MartinAustin
Active Member
Looks nice. You can see the grid of holes in the ground where they are going to start building the next chunk of the factory.
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Tesla Gigafactory
- Thread starter domenick
- Start date
Gerardf
Active Member
Some more pictures here : World's largest lithium-ion battery plant - What Tesla's $5 billion under construction Gigafactory looks like | The Economic Times
On the third picture it looks to me like you can see the shape of the final structure.
On the third picture it looks to me like you can see the shape of the final structure.
MartinAustin
Active Member
jhm
Well-Known Member
Along these lines, I'd like to see where the big orders for Powerpacks will come from. Demand for stationary batteries will be quite country specific, owing to how efficienct grids are and how favorable policies may be. So if we knew which countries or regions would take up 50 GWh per year or more, it would make good sense to build GFs there first.
In case it isn't obvious, I am thinking that the stationary market may grow substantially faster than the automotive battery market. Roughly, I'm thinking an out 100% annual growth for stationary and 50% annual growth for autos. If this is right, then GF deployment should follow the stationary markets. Sell Powerpacks locally and ship EV packs wherever they are needed.
krla
Member
we can stop calculating
It's official, current structure is 1/4 of total GF1
via twitter @ElonMusk
"This is not the full Gigafactory, it is just the pilot plant (1/4 size) "
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/600784025335136256
It's official, current structure is 1/4 of total GF1
via twitter @ElonMusk
"This is not the full Gigafactory, it is just the pilot plant (1/4 size) "
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/600784025335136256
brandude87
Member
In the second of these two images, two lines of columns are on the left
I'd add that Tesla is coming up with its own way of doing everything. That revolutionises the way factories are built. eg:
aligned North/South for GPS reasons.
0% net requirement from the electric grid.
Massive emphasis on using their own batteries (+ solar / and wind) to make the above item possible. Though ironically they've "negotiated/hard-balled" the state to get cheap utilities electricity for like 20 years - so it's possible there's very very little cost reason to even put solar on the factory roof!
Recycling - full product life-cycle built in from the start.
Locating everything as close to the factory as possible.
Raw materials in one end. Finished battery packs out the other.
And will release the blueprints / patents for it so others can copy it. They'll have a head-start, and be the name brand of electric car / battery makers.
They're calling it gigafactory 1... every other one will be like it too. You could probably go from #1 to #2 and not know that you have. They'll look the same, do the same.
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Makes me think that raw materials comes in at the thin end - and comes out at the other thin end.
If this works ok they'll build the other 3/4 - but it'll be 3x the volumne... still coming in at the thin end - and out the other end.
So the finished factory will have effectively 4 parallel tracks of product going through production (or 2 where the 2nd is 3x the width of the pilot). If that makes sense.
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Well spotted - first time I've seen the actual gigagafactory image as to what it looked like in the render!
Wow is it big!!! I thought we were seeing something closer to the full size already.
PS. why are people calling this the biggest factory in the World? I thought the Boeing one was bigger?
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One thing for Nevada. It was close to the LA plant by rail - so 500k batteries weighing half a ton each don't have quite so far to go. Also in Nevada there's 2 big lithium mining companies. One is WLC (Western Lithium) with it's lithium brine mine in production.
Would be good if they could build a LA -> Vegas hyperloop with a detour via the gigafactory so as to be able to move the battery packs for zero energy!
No point building a gigafactory plant for car-batteries EVEN if the cars are sold there - if you DONT have a car factory there to.
If it's PowerWalls' / Packs' then it probably does want to be where raw materials are and customers are. It depends which costs more per ton - the raw materials - or the finished unit. Usually you want to be near cheaper raw materials.
Tesla might not want to go to China for the intelectual property reasons - even if they do have all their patents out there. But I'd think they'd want to be where the raw materials are - and cheap labout, cheap site (with $1bn tax breaks).
If there will never be more than 500k demand for cars a year (supposed capacity when in it's previous guise) then no point building more car factories.
brandude87
Member
The largest building in the world (by footprint on the ground) is the Aalsmeer Flower Auction Building in the Netherlands at 5.6 M sq ft, follwed closely by Tesla's Fremont factory at 5.5 M sq ft, which is followed by the soon-to-be-completed Tesla Gigafactory at 5.0 M sq ft, which, finally, is followed by Boeing's factory in Everett at 4.3 M sq ft. The Boeing factory is, however, the largest building by usable space. So the takeaway here is that Tesla will soon own the second and third largest buildings in the world (by footprint)!
List of largest buildings in the world - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
dhanson865
Well-Known Member
It does, why do you ask?
Maybe you misunderstood that he was talking about square feet of land and thus only discussed the size of the first floor. It would be 10 M sq ft with both floors, but it's still 5 M sq ft of land occupied.
And the Boeing Everett Factory? It's taller than 2 floors so has more cubic feet of usable space. It's something on the order of 5 stories tall or so. Yet it takes up only 4.3 M sq ft of land.
brandude87
Member
You're totally right, pmadflyer! I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this. I photoshopped a comparison of the Gigafactory using images from February 28 (airplane shot) and May 17, 2015 (4k drone video). You can clearly see that since February, all of section 5 has been completely removed. Why would Tesla do this? Were they short on supplies and needed to focus on completing sections 1-4? Was it due to a design change? Thoughts?
brandude87
Member
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