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EGEB: How Hurricane Ida will impact EV and gas drivers, and power

Hurricane Ida

In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

  • Hurricane Ida will affect the price of gas for ICE-car drivers across the US.
  • Were widespread power outages from Hurricane Ida avoidable?
  • UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so it’s important to shop for the best quotes. Click here to learn more and get your quotes. — *ad.
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EGEB: US energy storage market shattered records in Q4 2020

  • The US installed more battery storage in 2020 than between 2013 and 2019, says a new study.
  • Representative Deb Haaland’s nomination for US Secretary of the Interior heads to the full Senate.
  • UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so it’s important to shop for the best quotes. Click here to learn more and get your quotes. — *ad.
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EV battery swapping is dead in US, but China wants to make it happen

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With the rise and fall of battery-swap company Better Place in 2013, the prospect of mass-scale swappable EV battery packs in the US fell by the wayside. Tesla abandoned the idea a few years later. The big problem (among many) was a lack of common battery standards across multiple automakers. Battery packs need to be the same size and shape. That’s an issue that could be solved in China, where strong state control can dictate standards.


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Electric vehicle battery cost dropped 80% in 6 years down to $227/kWh – Tesla claims to be below $190/kWh

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tesla model s battery pack platform

Profitable production of electric vehicles is highly important. Our capitalist society revolves around profitability and therefore, if electric vehicles are to prevail over gas-powered cars, they need to be profitable to manufacture in mass.

A new study published this month by McKinsey & Company and embedded below looks into how automakers can move past producing EVs as compliance cars and “drive electrified vehicle sales and profitability”. Unsurprisingly, it describes battery economics as an important barrier to profitability and though the research firm sees a path to automakers making a profit selling electric vehicles as battery costs fall, it doesn’t see that happening for “the next two to three product cycles” – or between 2025 and 2030.
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VW CEO denies plans for a giant electric vehicle battery factory

VW battery factory

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Back in May, we shared a report from German newspaper Handelsblatt, which has often produced reliable insider reports on the German auto industry, citing insider sources saying that Volkswagen was about to present to its board of directors a plan to build a ‘multi-billion euro battery factory’.

In a new interview with the same newspaper this week, VW CEO Matthias Müller denies plans for the giant electric vehicle battery factory.
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MIT startup claims a breakthrough for ‘holy grail’ of batteries, doubles energy density

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As always, a healthy dose of skepticism is important when it comes to an alleged “battery breakthrough”. Those announcements are being made every 2-3 months over the last decade and rarely anything comes to it, but at least we can always rely on the 5-8% annual incremental improvements in li-ion battery capacity. It’s not a “breakthrough” or doubling of capacity, but it adds up.

Now it’s time for another MIT spinout, after the defunct A123 Systems, to claim to have created the next battery breakthrough with an anode-free li-metal battery that could achieve an energy density of up to 500 Wh/kg – about twice the capacity of the current cells found in Tesla’s vehicles for example.
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Tesla Model 3 is expected to drive Panasonic’s battery sales to double in three years, says exec

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The Tesla Model 3’s $35,000 price tag will be enabled in part due to a significant reduction in battery cost through the automaker’s partnership with Panasonic on the Gigafactory in Nevada. While Tesla owns and operates the giant battery factory, Panasonic is still in charge of battery cell production at the plant, which Tesla then uses to make battery packs for its vehicles.

With the strong demand for Tesla’s vehicles, Panasonic now says that it expects its battery sales to double within the next 3 years – or after the first full planned year of Model 3 production.
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Tesla will add new section (5th) to the Gigafactory by December, Battery cell manufacturing equipment by July 20th

tesla gigafactory bird eye

For the most part, Tesla’s Gigafactory has looked the same from the outside since the beginning of the year. The first phase consists of 4 sections of about 475,000 square feet for a total of 1.9 million square feet. The final version of the building, which should be completed by the end of the decade, is expected to have 13 million square feet of manufacturing and work space. It should be enough to become the biggest building on earth by footprint and Tesla plans for the factory to produce at least as much battery capacity as the entire world production of li-ion cells.

Now we learn that Tesla is planning to add a new section to the plant with an estimated completion date by the end of the year, according a building permit recently issued to Tesla.
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Tesla could triple the planned battery output of ‘Gigafactory 1’ to 150 GWh, says Elon Musk

Tesla Gigafactory by Joshua Mcdonald 24/02/16

During the 2016 Shareholders Meeting today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company could triple the total planned battery output of the Gigafactory to ~105 GWh of cells and ~150 GWh of battery packs – or over 3 times the current total li-ion battery production worldwide.

The new potential total capacity would be based on the current planned factory of 13 million sq-ft – with no expansion needed. Musk revealed a few other tidbits of information about the plant during the meeting.
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Panasonic says it’s ready to accelerate its Tesla Gigafactory investment to support the Model 3

Gigafactory march 2016 video

During the recent conference call with analysts for Tesla’s first quarter 2016, co-founder and CTO JB Straubel said that we shouldn’t focus too much on Tesla’s previously stated goal of 35 GWh of battery cell production at the Gigafactory, and 50 GWh of battery pack output.

Straubel said that Tesla was prepared to adjust the battery factory output according to the higher than anticipated demand for the Model 3 after the company received over 373,000 pre-orders. Tesla’s battery output at the factory depends significantly on Panasonic and now the Japanese battery maker says that it would move up its investment schedule if asked by Tesla.
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Tesla is only manufacturing 75 and 90 kWh battery packs, but will offer 70 as software-limited 75 kWh

Model S

Earlier this week, Tesla confirmed that it is introducing its new 75 kWh battery pack to the Model S, like it did for the Model X last month. Now Tesla confirmed that while the option is not available now, it will be by the end of the week, and every updated Model S 70 produced since the ‘facelift’ was equipped with the new 75 kWh battery, but software-limited to 70 kWh.
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Tesla confirms base Model 3 will have less than 60 kWh battery pack option, cost is below $190/kWh and falling

Tesla battery cells

tesla battery cells

Tesla doesn’t like to talk about its battery cost as it complicates an already complex supply chain with several suppliers, including long-time partner Panasonic, and new ones like LG and Samsung. But the company felt the need to comment this week following a new analysis of the Model 3’s cost by Jon Bereisa, CEO of Auto Lectrification and former chief engineer of the Chevy Volt program.

Colin Langan, a UBS analyst covering Tesla for the firm, hosted a call with Bereisa to gain some insights for its financial model of the company.
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Tesla quietly removed the 70 kWh battery option from the Model X’s reservation page as bigger battery rumor intensifies [Updated]

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Update: Tesla has now reverted the website to the previous version listing again the 70D indicating that it was an error./

Over the weekend Tesla quietly removed the 70 kWh battery pack option from the Model X reservation page on its website. The move comes just after a Tesla OS hacker revealed that the automaker is working on a bigger 100 kWh battery pack.

Now only the P90D and 90D, both equipped with a 90 kWh battery pack, are shown as options on the Model X reservation page. The 70 kWh option is still available on the Model S’ online design studio.

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