This week, Tesla revealed the first details about its plan to build an enormous battery factory to provide cells for its future electric vehicles. Among the revelations: the factory will be powered primarily by its own solar and wind power parks; it will produce more than 50 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of battery packs a year; and it will cost $6 billion to build. To kick things off, Tesla also filed to sell $1.6 billion worth of convertible bonds today.
While these are intriguing details, there’s still a lot to determine about what this factory will actually look like. Here are my questions about the Gigafactory:
Why isn’t California one of the states being considered for the plant? The company named Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas as potential host sites. To build the batteries in a different state and then ship them to California, even by rail, will add considerable cost to the batteries. Why not locate the factory at or near the company’s vehicle assembly plant in Fremont, California? My guess is that environmental regulations for such an enormous factory are one negative factor weighing against California. That leads to a second question: Where will the cars be built? The batteries coming from this factory will be going into Tesla’s next-gen passenger car, not the Model S or Model X. That means that a car factory could also come along with the battery plant. . . .
http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/six-questions-regarding-teslas-gigafactory
