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Transportation Power

Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory 157

Posted by samzenpus from the start-it-up dept.
First time accepted submitter Mikenan writes Tesla has finally decided that it will build its battery "gigafactory" in Nevada, sources say. "That's a go, but they are still negotiating the specifics of the contract," a source within the Nevada's governor's office told CNBC Wednesday afternoon. The source noted that it could be a week before the deal is official. Nevada is planning a press conference Thursday in Carson City.
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Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory More

Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory

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  • CARson City (Score:5, Funny)

    by MildlyTangy ( 3408549 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @03:35PM (#47820093)

    Now we know why Nevada was chosen.

    CARson City.

    Makes total sense.

    • Well, super, mega, and ultra were all used up, what prefix would you suggest?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That and the fact that Reno is just a few hours from Palo Alto and, more importantly, is not located in California.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        more importantly, is not located in California.

        The best reason of all besides gambling and hookers.

      • Yeah, by all means, use toxic materials in a place so unimportant that they have REFUSED to have a nuclear waste dump in their back yard.
        Oh, wait...there goes your argument
        Real reason for Reno? Land, labor are DIRT cheap since the opening of "indian" casinos in Cali.
        And we all know about the Laxault class influence buying in Wide Open Republican Nevada, the state built with Mob Money.
        • It's always good to build in the desert when everyone around you is suffering from years of drought and the local river (the Colorado) is running dry. It's not like they will have to also hire a lot of water drinking workers to make it worse. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these people. I hope all of the south west dies of thirst. Fucking retarded.
          • The Colorado River isn't anywhere near Reno. Try checking a map before your next tirade.

            ~~
            • Point's still valid. [lawrencevilleweather.com] Truckee River is low as is Lake Tahoe. You can't keep putting stuff in a desert that doesn't belong there and think nothing bad will ever happen.

              • Re:CARson City (Score:5, Interesting)

                by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday September 04, 2014 @03:14AM (#47823455)

                Point's still valid.

                No it isn't. If you want to conserve water, then stop subsidizing wasteful irrigation. Nothing else matters. People have made similar complaints about casinos using water, but for every job created farms use more than thousand times as much water as casinos. We need farms, but we don't need farms in the desert.

                • How DARE you inject relevant facts into this conversation!?!

                • If you haven't figured it out, cities of people don't belong in the desert. Cities are wasteful irrigation. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Cities should be built where there is an abundance of resources to support it, not marginally enough resources. Supplying water to Reno is wasteful irrigation. Continuing to build in California in the desert areas of California is wasteful irrigation. And yes, that means a very big chunk of the state. If other countries kept on building new ci

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They should rename it "taxbreak city" because you just know this is going to cost taxpayers a fortune.

    • Your humor will be a Bonanza.

  • WTF is a "gigafactory?"

    Is it somehow different than any other kind of factory? Or is it a made-up word designed to satisfy some narcissists ego?

    • Dude he can call it "cucumber" if he wants as long as it creates actual STEM jobs in North America.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by CanHasDIY ( 1672858 )

        Dude, all the STEM jobs in the world won't matter if they only hire H1B visa holders to work them.

        I wonder if Tesla is going to start pushing for Mexico to become the next H1B nation, since the factory will be so close to their border...

        • Re:Stop Making Up Words! (Score:4, Informative)

          by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:22PM (#47820565) Homepage

          Am I missing something? Reno is a ten hour drive [google.com] from Mexico.

          • Am I missing something? Reno is a ten hour drive from Mexico.

            . . . that's why the government is relocating the illegal alien kids close to Reno . . . cheap child labor for Tesla! They wanted real aliens from nearby Area 51, but there was a tooling problem with the factory, because the real aliens only have three fingers!

            The new Tesla batteries will still be built using alien technology from Area 51, though. I don't want to be an alarmist or anything, but if your Tesla is dripping black goo, don't touch it . . . it might not be regular black oil!

        • Re:Stop Making Up Words! (Score:4, Informative)

          by lgw ( 121541 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:42PM (#47820767) Journal

          OK, obviously there' selection bias in play here, but I've never worked for a large dev shop that preferred HBB workers over workers that didn't require sponsorship. There are certainly H1B-only shops that exist (in defiance of the law) to exploit young workers, but those are contract-only shops (they only do contract work for other businesses). If you're keeping it legal, H1B workers aren't any cheaper (including legal costs).

