
On a side note I hope the folks at a16 will stop using Tesla as a poster child
for their belief that full stack startups are strategically better. Tesla and
Musk are constantly working with other players in their ecosystem to
accelerate growth.

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Shivetya
I still do not see any advantage to skipping over Texas, even Toyota went
there. They are simply more business friendly, let alone by far the largest
deployment of wind turbines in the US. While many associate it with oil Texas
never really sat still, energy is energy.

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FlacidPhil
My guess is because you can't even BUY a Tesla in Texas. Why would they set up
a $5B factory in a state where they can't even sell a car?
[http://www.teslamotors.com/advocacy_texas](http://www.teslamotors.com/advocacy_texas)

EDIT: Amongst other reasons of course, just a guess on one factor. Hard to say
it's business friendly when they've banned the company from doing business
there.

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jack-r-abbit
My thought exactly. Don't just pick a place business friendly. Pick a place
that is friendly to _your_ business.

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ankurpatel
No one seems to be paying attention to the amount of toxic waste that will be
generated from batteries after they are done with their usage. The toxin waste
is much worse than letting CO2 in the air IMHO.

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rdrdss23
Aren't they recyclable?

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toomuchtodo
Fully: [http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-
battery-r...](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/teslas-closed-loop-battery-
recycling-program)

