I'll be worried as soon as I see legacy automakers building their own battery factories. Until then, good luck!

I bet you Bolt EV hits consumer market before TSLA Model 3.

But yeah, GM owns its own battery factory. Is it the same size as Tesla's?? No. But I think its a smarter move to build the factories after demand has proven itself.

Tesla expects the Model 3 to sell out. Anything less than "amazing" will make the Gigafactory not worth its billions-upon-billions of dollars of investment.

> Tesla expects the Model 3 to sell out. Anything less than "amazing" will make the Gigafactory not worth its billions-upon-billions of dollars of investment.

Even if the Model 3 doesn't sell out, there are utility customers clamoring for stationary storage, first to replace peaking plant capacity, and then down the value chain as more utility scale wind and solar come online.

Do you even know what the energy storage market looks like in the US? You ain't gonna build a 30 GIGAWATT-hour plant on $3 Billion (1.6 Billion initially, another 1.5 billion in upgrades a few decades later) like the Bath County pumped storage station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_County_Pumped_Storage_Sta...

Lithium Ion will cost you significantly more.

Pumped hydro is restricted by geography. That's like arguing, "Why not build dams everywhere! Hydro power is so clean!". You need someplace to actually pump water around.

Virtually everywhere else has dams they can take advantage of. The places that don't have abandoned mines for Compressed-Air energy storage. Continental US has a ton of natural resources at its disposal that can be built up to significantly cheaper solutions than Lithium Ion.

And Australia. And Europe. And anywhere that is placing a premium on renewable energy. Tesla's market for batteries increases each time they're able to lower their price as volume increases.

> Virtually everywhere else has dams they can take advantage of. The places that don't have abandoned mines for Compressed-Air energy storage. Continental US has a ton of natural resources at its disposal that can be built up to significantly cheaper solutions than Lithium Ion.

There is no point in us arguing further when you don't base your argument on reality. You can't put dams anywhere. You can't build salt caverns anywhere. You can put batteries anywhere.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/new-type-flow-battery...

Good luck competing against Redox Flow. Its a miracle that Elon Musk has been able to get so much done with Laptop-batteries (18650 Cells). But the new chemistries actually designed for grid-storage are coming, and they crush laptop-batteries in cost and capacity.

The Gigafactory is designed to make Electric car batteries, and the 26650 (successor to the 18650 laptop cells) aren't even being produced yet. How long before TSLA / Panasonic can tweak the gigafactory to make a cell optimized for grid energy-storage?

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/08/hecate-...

Your turn. Show me a 1MegaWatt-hr or larger TSLA installation. kw-installations (Power Wall) are small money, I don't care about that. I care about hundreds-of-million $$ installations.

The only things I see for TSLA are planned projects and/or demos.

Redox Flow is a bit newer technology than Lithium Ion, but small-scale installations already exist all over the world.

http://www.energy-storage-online.com/cipp/md_energy/custom/p...

"Slated for commissioning in 2016, ViZn's ZnFe redox flow battery system will be the largest of its type in North America and Europe."

"The first of these projects is expected to be brought online by the end of Q316."

Small-scale deployments of Lithium Ion are not going to be as efficient as large-scale deployments of Redox Flow. Period. I don't think TSLA has bet on the right technology at the utility scale. Lithium Ion is great for cars, but better technologies simply exist in other niches.

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Look, Redox Flow batteries are ahead of TSLA. They exist right now at the "small scale" of 2.2MWhr.

http://www.uetechnologies.com/product.htm

These are the numbers for a utility-scale level company... currently mass producing Redox Flow batteries. TSLA power wall just doesn't compete. Not by a long shot.

There are many things which are more cost-effective long-term, which lose to something which costs less short term.

The 40-year old technology is cheaper, more well known, widely deployed, 100% green, non-toxic and extremely reliable. Its both a short-term and long-term solution.

TSLA batteries don't even beat the status-quo in the energy field, let alone the new technologies that are coming (Supercapacitors, Redox Flow, Compressed Air...)

Look, this is just like the PC revolution vs mainframes. Mainframes were cheaper and better on ANY axis relative to PC's in the 1980's.

However, a PC didn't require a multi-year allocation in the capital budget. A PC didn't require buy-in from multiple players. A PC was locally controlled.

So, PCs won. And the money expended on PCs eventually made them better than the mainframes they were displacing.

Okay. So why are PowerWalls going to beat the current state-of-the-art in battery technology?

Look, for areas with resources, Pumped Hydro / Compressed Air is straight up superior. For areas without resources, getting a shipping container for a Redox Flow battery is more efficient.

Plus, you are ignoring the biggest advantages of the PowerWall concept-- the decentralization and small-scale aspect. I don't think homeowners in my town are going to be building hydroelectric dams in their back yard, even if it weren't an earthquake zone (and it is...)

With regard to new battery chemistries... sure, there are probably things out there much better or stabler than lithium-ion. But posting some marketing copy about a not-yet-shipped new battery product proves nothing. I'm surprised you didn't latch on to the "ultracapacitor" hype since that is also a year away from taking the world by storm (and has been for the last 5 years, at least). As a layman, none of us have any idea whether these physics breakthroughs are 5 months away or 5 years, and none of the people who do know are going to talk about it.

If new battery chemistries do take the world by storm. I don't see why Tesla wouldn't just license them, much like they are licensing lithium-ion now. Tesla has the high-current charging network that a better battery would need anyway. Traditional car manufacturers have a spotty and low-wattage charging network that might not even benefit from a better battery chemistry.

You seem to be grasping at any possible reason to be negative about Tesla. I agree they're overvalued right now, but the idea of building a big factory for batteries, and focusing on a high-end electric car is smart, and the next few years will show that. There are strong network effects in building a charging network, and major economies of scale in building the gigafactory.

And it has nothing to do with "better". Lithium Ion has more energy per watt, but Redox Flow is just so much cheaper and also has a 20+ year life expectancy. It will be very hard for Tesla to compete when they're making car batteries and trying to apply it to utility scale.

Who cares about energy density when you're just going to bury the battery into the ground? The ground can support a lot more weight than the lighter Lithium Ion batteries. The Redox Flow's heavier weight is not a disadvantage in the utility space.

Tesla Batteries can only be used inside of Tesla cars and Powerwalls right now. All the other companies build their own batteries (out of LG Chem cells or Samsung cells).

Tesla only assembles Panasonic cells into batteries. They are not poised to actually benefit from increased global demand of Lithium Ion.

Tesla has no plans to make their own cells. This is a simple fact.

I mean, serious question. In the office building I work in, my company only owns two floors. The next floor is another company, and the floor above that is yet another company. My company owns more than half the building (the bottom floors has more space for various reasons), but the stuff made upstairs isn't made by my company.