Disruptive Tech
| Tesla Motors is set to detail plans for its lithium ion battery Gigafactory, soon. Elon Musk says the factory may be the biggest of its kind in the world, and some analysts suggest it will extend Tesla beyond being just a car company. |
Soon Elon Musk's Tesla Motors is expected to announce detailed plans for its Gigafactory, where it will produce the lithium-ion batteries needed for its next line of vehicles. This won’t be just any factory. It could be the biggest battery-making facility in the world. It will be “heavily powered” by renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar, Musk said on Tesla’s earnings call, and will have the capability to recycle old battery packs.
The company is already buying three times more cells than it did in the previous contract with Panasonic. Tesla plans to get a minimum of 1.8 billion cells from Japanese companies over four years.
Very shortly, we will be ready to share more information about the Tesla Gigafactory. This will allow us to achieve a major reduction in the cost of our battery packs and accelerate the pace of battery innovation. Working in partnership with our suppliers, we plan to integrate precursor material, cell, module and pack production into one facility. With this facility, we feel highly confident of being able to create a compelling and affordable electric car in approximately three years. This will also allow us to address the solar power industry’s need for a massive volume of stationary battery packs.
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A major impediment Tesla’s skyrocketing sales is the supply of battery cells. Musk has repeatedly talked about the trouble of getting enough cells and how that has caused the company to not market its cars as aggressively as it would like.
John McDulling at Quartz suggests that mass production of Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries could enable their use to power all sorts of activities beyond cars. For instance Telsa’s batteries have been used to store electricity from rooftop solar panels in California, and this might suggest an attractive link between Tesla and another Musk company, Solar City.
“We are witnessing the most disruptive intersection of manufacturing, innovation and capital experienced by the auto industry in more than a century,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas in a note. “Tesla may be in position to disrupt industries well beyond the realm of traditional auto manufacturing. It’s not just cars.”
The battery factory may be behind recent talks between Tesla and Apple, causing rumors of another major corporate merger between the companies.
SOURCE Quartz
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