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Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

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Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#91

Post by grecy »

swimfar wrote: post #83
grecy wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of innovating, they have been, essentially, polishing a turd. In North America, yes. The rest of the automotive industry has been advancing a lot. I love that BMW get the same power/torque from a 3.0 liter engine as Ford/GM do out of a 6+ liter engine.

Are you comparing a naturally aspirated engine with a turbo-charged engine? Also, I don't think it's fair to compare truck/utility engines (which generally run on regular gas) with the engines that go into BMW's highest performance cars. And, the 2.7 liter V6 which is going into the new F-150 supposedly makes 325hp. http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/2015-ford-f-150-weighs-less-th...

no, both N/A engines.

You're comparing a 2015 engine to engines Europe have had for 20+ years.

Yes, in recent years the North American manufacturers have caught up a little.. see the newer Ford V8, Jeep with VVT, etc. etc.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#93

Post by fancyketchup »

BrandonMarc wrote: post #89
cowmix wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One fact everyone seems to forget is that it takes approximately 6.5 Kwh of energy to refine one gal of gas. That is JUST refinement and not the energy to pump, store, etc. My Volt drives around 22 -> 28 miles on that power.

Keep in mind we'll still be refining oil / petroleum for other uses (lubricants, ink, plastic, fertilizer, diesel, etc). If this is independent of the refining into gas, then all's well with your math.

Do cars typically run on plastic and fertilizer where you're from? If it's true that a Volt can drive 25ish miles on the electricity used to refine a gallon of gas, then substituting electric miles for gas ones is a wash in terms of net electricity usage. Or are you trying to say something more subtle that I'm just missing?

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#94

Post by DannyBee »

tzm wrote: post #74
DannyBee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"opening up patents" There is still no truly legally enforceable promise, that explains in detail, exactly what Elon is giving away and what he isn't, and what the terms are. It's now 1.5 months later, and despite many people asking such a thing, nothing has been forthcoming at all. So before you give them amazing amounts of credit for this, could we please wait till they actually do something more than PR?

Nissan and BMW are currently hammering details with Tesla on this very issue.

Great, so when that is resolved, and it ends up as Elon says it would, i'll happily give him credit. But that's still "in the future" :)

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#95

Post by howeyc »

rthomas6 wrote: post #92

In terms of investing (buying Tesla stock), is Tesla's probable-seeming big success with their next two cars already built in to the price? In other words, how overvalued is Tesla stock? Would it be worth making it a significant fraction of my portfolio?

> In terms of investing (buying Tesla stock), is Tesla's probable-seeming big success with their next two cars already built in to the price?

Definitely.

> In other words, how overvalued is Tesla stock?

For those following Discounted-Cash-Flow models, a lot.[1]

> Would it be worth making it a significant fraction of my portfolio?

That's up to you. I'll leave you two parting thoughts:

a) It could follow the path of Amazon, lots of people screaming "overpriced" forever as it rises.

b) Building a lasting car manufacturer isn't exactly easy.[2]

---

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/aswath-damodaran-tesla-valuat...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man...

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#96

Post by DannyBee »

cgearhart wrote: post #55
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.

Napkin math supports your concerns. - The US used 134.51 billion gallons of gas in 2013.[1] - There are ~33 kWh/gal in gasoline [2] 134.51e9 gal x 33 kWh / gal = 4.44e12 kWh (4.44 trillion kWh / year) - The US used a total of 3.856 trillion kWh of electricity in 2011 [3] Ignoring improved efficiency and excluding other factors, converting all gasoline usage to electric would more than double US electricity consumptio…

This matches the numbers i came up with from an argument on reddit[1].

I subtracted out the electricity spent producing gas in the US, which isn't as much as one would think.

You can entirely ignore it if you want to compare the residential electric grid.

Note that if you stick to residential, it's 6x all current residential usage if everyone drives teslas and charges once a day.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/236uzj/toyota_co...

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#97

Post by DannyBee »

NickM wrote: post #71
cgearhart wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napkin math supports your concerns. - The US used 134.51 billion gallons of gas in 2013.[1] - There are ~33 kWh/gal in gasoline [2] 134.51e9 gal x 33 kWh / gal = 4.44e12 kWh (4.44 trillion kWh / year) - The US used a total of 3.856 trillion kWh of electricity in 2011 [3] Ignoring improved efficiency and excluding other factors, converting all gasoline usage to electric would more than double US electricity consumptio…

Ignoring improved efficiency and excluding other factors, converting all gasoline usage to electric would more than double US electricity consumption. Not a bad analysis, but there's a lot we're glossing over here. For one thing, that 33kWh can get you about 100 miles in an average electric vehicle. That's compared to the average new US car which gets 25MPG, and existing cars out there average worse than that. So rig…

"Further (as others have mentioned) it takes a huge amount of electricity to refine oil into gasoline. The electricity savings from not refining a gallon of gas are enough to drive an electric vehicle pretty far on its own."

This isn't as much as you would think. The manufacturing electrical usage of the US (which includes this) is separated out on the EIA site, and you can simply subtract it :)

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#98

Post by secabeen »

ksec wrote: post #17

Again as with my previous response, I still dont get why the need for a Gigafactory. Battery Industry are an extremely automated, high volume market and with profit margin in single digit. Cutting those off aren't going to automatically made electric cars affordable. Unless Telsa and Panasonic has jointly developed an revolutionary battery that is going to need some funding and mass produced. But any new battery will…

They have a existential need for batteries with the Model 3. If they don't get the batteries they need when they need them, they go out of business. Vertically integrating the batteries helps prevent them from being screwed by problems elsewhere in their supply chain. They've had problems like this in the past. For the model S, some suppliers didn't actually believe that Tesla would actually want the scale of parts they had optioned for. When time came to deliver, the factory was ready, but the parts were just being produced half way across the world. Tesla had to pay substantial air freight costs.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#99

Post by TD-Linux »

jacquesm wrote: post #37
SeanLuke wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (polapul…

This is exactly backwards. Traditional Li-Ion batteries have a liquid electrolyte, and Li-Poly have a solid polymer electrolyte. Both batteries consist of anode/electrolyte/cathode rolled up. In the case of a "pouch" cell, they are rolled up flat, and a cylinderical cell has them rolled up in a cylinder. There is actually no limitation for the shape - you can totally make a Li-ion battery with liquid electrolyte in a prism - many cell phone batteries do this.

Li-ion, due to the liquid, needs a hard metal case, whereas li-poly can often get away with a foil pouch. The surface area per volume of a cylinder is less, as well as easier to make structurally sturdy, which means less weight is spent in the casing. Tesla cares more about weight than volume, so this is an acceptable tradeoff.

Re: Panasonic and Tesla Sign Agreement for the Gigafactory

#100

Post by TD-Linux »

ansible wrote: post #65

I am curious about the choice of lithium-ion vs. something like lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery chemistry. Obviously, there is a good reason for Tesla and Panasonic not to have chosen LFP, does anyone know why? I know the energy density is lower, but are there other reasons?

Lithium iron phosphate has much lower energy density (energy per weight). This is the most important factor in the choice of battery, along with the cost per energy.

LFP's advantage is in power density, which is not an issue with the size of pack that Tesla is using.

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