Elon Musk discusses future plans for Tesla and his other endeavors with curator Chris Anderson at a TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada, April 28, 2017. The transcript below is an attempt to capture the conversation as accurately as possible. 

Chris: Elon. Hey, welcome back to TED. It’s great to have you here.

Elon: Thanks for having me.

Chris: So, in the next half hour or so we’re going to spend some time exploring your vision for what an exciting future might look like, which I guess makes my first question a little ironic. Why are you boring?

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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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When Tesla inked a deal with the state of Nevada to build its giant battery factory near Reno, it was widely reported that Tesla received $1.3 billion in tax incentives. While the deal could be worth close to the amount over a 20-year period, it is not clear how much Tesla is currently getting from the state because it was awarded as sales and property tax abatements, transferable tax credits (TTC) and discounted electricity rates.

Through documents recently released by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED), we now learn that Tesla started profiting from transferable tax credits by selling around $20 million worth to MGM Grand Casino.
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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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While Tesla has been manufacturing battery packs at the Gigafactory for its energy storage division since last year, new battery cell production is expected to be the real hallmark of the giant battery factory and it has yet to happen.

Panasonic, Tesla’s strategic partner at the plant, is in charge of the cell production inside the facility and it is expected to begin the process by the end of the year. Now we learn that Panasonic is “gearing up for significant growth” at the Gigafactory and it will host a special invitation-only hiring event on location next week to for “positions in advanced manufacturing”.
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The pilot plant of Tesla’s ‘Gigafactory 1’ is almost completed and will be officially inaugurated at a special event on July 29.  Pictures of the ambitious facility, which is located east of Reno in Nevada, have been more scarce since two journalists from Gannett’s Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) were involved in an altercation with two Tesla safety managers on the property while they were trying to take pictures of the factory late last year.

We’ve got an update with some up close pictures when Motor Trend did a photoshoot for the Model 3 at the Gigafactory a month ago, but we are now bringing you the most recent aerial shots of the factory.
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Tesla has been promising a special event to celebrate the opening of its battery factory in Nevada for a while now. Attending the event was even part of the prizes of Tesla’s second round of the Model S owner referral program. Now it finally has a date: July 29th. The company sent out the invitations to the top Model S referrers last night.
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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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Although far from having completed the project, it’s quite impressive what Tesla accomplished in the Nevada desert in a little less than 2 years – of course that’s with the help of several contractors and its partner, Panasonic.

After breaking ground in July 2014, before even announcing a deal with the state, Tesla has now completed the first phase of its giant battery factory, which should soon be officially inaugurated.

You can watch a quick time-lapse of its construction below.
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As we reported on Friday, local Reno media outlets were given rare access to the Tesla Gigafactory and we even got our very first glimpse of the manufacturing floor. Though reporters were not allowed to take footage of the assembly line and it looks like all pictures were from the same angle near the offices.

Now it appears that someone with better access leaked several pictures of Tesla’s Powerwall and Powerpack assembly line, and it’s awesome.
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In an effort to lobby Nevada lawmakers for the development of solar energy following the Public Utilities Commission’s decision to slash net metering, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive organized an event Wednesday night at the Gigafactory for Nevada politicians and top government officials.

Tesla and SolarCity executives held presentations meant to be “forward-looking and educational” and the whole event also included a tour of the Gigafactory.
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An interesting fact about lego bricks: the first hands to touch a Lego brick are the hands of a customer since the entire manufacturing process is automated.

Granted, plastic blocks are significantly less complicated than li-ion battery cells, but since Tesla hired a long-time Lego manufacturing executive to lead the Gigafactory effort, it is an interesting analogy for the potential level of automation at Tesla’s battery factory.
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Elon Musk shines in MIT Technology Review’s recently published top 10 list of technology breakthroughs of 2016. According to the MIT, the list “identifies innovations from the past year that solve difficult problems or create powerful new ways of using technology”.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is directly involved in 3 of the 10 projects identified by the MIT.
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Recent pictures of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada have been scarce lately. We were getting regular updates via drone videos, but those stopped and were even taken down. We can’t say it was the cause, but the videos were taken down not long after two journalists from Gannett’s Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) were involved in an altercation with two Tesla safety managers on the property, while they were trying to take pictures.
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Tesla has never hidden the fact that the Model 3 and especially its $35,000 projected starting price are closely linked to the Gigafactory, which aims to reduce battery costs by more than 30%.

