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GM, LG to Spend $2.3B on Venture to Make Electric-Car Batteries
- WhompingWindows 7y agoDoes anyone know more details about what kind of batteries these are going to be?
- cowmix 7y agoProbably some version of the pouch cell type.
- ChrisClark 7y agoYeah, that's what most cars using LG's batteries use, right? Though they must have the cylindrical too, since LG is currently making the cells for the Model 3 in China before Tesla starts their own production there.
- cowmix 7y agoMan, to think everyone in the industry said the Tesla gigafactory was a mistake or a waste.
- imglorp 7y agoJust the shorts, maybe.
- agumonkey 7y agoAt the very beginning it was still a wild bet about timing. Nothing was aligned, so surely a lot of long were not tempted.
- vladimirralev 7y agoThe industry was right back in 2015-2016. The gigactory was supposed to have capacity 150Gwh/year by now. This is what they called a mistake and a waste. The current gigafactory operates at less than 40Gwh/year (as of August 2019), which is the reasonable quote. And a darker interpretation of this is that Tesla knowingly deceived the state about the size in order to be granted more incentives with no intention of ever achieving this size.
- Veedrac 7y agoSource? From October 2014: > The automaker says that by 2020, the factory will be shipping out 35GWh of cells and 50GWh of packs per year. https://www.zdnet.com/article/panasonic-to-pour-billions-of-yen-in-teslas-gigafactory-as-initial-investment/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/panasonic-to-pour-billions-of-...
- WhompingWindows 7y agoThere seems to be contradictions on the Wiki article about Gigafactory 1... "Its projected capacity for 2018 is 50 (GWh)/yr of battery packs, and its final capacity upon completion was, as of May 2016, planned to be 150 GWh/yr of battery packs.[39] This would enable Tesla to produce 1,500,000 cars per year." But after this quote, they failed to verify the initial numbers, so maybe there is some whitewashing of those facts?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- vladimirralev 7y agoWell the numbers changed at the 2016 shareholder meeting https://www.visualcapitalist.com/9-slides-put-new-tesla-gigafactory-perspective/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/9-slides-put-new-tesla-giga... to align with the model 3 projections. In 2018 the numbers changed to 100GWh, but it wasn't clear if it was only for cars or all. And now nobody knows. But the point is that the outrage came with the 150Gwh quote from 2016.
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/85M0J http://archive.is/85M0J
- bryanlarsen 7y agoThere are battery factories in China coming online in the next couple of years that make the Gigafactory look small. I expect that batteries will follow a boom/bust cycle like DRAM does.
- mdorazio 7y agoDepends on the timing with respect to market demand / production volume of EVs. As battery prices come down due to increased production / economies of scale, EV demand will go up so it could be a smooth transition. It could also turn into a glut/bust scenario like you say, but I think we'll see the factories scale up production to meet demand rather than running at 100% from day 1.
- ianai 7y agoCrazy idea time, but I wonder if the scale of battery packs being increased significantly couldn’t help market penetration. It’d obviously require much cheaper and better/lighter tech, but imagine if a battery pack was more close to 1MWh than dozens of KWh and could still charge in hours. It’d make sense to walk a mall for hours once a week for apartment dwellers. I know I’d at least flesh out the purchase idea if I won the lotto.
- jandrese 7y agoThe blow could be cushioned if they drop the prices enough that grid tie battery systems become economical and generate enormous orders to soak up the excess capacity.
- magduf 7y agoBatteries have uses other than EVs, with a big one being power storage. There's a big push to reduce fossil fuel usage and get more power from renewables (solar/wind), but these aren't constant sources of power, so massive banks of batteries would be very useful here for utility-scale use of renewables without needing nuclear or fossil fuel plants for a baseline.
- jersey 7y ago
- ianai 7y agoWhat are the current avenues for us regular people to invest in companies doing battery R&D? I found the lgclf stock, but that doesn’t seem right from my low knowledge level.
- jersey 7y agoInvest in Tesla? They have made several acquisitions related to battery R&D and are likely moving to producing their own batteries.
- ianai 7y agoThat’s one way, for sure. But that stock is already well known.
- pmorici 7y agoI'm not sure if it is still true but up until the past month or two Tesla was the most shorted stock in the market and you couldn't watch CNBC for 30 minutes w/o a talking head positing that it would go bankrupt before the year was out. Fast forward to today and every automaker is falling all over themselves to copy the Tesla model and Tesla has positive cash flow and $5.3 billion cash on hand.
- jfengel 7y agoNot the most shorted, but up there. It was #50 on a list back in August (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4285222-heavily-shorted-stocks-august-2019 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4285222-heavily-shorted-sto...). Today it has dropped off that list: its short ratio is still 20% but the bottom of that list is now at 24%. That 20% figure has been relatively constant. Top of the list: GameStop, followed by Bed Bath & Beyond.
- OnlineGladiator 7y agoI love how almost every company on that list has a market cap around $1 billion, and then there is Tesla with a market cap over $40 billion.
- madengr 7y agoSorry, I don't believe it. I just sold my GM stock at 10% loss. I bought it thinking they were actually going to invest in EVs and self driving. Instead they have been pumping out trucks and SUV, while killing the Volt. Screw GM; the federal government should have let them sink.