          I have worked for places that had 80-90% of their developers working in India and/or China. That saves money. I'm happy to compete with anyone who works and lives in the US - we all have the same expenses (and I don't send half my paycheck back home).

          None of which has to do with manufacturing, of course. Tesla does use some H1Bs for software development (friend of mine's wife works there), but AFAIK they're like most places and pay competitively.
           

        • I'd bet on a shit ton of robots as opposed to lot's of low salary people.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by keltor ( 99721 ) *
          Given that there's 1million H1B visa holders in the US and there's a hell of a lot more STEM workers, it's probably not all that big of a deal.

      • Dude he can call it "cucumber" if he wants as long as it creates actual STEM jobs in North America.

        Once it's built it will probably only employee low-paid assembly line workers and some managers.

        (Which isn't STEM, but may still be an improvement on the way the USA has been hedded for the past few decades.)

        • Factories need industrial engineers, not just assembly-line workers. No, you don't need a ton of IEs to run a factory, but still, there's some there. You also need engineers to do the design, testing, etc. (though some of that may be at their main location in California).

    • Re:Stop Making Up Words! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dynotrick ( 947014 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @03:42PM (#47820141)

      WTF is a "gigafactory?"

      Is it somehow different than any other kind of factory? Or is it a made-up word designed to satisfy some narcissists ego?

      It's the opposite of a nanofactory.

    • It's a billion factories. That's what he must mean, because giga- used as a prefix has a set, specific meaning.

      • "Gigas" and "gigantism". Two words with the giga prefix that don't meet your set, specific meaning. Your rule is broken.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sique ( 173459 )
        Actually, giga(s) is greek and means "giant". And yes, the syllable for the billion is derived from the greek word. But that doesn't mean that the original meaning just vanishes.

        • But from the context of my post it was pretty clear I was speaking about English, as I was speaking in English, and not about Greek, because I was not speaking in Greek, so the meaning of giga(s) in Greek is entirely irrelevant to the point being made.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sique ( 173459 )
            Even the word giant has the same root: it's just omitting the second g, gi(g)ant, for better pronounciation. It's gigas with the latin ending -nt meaning "the one who does", comparable with the english -ing.

    • It is to show the size of the factory. From the article, it is supposed to produce "35 GWh." worth of batteries. I assume that is per year, but they are a bit coy on that detail.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )

      I agree. Say NO to those linguogogues and their linguomorphic practices!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      It's a factory the makes gigawatts worth of batteries.
      Duhr.

    • We should certainly NOT stop making up words. We don't want a dead language thank you very much. Here, watch this:

      http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_... [ted.com]

      In any case, it's not "a gigafactory" it's "The Gigafactory". It's a proper name. Tesla can call it what they like, just as you can call any children you have exactly what you want.

      • In any case, it's not "a gigafactory" it's "The Gigafactory". It's a proper name.

        Well then, somebody needs to tell the media, because they sure do like treating it as a common noun.

        Tesla can call it what they like, just as you can call any children you have exactly what you want.

        Not exactly true. [jonathanturley.org]

        • Well then, somebody needs to tell the media, because they sure do like treating it as a common noun.

          Today's media can't even spell words properly or use proper grammar; it shouldn't be too surprising that they'd screw up Tesla's factory name.

        • There's nothing stopping you calling your child "Gigachild"

    • Because Elon Musk.

    • Let me only reply to the topic for a second.

      Making up words is healthy. It's a necessary part of communicating sometimes. Especially when it's just dropping a prefix onto a word to help establish one of its primary qualities(in this case, scale).

    • WTF is a "gigafactory?"

      A factory that makes giants.

    • WTF is a "gigafactory?"

      It gets it's power from lightning striking the clock tower of Reno City Hall.

    • Maybe its because they will be building billions of batteries?

      If a car need 8000 batteries, that's 125,000 cars. Its a believable number for sure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nethead ( 1563 )

      WTF is a "gigafactory?"

      This: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • California Betrayed (Score:3, Informative)

    by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @03:51PM (#47820235)

    Nevada; No corporate income tax. Far fewer and less effective environmental and labor pressure groups. How selfish. Who does this Elon think he is refusing to be suckered in with environmental rule waivers [latimes.com]?

    I suspect it's going to take a lot more of this kind of corporate profiteering before the bloom comes off the Telsa rose around here though, and my poor karma will suffer a lot more hits — because fanbois will be fanbois.

