Elon Musk Breaks Ground on Tesla's Shanghai Factory (cnbc.com) 122
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong celebrated on Monday the ground breaking of the electric automaker's first non-U.S. factory. From a report: "China is becoming the global leader in electric vehicle adoption, and it is a market that is critical to Tesla's mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy," Musk said, according to a company statement coinciding with the ceremony for the Shanghai factory. In Twitter posts before the event, Musk said that the factory will produce "affordable versions" of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles for the Greater China region, and that the plan is to "finish initial construction this summer, start Model 3 production end of year and reach high volume production next year."
According to the company, the so-called Gigafactory in Shanghai "will allow Tesla to localize production of Model 3 and future models sold in China, with plans to eventually produce approximately 3,000 Model 3 vehicles per week in the initial phase and to ramp up to 500,000 vehicles per year when fully operational (subject to local factors including regulatory approval and supply chain constraints)."
According to the company, the so-called Gigafactory in Shanghai "will allow Tesla to localize production of Model 3 and future models sold in China, with plans to eventually produce approximately 3,000 Model 3 vehicles per week in the initial phase and to ramp up to 500,000 vehicles per year when fully operational (subject to local factors including regulatory approval and supply chain constraints)."
This plant is only for the least-expensive autos (Score:5, Interesting)
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White.
Re:This plant is only for the least-expensive auto (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, it's quite possible that the cheapest versions of the Model 3 will be cheaper in China than in the rest of the world. Labour and supplier costs are certainly lower there than in Fremont.
Battery cell costs are an open question. Panasonic isn't going to be as closely involved there as they are with Tesla's US operations; Tesla plans to use predominantly Chinese cell suppliers.
Re:This plant is only for the least-expensive auto (Score:5, Funny)
You're right - I'm everywhere. I'm everyone. Nothing happens without my nod; all that transpires is due to the sheer force of my will. I am a shape shifter. I live in the cracks. I'm watching when you least expect it. I live in the shadows of your darkest fears. In your weakest moments when you are naked and vulnerable, I'm there. Watching, waiting, posting. I live through you all, within you, and beside you. I am the breath on the back of your neck, the breeze in your hair, the moisture in the air.
Cheers!
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I am the breath on the back of your neck, the breeze in your hair, the moisture in the air.
Wow! Cool! It sounds like you are a Huldufólk!
You are most welcome on my lawn!
Not that I would notice you anyway . . .
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A shill they may be, but at least Rei generally stays on topic. Which makes Rei's posts infinitely more interesting to read.
Try stopping the ad hominem attacks, and have a go at arguing some points that are actually on topic. We, the Slashdot crowd, will appreciate the effort.
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There is much anger in this one.
No problems. I'll just downvote all comments like yours. The Slashdot crowd doesn't need to put up with that sort of shit.
Re:This plant is only for the least-expensive auto (Score:4, Informative)
Chinese battery tech has proven to be reliable and robust in harsh use cases such as commercial vehicles. Buses and taxis running them hard every day, that sort of thing.
With a battery made up for many, many cells it's not necessarily the case that you want the highest quality, because that pushes the price up a lot. It can often be better to over-provision and accept a slightly higher failure rate among individual cells.
For example Kia and Hyundai have both released 64kWh usable capacity cars with lifetime, unlimited mileage battery warranties. Most other manufactures only offer 8 years and 100-120k miles. They don't state the full capacity of the batteries, only the amount they guarantee is available when new and for warranty purposes. The full capacity is probably a trade secret, as it depends on LG's manufacturing capability and how much they need to over-provision to offer the lifetime warranty.
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LG isn't Chinese; it's Korean. But I agree with your general point; Chinese li-ions have seen widespread use, and while they're generally not "top end", they're perfectly fine. Any differences vs. Panasonic will be compensated for with a higher cell count.
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It's worth pointing out that the Chinese and Koreans are perfectly capable of producing top notch cells. Korea in particular supplies a lot of phone batteries that are the highest grade. It's just that economics of large automotive packs mean that the sweet spot on the price/performance curve is in a different place.
BTW I didn't imply LG was Chinese... I had switched to talking about Kia and Hyundai, Korean manufacturers, by that point :-) And it's worth saying that LG is actually the leading automotive bat
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Fully disagree with your second paragraph. Panasonic is generally considered the leader in tech and price per kWh. Check out, for example, the Munro teardowns; they've studied all of the cells on the market used by all major EV manufacturers, and put Panasonic way out in front. Panasonic's cells have simultaneously the lowest-cobalt of the cobalt-bearing EV chemistries (lower than the cobalt targets of most manufacturers next-gen cells), yet the among the highest energy densities, and are around $100/kWh
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Munro haven't looked at a Kona as far as I can tell, and I couldn't find anything to indicate that they have looked at an LG pouch cell pack in any detail.
