Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory • Hacker News Board

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#31

Post by akadruid1 » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:23 PM UTC

davman wrote: post #22

C7E0F338E42448 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where do you live, where owning an electric car in your lifetime seem like a distant dream? and why do you want to own one so badly?

Well I live in the UK, I've specced out a mid range Model S with a few optional extras so this comes in at £67000. Lets assume by some miracle I manage to save up a £7000 deposit, this leaves me with some £60000 to find. At a quick google around its pretty hard to get car finance over £25000, but lets have a crack at it and try autotrader. They'll only let me borrow £50k over 60 months which gives me monthly payments…

Give it a few years, things are changing very fast. Useful electric cars will be affordable in 20 years for sure; Tesla seem to be aiming much sooner.

Anyway, even if nothing changes, in 20 years your £67K Model S will be on autotrader for £6K or less. You can pick up a 20 year Ferrari 456 GT for the price of a new Ford Focus and I'm sure they hold their value better than a Tesla will.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#32

Post by davman » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:29 PM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #25

davman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I live in the UK, I've specced out a mid range Model S with a few optional extras so this comes in at £67000. Lets assume by some miracle I manage to save up a £7000 deposit, this leaves me with some £60000 to find. At a quick google around its pretty hard to get car finance over £25000, but lets have a crack at it and try autotrader. They'll only let me borrow £50k over 60 months which gives me monthly payments…

Are you working in IT?

Yes, I'm an entry-level SysAdmin

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#33

Post by snarfy » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:29 PM UTC

Has there been any analysis on the amount of joule energy pumped out of all of the current gas stations on a daily basis?

I'm worried the current electric grid is woefully insufficient for a world full of electric cars. I know their are plenty of electric lines out there running at greater than 100% of their rated capacity already.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#34

Post by celticninja » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:30 PM UTC

martin_bech wrote: post #30

pptr1 wrote: post #28

This just shows me that Tesla is able to execute. The Gigafactory, opening up patents, rapidly growing charger network, and the eventual $35k Gen III tells me they have tons of potential in the future. Tesla is thinking big. They want everyone in the world to eventually have a electric car. I think they will own a significant share of premium market after they release the Gen III. However, they will be cars that peop…

Im going to repeat myself.. They are going to do to alot of car manufactures, the same thing Apple did to Nokia and Blackberry..

Is that to "F them in the A"?

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#35

Post by julianpye » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:30 PM UTC

This is very significant for Panasonic's new direction. They now partner with a startup that takes on a IPR policy radically different from the Panasonic of the past. Panasonic's R&D engineers used to be measured internally by the amount of patents filed and the company had a large presence in every significant patent pool. In addition it means that one of Panasonic's key manufacturing expertise will be located overseas, which is also a radical departure to the mindset of keeping core manufacturing as 'black boxes' in Japan. However this may still apply to components that are integrated in the Gigafactory.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#36

Post by twsted » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:36 PM UTC

dm2 wrote: post #4

awjr wrote: post #2

Out of curiosity, with the recent release of their patents, is Tesla going to be enabling other car manufacturers to purchase these batteries? Standardising on a housing module across manufacturers seems a 'good thing' for the general consumer.

I don't see why they wouldn't, they already sell their powertrains to other companies. It would probably depend on how much extra capacity they have. The Tesla vehicles are in high demand and only going to be in more demand when they start rolling out the Tesla 3 (which is really the 4th Tesla isn't it, I guess they're referring to it being the 3rd generation with the Model S and X being the same generation).

Elon gave a funny explanation for the new name: he would have wanted a Model E to compose S E X, but the name was already taken. So he chose 3 to at least have S 3 X.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#37

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:36 PM UTC

SeanLuke wrote: post #24

jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an efficiency matter. The cylinder gives good electrode surface relative to the amount of matter contained. For a cube that ratio would be much worse, for a sphere it would be optimal, but spheres are harder to manufacture and connect to, as well as harder to stack in arrays. So we take a medium between the sphere and the cube and end up with a sweet spot in the cylindrical shape.

This doesn't explain why LiPoly batteries are cuboids.

Indeed it does not, this is about Tesla's and Panasonics 'gigafactory' which will make Lithium-Ion batteries in a cylindrical form factor.

Lithium Polymer batteries (or LiPo for short) are a special case of Lithium-Ion batteries. They are sold in a 'pouch' format (and they are not the first to use a format like that, for instance, in the polaroid cartridges there used to be a battery in a similar form factor (polapulse)).

The reason why LiPo batteries are not so constrained in shape as their siblings is that the electrolyte is a liquid. Solid electrolyte batteries are typically much more constrained in terms of shapes.

This is also why regular car batteries (lead-acid) can be block shaped, the acid is also a liquid.

The polapulse was an interesting battery, it only had to fire the camera 10 times but was quite high current. The packaging constraints of the cartridge dictated the battery geometry and so a flat pouch like battery was born.

LiPo batteries exist in all kinds of interesting shapes and sizes too.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#38

Post by cpwright » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:37 PM UTC

I found some of the business arrangements interesting, though maybe not surprising. I think those are the real new details of this release.

First, they'll be producing 50GwH of packs, but only 35GwH of cells; so they'll still be dependent on external cell manufacturing for a sizable portion of the packs.

Second, that it sounds like Panasonic will basically own and run the cell part of the factory; as opposed to Tesla or a joint venture purchasing the equipment and making the cells themselves.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#39

Post by tristramg » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:39 PM UTC

aharonovich wrote: post #8

awjr wrote: post #2

Out of curiosity, with the recent release of their patents, is Tesla going to be enabling other car manufacturers to purchase these batteries? Standardising on a housing module across manufacturers seems a 'good thing' for the general consumer.

They plan to have capacity of 35-50 GWh at 2020 [0]. IMO they will not be able to produce so many cars, to use all the battery capacity in Tesla cars they would to make ~0.5 Million cars per year. This means that they do plan to sell the excess capacity. [0] http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachme...

They say so in their announcement: “and for the stationary storage market”

A huge growing market will be batteries in homes. Germany is trying to push it to go from 30% of photovoltaic self-consumption up to 70% (when the sun shines, people usually are away at work). The excessive electricity is sold to the network.

This requires between 5 and 10kWh storage capacity (compared to the 50+kWh of a Tesla) for a single family home. The current price is about 20€cts/kWh for the storage over the whole lifetime. So it is not economic yet, but it should be within a few years and I hope that Tesla will contribute to it. Solar costs about 15€cts/kWh and electricity from the network is around 25€cts/kWh. When solar will reach 10€cts and storage 10€cts/kWh, the market will be very important.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#40

Post by azunds » Thu, Jul 31, 2014, 12:40 PM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #33

Has there been any analysis on the amount of joule energy pumped out of all of the current gas stations on a daily basis? I'm worried the current electric grid is woefully insufficient for a world full of electric cars. I know their are plenty of electric lines out there running at greater than 100% of their rated capacity already.

With current pv technology this probably will not be a problem