  • Another building full of robots? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:00PM (#47820343)

    I mean, I guess it's good that they're not manufacturing the batteries in China (batteries are heavy so I guess the shipping outweighs the labor savings) but it sounds like Tesla is just going to pocket a ton of tax credits and other stuff in exchange for putting a building of robot manufacturers in Nevada.

    Say what you will, but the middle class needs work. We need something for the vast majority of people who aren't scientists, engineers or politicians to do. That used to be traditional assembly-line manufacturing. After that, it was the millions of people routing documents and reports around large corporations. This next wave of automation is going to put a real crimp on the middle class that it can't easily absorb. Unless people start paying full-salary wages for stupid stuff like rating cat videos or posting on social media, the traditional model of 2-kids-and-a-mortgage is out the window. For the low end, we need something like the steel mills and other factories that would employ thousands of workers in 3 shifts. And for the medium end, we need to preserve at least some of the "corporate drone" jobs. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it looks like there's nothing left for the middle of the economy -- it's going to split into ultra low end jobs like cleaning and food service, and high-end jobs like engineering, science, etc. (And I'm guessing management will reserve itself a place in the high end too.)

    The problem is, without rolling back a lot of the benefits automation brings, I don't know how we're going to handle the next level of change.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sobiloff ( 29859 )

      Local media has said they expect 6,500 new jobs to come from the factory and associated support services, so it's a significant employment boost no matter how many robots are in the factory.

      • Local media has said they expect 6,500 new jobs to come from the factory and associated support services, so it's a significant employment boost no matter how many robots are in the factory.

        Local media always overplays the number of jobs a new thing brings in; namely, they fail to point out that most of the "new jobs" are temporary ones that exist only during the construction phase.

        I want to know exactly how many full-time employees are necessary to run this factory. That should be easily quantifiable for someone who knows the details of the project.

      • Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:5, Informative)

        by sobiloff ( 29859 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:33PM (#47820677)

        Whoops, 6,500 direct factory jobs, 9,000 associated jobs.

        http://www.rgj.com/story/money/reno-rebirth/2014/06/15/reno-rebirth-tesla-game-changer/10406441/

    • Unfortunately, that paradigm for large manufacturing employment doesn't work anymore. Even if you could convince every executive in the United States to follow it, the costs would be so high that they would no longer be competitive globally. They would be driven out of business by more nimble and cheaper foreign competitors that either use advanced automation or dirt cheap third world labor. What an automated factory like Tesla is doing is salvaging what it can, keeping what few jobs are left in the Unit

    • Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:49PM (#47820825)

      Say what you will, but the middle class needs work. We need something for the vast majority of people who aren't scientists, engineers or politicians to do.

      Oh please. We can just put everyone to work in retail sales and real estate. We'll all get rich selling houses to each other!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Say what you will, but the middle class needs work. We need something for the vast majority of people who aren't scientists, engineers or politicians to do. That used to be traditional assembly-line manufacturing.

      You do realize that outside of VERY narrow manufacturing, assembly line jobs suck.

      They are NOT middle class jobs. They are unskilled labor jobs that pay basically minimum wage (see unskilled). These are NOT jobs you want because they'[re mind-numbingly boring, dull, and because of that, dangerous.

      T

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ksheff ( 2406 )
      So is that why businesses are needing to run their own apprentice programs due a lack of skilled labor and vocational colleges are boasting near 100% placement rates of their graduates?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by myrdos2 ( 989497 )

      This next wave of automation is going to put a real crimp on the middle class that it can't easily absorb.

      I often see this argument, and always disagree. Technology has, I believe, reduced the number of farmers from 66% of the population down to 4%. And yet, 62% of the population isn't out of work. Ditto for factories that mass-produce items, making them much more quickly and efficiently than a craftsman could do by hand. What happened is we started buying more stuff. We weren't content with 1900s levels

      • Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Areyoukiddingme ( 1289470 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @10:53PM (#47822771)

        ... we wanted more. (And probably always will.)

        No, we won't.

        This is a major fallacy of economic thinking that really needs to be put to bed. It isn't true. Thinking like this is the basis for the Trickle Down Theory of economics, which has been soundly falsified. No, we won't always want more. Unbridled all-consuming unsatisfiable greed is a neurosis. It is abnormal and very unusual. Adults who suffer from the condition are considered stunted, little more than children. Children are expected to grow out of it, if they ever go through that phase at all. If you always want more, everybody around you thinks there's something wrong with you, and will usually avoid being around you any more after a while.