Cylindrical cells do have some advantages, that's likely why Panasonic recommended them to Tesla for automotive use. But since most people don't need sub 2 second 0-100 times or sustained track performance, if you want to get the price down you can just go with a bit less cooling performance. Redundancy isn't much different in practice as cylindrical cell
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They do seem to have improved the fitting of the bodywork considerably. Paint is still a bit hit and miss, but improving too.
Of course how much they pay per kWh for the batteries is a secret, but it does seem to be a bit more than Kia/Hyundai are paying for them. Either that or they are just ripping their customers off more.
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Absolutely they are. Cell phone batteries are terrible. The whole lot of them.
And remember that aforementioned swelling problem? Yep. [wired.com] (both types of failures were caused by swelling during operation, albeit for different reasons). Pouch cells are what you choose when you want something cheap and easy to make, but durability and reliability are not at the top of your concerns list.
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This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of lithium cells. For example, the cylindrical ones will swell just as much if they don't have proper venting. If they are made poorly and short out they are actually more dangerous than the defective Samsung cells you link to, as the resulting explosion is inside a pressurised metal can. That's why the decent ones have pressure vents, although inside a sealed automotive pack it might not help much.
Pouches should vent safely too if properly designed. Your own a
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They do not. Cylindrical cells mechanically resist most swelling from normal operation. Venting is only from abnormal operation, e.g. short-induced overheat.
All li-ion cells will fail severely in the event of a short. Shorts are self-propagating (a small short through the separator burns itself into a
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Wait, you are talking about the normal changes in size that are not a fault condition and which are designed to happen, either in a pouch or inside a metal tube? What exactly is the problem again?
Samsung's failures were both due to internal shorts due to manufacturing defects, causing abnormal swelling. If they had somehow released a brickphone that used cylindrical cells that had similar shorts they would have either vented or exploded. In that case having the pouch expand but not, in most cases, fail cata
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Internal shorts are always fatal for li-ion cells, regardless of the type. You should never have an internal short. You can't say "The problem was due to internal shorts causing abnormal swelling". Any sentence about li-ion failures ends when you get to the "internal short" problem.
You're confusing cause and effect. The swelling - something most pronounced in pouch cells, as they do not mechanically resist it - caused the shorts. Normally swelling does not cause shorts, but two different types of manufac
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Thing is cylindrical cells will not be any better, as I already explained. They change geometry internally too, which can cause a short if they are not properly manufactured. It's nothing at all unique to pouch cells. It's just that because pouch cells can expand and usually vent along the seams they mostly don't become high pressure bombs in the event of such a failure.
But none of that is relevant to automotive packs because the packs themselves are sealed, meaning that ultimately both types of cell are en
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I think AmiMoJo is confusing "warranty length" for "battery lifespan". It's a common fallacy when looking at low-volume EV production where people assume that all vehicles have similar profit margins and you can do a feature-for-feature comparison to determine manufacturing costs, properties, longevity, etc from this. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of manufacturers lose money on their EVs (and freely admit to this) or earn only de minimis margins, so things like warranty length (aka warranty
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Five six years down the line, there is going to be another industry to unpack, salvage still good cells and create refurbished batteries from salvaged cells. Down graded cel
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I wonder if they might be planning to export some of those cheap Model 3s. For example they already export from the US to Europe, with some reassembly done in the EU to avoid tariffs. Maybe that's one way they can get the price down far enough to make the $35k model worthwhile.
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Maybe... It's hard to take anything Musk says too seriously, let alone his tweets.
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A telling factor is that Tesla has made it clear that even for the Chinese market, high-end Model 3s, and all Model S and Model X, will be made in the US and exported to China. Only low-end Model 3s and Model Ys will be made in China.
Even in China, "Made in China" is not seen as a mark of quality. Affluent Chinese generally prefer imports to domestic goods.
The trifecta. (Score:1)
Full battery cars hit the trifecta. They are greener, not more expensive, and better. The acceleration and low CG are just the beginning. two, three or four independent motors which can rotate at different RPMs, with time lag between them controlled by computers, torque vectoring.... We are bare scratching t
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Don't feel bad, industry bigwigs whose job it is to anticipate the technology have failed to see it. So you don't have to feel bad, feel free to change your mind and drive a BEV.
You are a 10 year reader with 2^8 +5 insightfuls, and 35th level achievements. You owe it to yourself to test drive a Tesla. Test drive is
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The slowest Model 3 (including the upcoming base SR) is faster than the WRX STI 310 HP. 0-60 variously reported as 5,7 or 5,8s, vs. 5,5s for Model 3 SR ($35k w/o PUP), 4,5s for Model 3 LR AWD ($51k w/PUP), and 3,3s for Model 3 P ($62k). Not counting tax credits. And the standard feature list isn't even remotely close to comparable. Particularly if you want to compare to vehicles with PUP.
