Elon Musk's new battery factory.

I saw a report today that Elon Musk is building his gigafactory to make lithium-ion batteries. He expects the price of batteries to drop by 30% or more, once it comes online in 4 years. Perhaps we should get Elon on on the forums here! 😉

MAD777 said:

I saw a report today that Elon Musk is building his gigafactory to make lithium-ion batteries. He expects the price of batteries to drop by 30% or more, once it comes online in 4 years. Perhaps we should get Elon on on the forums here! 

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That story has been around for 1-2 years and I guess that they've already broken ground?

I think he's doing it because Panasonic can't supply everything that Tesla will need for future production cars. The original 80kWh high cap pack has/had something like 6800 18650s inside, so that's a lot right there.

Whether worldwide prices drop, probably depends on supply and demand. More Teslas on the road, fewer cells for us flashlight geeks. If Tesla's sales tank with their new 'smaller' model, than it'll be a boon for us!

Chris

There will be plenty of cells that don't meet the Tesla specification. Just like with computer processors. Shoot for 3.4ghz, only runs safely at 3.2ghz and can't get a premium price.

I suspect that the latest Tesla model probably won't have as many cells within the pack as the new model is a much smaller car and isn't advertised as a performance car.

Tesla claims with their Supercharger battery charger, that you can charge battery to get 170 mile range in 30 minutes. https://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger

The batteries are going to have to be some kind of special to accept 10C or higher charge rates.

Panasonic and Tesla are partners in the Gigafactory - and from this article, Panasonic is going to make all the cells there. https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/panasonic-and-tesla-sign-agreement-gigafactory

MAD777 said:

I saw a report today that Elon Musk is building his gigafactory to make lithium-ion batteries….

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18650 ? Or 21700 ?