Tesla’s “Gigafactory” Accelerates All Things Environmental
It looks like the Tesla “Gigafactory” will be built in Reno, NV, enabling the assembly of batteries for 500,000 electric vehicles annually. That’s a peck of EVs in anybody’s book (see photo).
Tesla believes that their new vehicle, the Model 3, will be quite popular. With an MSRP of approximately $35,000 and a range of 200 miles per charge, it’s hard to argue against that idea.
It’s important to note that this project is cause for optimism that spreads far beyond the domain of electric transportation itself. More EVs on the road means accelerated development and implementation of more smart grid solutions to charge them–from an expanded set of renewable resources.
Btw, this phenomenon surrounding the rising tide of EVs and the infrastructure to charge them is one of the eleven reasons that I have renewed optimism that humankind will effectively address its environmental issues. Thus the name of my current book project: “Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose.”
Craig,
Do you know if the $5 plant cost estimate is including the associated renewable energy that has been proposed to power it? I suspect it will take another $1-2 billion.
Otherwise, this is a good thing – even though I don’t like EV’s. Because if the energy demand is indeed offset by renewables, the large manufacturing plant would enable the large-scale carbon neutral manufacturing of high-end lithium batteries… and that’s a good thing.
I hope – in the end – that much of the production is eventually shifted to something other than EV’s… but the manufacturing facility itself, and the very large investment in renewable energy to offset its demand… these are good things.
😉
I don’t know the answer to your question. But $1-2 billion? That seems like a lot.
Craig,
It is a lot… But it takes a lot of power to make batteries. It could actually be more than that… I don’t know what to make of Musk’s “net zero” promise… but I suspect that it would be in that range before subsidies are considered.
It’s clear that most of the renewable power needed will be solar, which in and of itself will have to be an installed base of ~400-500 MW, which would cost ~1.6 – 2 billion assuming $4/W, but of course will cost far less once all the state and federal subsidies are considered.
I’m assuming that Musk is intelligent enough to know that he’s working with offsets here, and if he produces enough total energy for the grid to match his total energy demand he can (honestly) claim net zero for the plant itself… But if he want’s to isolate the plant and exclusively use solar, he’s going to need very large fields of battery packs. That would cost far more…
… and of course if he seeks to offset the carbon load of the materials themselves, it becomes astronomical, though I seriously doubt he’s considering that. Note that I don’t even consider this to be a criticism… If he really does offset the entire plant’s load he’ll have done far more than most CEO’s would ever consider, and he will have garnered a great deal of respect from me.
I thought solar PV was under $3/Watt installed — especially at that scale.
Craig,
Fair, and my bad… I’m not used to thinking on an industrial scale. It actually looks as though something of this magnitude could be as little as $2.5/MW.
So if they install 400-500 MW of solar, then it would cost $1 B – $1.25 B.
It’s less than I thought.