As for your "piece of shit" remark, Teslas consistently perform highest in Consumer Reports owner satisfaction surveys,
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We're going to start seeing lots of track records being broken by race-prepped Model 3s in the coming year.
Re:The trifecta. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tesla is cheaper than any ICE car in the > 450 HP range. Model S and X. Model 3 LR is cheaper than any car in the 290 HP+ range. Model 3 SR will be cheaper than any car in the 220HP+ range.
That's not quite true, based on the prices of 44K for a 3MR and S at 76K, without the autoplilot option, when ordered from Tesla. The Challenger, Camaro, Mustang, amongst others all have 300+HP models for a lot less than the Tesla's 30K base price. They and the Corvette, as well as Mercedes - AMG, Jaguar and Alfa, have have 500HP+ models less than the base X and S.
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Face the fact buddy, the ICE cars can not perform as well as BEVs.
The only saving grace for the ICE car is, it can be refueled in 10 minutes for 400 miles of range. There is no other winning point for the gasoline cars.
You can argue that is a show stopper and continue to buy ICE car
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None of them can beat the X in acceleration, cornering or handling.
You used HP as the criteria, and a number of cars beat Tesla in that for less money. An EV due to the motor's torque characteristics will accelerate faster than some ICE vehicles; but even a Mustang beats the 3 in 0 - 60 times. Even the Dodge Demon beats the P100D in the quarter mile at about 2/3 the base price. The 2018 Mercedes-AMG GLC63 S Coupe is just a tick slower on the 1/4 mile for less than half the price of the P100D. Tesla's handling is nothing to right home about based on reviews, not bad but cer
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Batteries are replacing peak load electricity generation plants. Battery cars are replacing gasoline cars. We are on the right path.
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Batteries are replacing peak load electricity generation plants.
I was with you till this careless piece of thought. No, no they are not. Batteries are great things that can efficiently store electricity. They are several orders of scale smaller than the grid though. They work on islands or when you are buffering two working and back'ed up grids. They don't handle any sort of large scale balancing of load on a grid. It would take the entire planet's output of batteries for many years to backup just the CA grid and even then it wouldn't handle 2 cloudy days in a row
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and even then it wouldn't handle 2 cloudy days in a row.
And what has that to do with "balancing peak load"?
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No new coal powered plants since 2014.
No new gas fired peak load plants after 2020.
No new base load plants after 2030.
Last gas fired base load plant dies, may be in 2045 or 2055.
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You meant: no new base load plant since 1930 ...
Last gas fired base load plant dies, may be in 2045 or 2055. ...
I doubt there are any gas fired base load plants on the planet. Perhaps "the new" plants in the US are scheduled for base load
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Perhaps you want to look up what base load means. Actually pretty obvious if you understand base load, midrange, load following and peak load.
Hint: it has nothing to do with how you generate the power, as in coal, nuclear or gas.
E.g. most hydro plants in Germany are base load ...
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Citataion needed?
Proposed: https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com] Approved: https://www.greentechmedia.com... [greentechmedia.com] One more source: https://www.energy-storage.new... [energy-storage.news]
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It would take the entire planet's output of batteries for many years to backup just the CA grid and even then it wouldn't handle 2 cloudy days in a row. I love EVs and am on my second one. But I'm still an engineer who can do math so I know their limitations.
I agree with you on this. It would take a decade of production capacity to store 30 minutes of peak electricity usage. Peak usage= 1 TW. 30 min= 500 GWh. At 40 Wh/ year it would take about 12 years!
But, I see it as a plus, not a minus. The cost effectiveness of batteries to replace gas plants has been demonstrated. There is demand. So the production will follow. There will be investment, there will be battery factories. They will build batteries. Why? It costs same as gas plants. And the cost is falling.
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You are right. I was careless, in using HP instead of acceleration times.
Even then there are cheaper alternatives that accelerate faster and significantly cheaper cars that are almost as fast so that the average driver will never notice the difference.
Anyway BEV is a better product than ICEV.
Better is relative. It depends on one's needs and desires. I think Tesla is on to something with the EV truck.
If Tesla does not make the better one, others will. That is is the important thing.
True, and many manufacturers are looking to entire the EV market; it will be interesting to see how it will play out for Tesla and them.
Batteries are replacing peak load electricity generation plants. Battery cars are replacing gasoline cars. We are on the right path.
The key word is path. We're not there yet, and i'll be a decade at least, IMHOP, befo
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The key word is path. We're not there yet, and i'll be a decade at least, IMHOP, before batteries play a significant role in peaking or transportation. I do agree it is the future, the question is how fast and what companies will survive?