The automaker expects to achieve such a significant cost reduction through economy of scale with a factory output greater than the total world production of li-ion batteries in 2014 – when Tesla announced the project.

Beside economies of scale and incremental technology improvements, Tesla is likely to benefit from the recent decrease in cost of several metals used in the manufacture of li-ion battery cells.
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According to a new report from the Reno Gazette-Journal, the Tesla Gigafactory is still ahead of schedule, but it is falling short on job creation and capital investment projections for the project. It would be important to note that RGJ is making these claims based on the most recent data available – dated September 30 and June 30 – while comparing the numbers to the state’s projections for the end of 2015.

In its analysis, RGJ assumes that Tesla is still falling short in the fourth quarter because it was lagging so far behind in September. 
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When Tesla CEO Elon Musk first announced the Gigafactory project, he said that even though the planned capacity of the factory is equal to the entire global production of lithium-ion batteries in 2013, the world would sill need around 200 more giant factories of similar size to support the auto industry’s transition from fossil fuels to electric.

Tesla named the factory in Nevada: “Gigafactory 1”, implying that the company plans to eventually introduce “Gigafactory 2” and so on. Late last year, German Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel confirmed being in contact with Elon Musk over the possibility of building a battery factory in the country. Now we learn that Tesla is also reportedly in talks to build another Gigafactory in South Africa.
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Panasonic confirmed being a partner in Tesla’s battery factory early in the development of the project, but other than some estimates from Tesla, the electronic giant never committed to a dollar amount in investment until today.

Tesla made clear its plan to remain in control of the project and to contribute the majority of the estimated $4 billion to $5 billion investment required to build its massive battery factory. Panasonic confirmed today that it plans to invest between $1.5 billion and $1.6 billion in the Gigafactory.
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Even though Tesla has been producing stationary energy storage products at the Gigafactory 1 in Nevada for a few months now, we haven’t had the chance to see any pictures from inside the plant since the walls of the first section of the factory are up.

Today we get our first modest look via professional photographer James Lipman’s Instagram (first spotted by Evannex).
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk was at the AGU Fall Meeting today for the Presidential Forum and made some comments about Tesla’s battery factory under construction in Nevada.

Musk said that the battery cells the company will produce at the Gigafactory in partnership with Panasonic will feature some “moderate improvements” in technology over those in production today. 
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Navigant Research recently named LG Chem the #1 leading supplier of batteries for electric vehicles. The company has been a longtime partner of GM for the production of the Chevy Volt and it recently attracted interest from other electric vehicle makers such as Nissan and Tesla.

Those manufacturers plan to introduce several mass market electric vehicles in the coming years and if LG wants to keep its lead, it will need to significantly increase its battery production output. And the Korea-based electronic giant is counting on its Michigan battery plant to keep up with the auto market. 
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Earlier this week, the Reno Gazette-Journal published its latest progress report on Tesla’s Gigafactory. I suggest reading the entire lengthy piece to get a good idea of the impact of the Gigafactory on the region, but the paper can get obnoxiously whiny about the state and local government’s support of the project, so I compiled the bulletpoints and facts from RGJ’s document digging for a quick overview here:
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Local news reports in Chile are stating that “senior Tesla executives” met with government officials to evaluate a partnership with state-owned mining company Codelco in order to source lithium in the country.

The agreement would presumably be to supply Tesla’s Gigafactory under-construction in Nevada.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk described the Gigafactory in Nevada as a product, calling it the “Gigafactory 1” – implying there will eventually be a “Gigafactory 2”. This second battery factory could end up being built in Germany according to comments made earlier today by Vice-Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel.
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