        Normal people, by definition most people, are satisfiable. And satisfiable without actually all that many resources, in the grand scheme of things. Yes we all want more than a 19th century standard of living, but that's because the ancient Romans had a better standard of living than most of the world in the 19th century. It didn't take much to do better than that. Our needs get satisfied in a hurry. A variety of food, some indoor plumbing, and a roof that doesn't leak covers most of it. Add on some form of personal transportation if you live in a large, mostly empty continent like North America, and you're done. The wants that go on top of that are actually quite minimal. Almost nobody has more than two cell phones, and the vast majority of the world has only one. Practically every type of consumer electronics and appliance follows the same pattern. People have one cell phone, one tablet, one laptop, one desktop (they forgot they had), one blender, one microwave, one toaster oven, one deep fryer. The only people who have six cell phones are neurotic or app developers (but I repeat myself).

        Yes, once you have one of everything, you can just go bigger. But again, there are pretty serious upper limits. Most people don't want a 700 room palace on the order of Versailles. Even those who did had a tendency to stuff 3000 permanent residents into that space. Most people don't want their own yacht, let alone their very own cruise ship, or there would be many more yachts in the world. So it goes for every thing you can possess.

        So no, most people won't always want more. Most people in developed nations are quite satisfied with what they have. Sure they dream about palaces and fleets of sports cars, but drop unlimited funds on their cringing heads and they still won't buy all that. They'd be uncomfortable trying to live in a palace.

        People's needs can be trivially satisfied. People's wants can be easily satisfied. Whither now your broken economic system that requires unlimited growth?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by myrdos2 ( 989497 )

          I think we're on different wavelengths, since I actually agree with what you say.

          What I'm trying to do is refute the Broken Window Fallacy, which says that if you go around breaking windows you'll benefit the economy, by creating jobs fixing windows. But what you've done is made owning windows more expensive, since they periodically need to be replaced. And the standard of living drops a little, because you're wasting resources fixing windows that you could be using for something else.

          Making a window factor

    • People have to own the machines; it's the only way I can see for humans to remain viable. We need to be buying our kids stock, not college education.

    • This is a result of artificially low interest rates. Any time you build manufacturing capability you need to do a cost/benefit analysis of how much to automate. I've done this analysis in the past when I worked for an automation house. The main factors are the local cost of labor and the interest rates. In times where interest rates were high (I have lived long enough to see this) and there was high unemployment so people would accept a lower wage it always made sense to hire more people than machines. The

  • Don't they use a lot of water (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I may be wrong, but doesn't the production of batteries use a lot of water? Something Nevada is known not to have?

    • I may be wrong, but doesn't the production of batteries use a lot of water? Something Nevada is known not to have?

      I was thinking the same thing....

      They need Electrolytes... So... Brondo???

      • They need Electrolytes...

        The electrolytes used in lithium ion batteries don't use water. Water is unstable at those voltages.

        Of course, the factory must use some water, if only for the employees drinking. I don't know how much, though. Perhaps it is worth mentioning that there appears to be a small river near the site.

  • I made a battery in Reno . . . (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    . . . just to watch it die.

  • Well that's a relief (Score:3)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @04:10PM (#47820437)
    I think Tesla is accomplishing something amazing and revolutionary. At the same time, the selection of a site for this factory has been WAY over-reported (at least here in NM, which was on the list), and watching the states trip over each other to "give away the store" in luring Tesla is just sad, and especially unfair to regular companies who don't have this kind of pull and will never get such sweetheart deals.

    • Anyone can get a sweetheart deal in Nevada. Microsoft and Amazon are already firmly established their.

      Nevada's economy is so weak that there was once serious consideration of reverting its rushed statehood.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zwede ( 1478355 )

      ...and watching the states trip over each other to "give away the store" in luring Tesla is just sad, and especially unfair to regular companies who don't have this kind of pull and will never get such sweetheart deals.

      This is standard practice for any large business. Texas just gave Toyota tens of millions of dollars in incentives to get them to move their headquarters here.

  • And decide no Teslas can be sold there unless they pay a million dollar tax per vehicle.

  • Yawn (Score:2)

    by jtara ( 133429 )

    You mean that place where they've been building the big factory? That place? The place where work has been ongoing for months?

    What a surprise.

  • I'm wondering... When you dump massive amounts of lithium in the grounds in Reno... Will it make the place less insane?

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