- magduf 7y agoFrom GM's point-of-view, they're probably doing the right thing. The kind of people who are interested in GM vehicles generally only want trucks and giant SUVs. It'd be nice if GM made more smaller cars, but the kind of Americans who want cars don't want GM cars; GM has ruined their reputation there for many decades now. Why buy a GM car when you can get a Japanese car that's so much better? Even when the powertrain is good (GM powertrains actually seem to be very reliable these days), GM always gives its cars terrible interiors that age poorly. Ford already saw the writing on the wall and gave up on making cars altogether. I do agree however that the government should not have bailed them out. Their suppliers would have turned to other automakers, and their assets would have been bought up by other companies and put to better use. The GM brand really isn't worth much (it might even have negative value), so bailing it out, while in the short-term interest of the people working there, was not good in the long term for the nation overall. They failed because of their own choices, and should have been allowed to die.
- bronco21016 7y agoI wonder what the market is for someone who wants something that GM does well (trucks) but in EV form factor? Don’t get me wrong I like the Tesla Model S and 3 but as someone with a family and a large pickup it’d be an adjustment to drive something as small as a Model 3. That doesn’t mean I’m not cognizant of the amount of fuel we’re unnecessarily burning. I’d love to have an EV truck and I suspect many truck owners would be interested in the same. Maybe I’m wrong though.
- hwillis 7y agoProbably quite high- many pickups are utility vehicles for contractors etc. and drive less than a couple hundred miles a day. Electric trucks might need a low range gear for extra payload torque, but they'll be much more torquey than normal trucks regardless and much more fun. The savings will be several times higher than for normal EVs since fuel consumption and driving distance are so much higher. It is a tricky technical problem though. Aerodynamics are not valued in trucks but would be required for an EV. Trucks have low beds and big engines, which is very non-ideal for batteries. Putting the batteries in the front is bad for driveability. Putting them in the normal skateboard spot raises the bed. The huge leftover space where the engine was is a big part of the look, but it's so high up that it would be hard to use as a frunk, very bad for aero, and increase the cost and size of the truck for no good reason. There are good reasons the telsa truck looks like it does- the low nose avoids the problems with normal pickups without making it look like a cabover. The cover in the back allows them to have a deeper bed even though they had to raise it a bunch to put in batteries. There aren't many concepts of what a pickup without a giant, long hood would look like.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- csours 7y agoDisclaimer: I work for GM, any opinions are my own; I have no special knowledge of this deal. Vehicle launches are generally prepared starting 5 years out with defined components. This creates a special challenge when interfacing with quickly changing technology. I don't have a publicly available source for this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've heard that for every new battery pack released, there have been serious, funded plans for 2 or 3 other pack, battery form factor, or chemistry updates. The technology for each simply moves too fast to integrate at the pack level, much less the vehicle level. As an example: the Model Year 2017 Bolt EV released with 238 miles of range, and the 2020 bumped that to 259, without changing the module or pack form factor. It's an incremental advance to be sure, but ~10% without adding modules is pretty dang good.
- microcolonel 7y ago> Vehicle launches are generally prepared starting 5 years out with defined components. FWIW, if they have a defined form factor and connector, they can sort of assume one of these chemistries and supply chains will come through.
- cogman10 7y agoThings to consider. BEVs are far simpler than regular cars. Particularly ones that aren't retrofitted on older chassis. There are simply far fewer parts to deal with. Chemistry for batteries doesn't really matter all that much when thinking about compatibility. Do you care about the chemistry of any given AA? Probably not. Batteries and battery packs are right there in the same wheelhouse. Whether a chemistry gives you 1wH or 20wH really doesn't matter if the form factor and voltages are all the same. Tesla packs are a good example of this. The chemistry has changed pretty drastically from 2012->today. Yet the pack form factor for Model S and X is the same. It only recently changed with the Model 3 (and they are still producing S and Xes).
- csours 7y ago> BEVs are far simpler than regular cars. Particularly ones that aren't retrofitted on older chassis. There are simply far fewer parts to deal with. Sure, but you've still got to figure out which parts to use and how to put them together. Automakers have over a century of calibrating ICE propulsion, so the incremental change in calibration for an ICE is very small. Calibrating EVs may be much easier, but the incremental change is huge for legacy automakers. As an aside, even Tesla cheerleaders should be happy that legacy automakers are entering the EV space. Competition is great for the consumer. > Chemistry for batteries doesn't really matter all that much when thinking about compatibility. I mean, sure, all batteries will deliver "electricity", but engineering is all about balancing conflicting requirements. You want low volume, low weight, low risk of "thermal events", high energy capacity, high discharge rate, high charge rate, high charge cycle count, etc etc etc. > Tesla packs are a good example of this. ... Yet the pack form factor for Model S and X is the same. I'd say this is a good example of the cost of engineering. On the one hand, if it ain't broke don't fix it. On the other hand, customers continue to demand better vehicles, especially as competitors enter the market.
- elihu 7y agoGood. They make some interesting batteries with unusual specs. Here's a 38 pound battery pack that can allegedly source 800 amps (briefly), with a nominal voltage of 60.8. That's crazy. You could run a car off of about three of these. It wouldn't go very far, but still. It's kind of the exact opposite of the Tesla approach, which is to use cells with low-ish power density, but to make up for it by using huge battery packs. https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=4&products_id=481 https://www.evwest.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=4&prod...