BMW Porsche etc are very proud of their performance engines. Toyota, Honda are proud of their smooth ultra reliable, efficient engines. They are significantly ahead in these areas. It is their crown jewels, so to speak. Making a transition where the crown jewels needed to be thrown away would be very very hard for them. Almost like Kodak having to give up on chemical film technology.
Glorified coach builders like Jaguar, (it actually started out as a coach builder), might transition better. If the current c
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The key word is path. We're not there yet, and i'll be a decade at least, IMHOP, before batteries play a significant role in peaking or transportation. I do agree it is the future, the question is how fast and what companies will survive?
BMW Porsche etc are very proud of their performance engines. Toyota, Honda are proud of their smooth ultra reliable, efficient engines. They are significantly ahead in these areas. It is their crown jewels, so to speak. Making a transition where the crown jewels needed to be thrown away would be very very hard for them. Almost like Kodak having to give up on chemical film technology.
I disagree. Porsche and BMW are looking at Evs as the future for their vehicles; especially given the EU's push to eliminate ICEs. They have beed developing hybrids as well as Evs as interim steps. My thought is they will make the transition just fine and produce EVs that are worthy of their performance heritage. Given the performance advantages of an electric motor in terms of acceleration, coupled with their experience building well handling cars (trailing throttle oversteer be damned) it's not much of a
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Model S P100D 24.60 150th place
Model S P85 24.70 155th place
Model S P85D 25.00 185th place
Model X P90D 25.10 196th place
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The real competition for the low cost short range Model 3 is from other EV manufacturers. Hyundai already has their car our, with Kia opening the order book later this month on theirs. Both cost less than $35k and have a higher spec than the base Model 3 in most ways, including the crucial number: range.
Nissan have their new Leaf with similar specs due to launch soon, Kia are updating their family wagon Soul EV this year too... We will probably see an update to the little Renault Zoe and something from BMW
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Also all these self driving etc are not needed for the base level cars. All those 8 cameras and 18 radars are too much for a regular run about. Yes, we need a cheaper alternative to Tesla, and I am glad they are coming up.
My enemy is the ICE, not BEV from other makers. Other Tesla supporters may or may not agree. But that is my stand.
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This is with the Niro and Kona you can have autopilot and luxuries like heated/ventilated seats, but they still cost less than the promised $35k Model 3.
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You must not know much about cars, with turbos there are large swaths of cars that make that much HP and are significantly cheaper then teslas. My base model v6 ford explorer makes 290hp and was half the price of my brother's model 3.
The resistance most people have to teslas is that they are not there yet but you fanboys keep insisting they are superior in every way. There's no argument that they accelerate faster then most cars but there's more to a car then it's 0-60 time. Tesla is still a generation or t
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The self-driving stuff is nothing more than a handful of cameras and stuff that's included in modern basic models of other manufacturer's vehicles (e.g. lane-guidance, etc.), and some software that's basically cost-spread over everything they sell.
The expensive bit is all the batteries and electric motors, which is why other electric cars are also expensive.
Tesla without the auto-driving is just an expensive car that you can buy already, for cheaper, from a name that's been around in the industry for a cent
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How about a more affordable car without all the auto-driving bullshit?
Something to compete with the Smart EV, the Nissan Leaf, etc.
"Smart" Consumers (and producers) probably realize that ownership of cars have a narrow window of relevancy remaining. There are probably less than 10 years left before vehicle ownership is thought of as quaint.
. Once fleets of smart EV vehicles, called by an app on your phone, with quick response and high availability are common, most people won't be buying cars.
They'll be buying memberships for frequent smart car use.
People who live in geographically challenged areas (or road warriors) will probably still
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Then I guess I will wait to buy a $5k Tesla in 2027. [xkcd.com]
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Never mind the morals, feel the price (Score:2)
"Nazi China is becoming a world power thanks to its innovative use of slave labour to keep prices down..."
It all comes back eventually.
Telsa Intellectual Property... (Score:1)
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Musk gave away all of Tesla's patents years ago. [businessinsider.com] Do you really think he cares that China might want to steal the IP?
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Tesla doesn't have any intellectual property. They gave open access to their patents to any competitor. It's the primary reason I think investing in Tesla is a bad idea. Well, that and the strange interactions between Musk's businesses (bailing out SolarCity, etc.)
Fix the title (Score:1)
Elon Musk Breaks Ground on China's Tesla Factory.
As of right now, any automotive company in China must be at least 51% State owned - meaning, it's a Chinese company and they get to run it as they want, and will do so as soon as Musk is no longer needed. Banking, steel, transportation, telecom - those are the big ones the Chinese Government reserves for itself.
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