Tesla Used A Third of All Electric-Car Batteries Last Year

cartechboy writes "We've heard about Tesla building this new gigafactory to produce battery packs for its electric cars. Heck, the company's current bottleneck is its ability to get battery packs for its electric cars. In fact, last year Tesla used a bit more than one-third of the auto industry's electric-car batteries, and that was with only selling 22,477 cars last year. Tesla is expanding its model lineup as quickly as possible with the introduction of the Model X crossover next year and a compact sports sedan in 2017. With the rapid expansion of its vehicle line, Tesla is going to need a crazy amount of battery packs, and quickly. Thus, the Silicon Valley upstart is building the gigafactory to engineer and produce battery packs in much larger quantities. If Tesla can remove the battery production bottle neck it's currently facing, the only question left will be market acceptance of a mainstream electric car."

YGTBFKM

[Overzeetop]

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

"Right now, the ONLY thing that is preventing me from getting a Tesla is that I have to travel longer than 500 miles a few times a year, and renting a car for a week, three times a year is too expensive an option."

Renting a car for $500/pop three times a year is "too expensive" for a guy who has no problem dropping $90,000 on a car? I could see that the inconvenience might be a reason, but cost? We rented a mini-van a couple times a year for our family vacations because the sedan wasn't big enough. NBD.

Re:Not all Lithiums the same

[Zeromous]

>literally be a bomb on wheels

No it is neither literally, nor figuratively a bomb on wheels. It will catch fire though, with plenty of warning and safety features, if punctured. As I understand if you were in the Tesla when it caught fire in the battery packs, you probably wouldn't burn to death.

Just Like Digital Cameras 20 Years Ago

[onkelonkel]

This whole discussion on electric cars reminds me of digital cameras when they first came out. People act as if no technology ever improved over time. The first cameras were about 320 x 240 or so. Film purists were laughing. In order to get the same resolution as 35 mm film, you would need 5 MEGAPIXELS!!! which considering cameras were barely .1 Megapixels seemed purely ridiculous. No way is digital going to replace film! Of course the camera resolution doubled year after year and now digital cameras are ubiquitous and film is almost extinct.

EV batteries will get cheaper and more powerful over time. Range will go up, vehicle prices will go down. Economies of scale and technological progress will see to that. As they get cheaper and better, they will make more sense to more people. People who might not buy a $40k car with a 120 mile range may well buy a $25k car with a 200 mile range.