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Power United States

13 Battery Gigafactories Are Coming To the US By 2025 (electrek.co) 47

Posted by BeauHD from the locally-sourced dept.
schwit1 shares a report from Electrek: There are 13 new battery cell gigafactories coming online in the US by 2025, according to the Department of Energy. These factories are ushering in a new era of battery production in the US. [...] Now the Department of Energy has issued a report listing all the battery factory projects in the US: "In addition to electric vehicle battery plants that are already in operation in the United States, 13 additional plants have been announced and are expected to be operational within the next 5 years. Of the 13 plants that are planned, eight are joint ventures between automakers and battery manufacturers. Many of these new plants will be located in the Southeast or Midwest." The list, published by the Department of Energy last week (available in full via Electrek), includes factories from Ford, SK Innovation, General Motors and LG Energy Solution, as well as one from Toyota and Volkswagen. "It looks like they missed a few too," adds Electrek.

"For example, Tesla is currently deploying battery cell production capacity at its Gigafactory Texas in Austin. It could become one of the biggest battery cell factories in the world, with a planned capacity of over 100 GWh."
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13 Battery Gigafactories Are Coming To the US By 2025 More

13 Battery Gigafactories Are Coming To the US By 2025

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  • Is this going to create well-paying jobs for humans, or are the factories mostly just automated? In ye olden days, manufacturing jobs paid pretty well. In the modern era of globalization, not so much.

    • In Ye Olden Days, the batteries would have been pretty expensive.

    • Is this going to create well-paying jobs for humans, or are the factories mostly just automated?

      Let's hope they are automated. We have labor shortages, so any workers will have to be shifted from other productive activities and raise the cost of the batteries.

      • We have labor shortage.

        There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of employers willing to pay the going rate for labor, which is the same insanity as insisting you're experiencing a "food shortage" because you refuse to pay the market rate for food from stores with fully stocked shelves.

        • Re:Job creation (Score:4, Informative)

          by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @07:19PM (#62123701) Homepage

          There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of employers willing to pay the going rate for labor, which is the same insanity as insisting you're experiencing a "food shortage" because you refuse to pay the market rate for food from stores with fully stocked shelves.

          This is true. I have hired several people this year -each time I advertised an opening I have been inundated with applicants. Plenty of people are willing to work. You get what you pay for.

          But... prices and salaries are linked. If employees demand higher salaries, don't be surprised to find that prices of products go up.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by brad0 ( 6833410 )

            But... prices and salaries are linked. If employees demand higher salaries, don't be surprised to find that prices of products go up.

            Pricing of products have been going up for ages with most jobs having stagnant wages. About time the employees also benefit instead of the bullshit dysfunctional nonsense.

          • But... prices and salaries are linked. If employees demand higher salaries, don't be surprised to find that prices of products go up.

            It's not such a deterministic link. Prices can go up & down due to other factors, e.g. customers have more disposable income, reduction in competition, higher or lower perceived value. Many savings that are made in production costs simply go into profits. After all, that's what the shareholders want, isn't it? If labour costs go up then profits will go down, & that's very, very bad for the CEO, & s/he'll have to answer to the shareholders for letting that happen.

            • Yes -there are reasons prices may go up not related to cost of labor.

              But... labor is my single largest expense in running my business. When I pay people more, prices of goods I sell go up. It is a cycle.

          • Re:Job creation (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @10:23PM (#62124101)

            I have hired several people this year -each time I advertised an opening I have been inundated with applicants.

            How many of them were sitting at home before you hired them? How many did you hire away for another company?

            If higher wages just cause people to jump from one job to another, that is not evidence that there is no labor shortage.

            • In my case, I am hiring people part time, and at low wages. These are people who already have a job, or who are in school, or retired. It is just supplemental income. I do not have enough work to offer to draw them away from other work.

        • There is no labor shortage. There is a shortage of employers willing to pay the going rate for labor

          That is only true at the bottom of the market, where higher wages pull people into the labor force, and the bottom is indeed where wages are rising the fastest. In my city, McDonald's is paying $18/hr to new employees.

          For skilled labor, it is much less true. There is no pool of software developers sitting at home waiting for salaries to rise. Salaries are rising, but mostly pulling devs from one employer to another.

          70% of salary increases are passed on as higher prices. So a $100 raise for everyone mean

        • Depends on where you live. For example in the UK, they voted to kick out those immigrants and foreigners from taking their jobs. Well they have plenty of jobs right now for loyal British citizens. Surprisingly none of those patriotic Brexiteers want to take those low paying and menial jobs they did not want the foreigners to have. Industries like agriculture are double hit as they do not have enough workers for harvests and not enough truck drivers to deliver the food even if they could harvest them. But th

          • The shame is: many of those foreigners were Polish.
            After Germany overran Poland and kicked the Britts out of Duenkirken/Duenkirch, lots of Polish soldiers and scientists fled to UK. They helped to crack the Enigma and saved UK's ass from Germany.
            And now you see what they get back as thanks: especially from the last still living UK veterans who voted pro Brexit.
            Unthankful brats.

      • Let's hope they are automated. We have labor shortages

        In some industries perhaps. In general though we have slave labor shortages. And that's not a thing we should be demanding, so it's not a thing we should be supplying either. If you pay a living wage you can generally find employees. If you pay a fair wage you can generally find skilled ones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrKaos ( 858439 )

      In ye olden days, manufacturing jobs paid pretty well. In the modern era of globalization, not so much.

      That's a compact set of observations you got there. It tied together a few things I've been considering.

      In "ye olden days" they also employed children to operate industrial machinery because if they got caught in the machines their bones were soft enough to allow the machine to keep running. Production did not have to be stopped just because a child was caught in the machines.

      Of course sometimes the child didn't die and they were then extracted from the machines at the end of the day, in the meantim

    • Rather than torch a Tesla rather than pay a grievously high cost new dealer battery pack, we need to legislate battery pack repair, and this might even need right of repair. Thankfully there is a few battery pack repair places - but nowhere near enough. Repairing and replacing defective cells IS possible. Plenty of computer charging and re-balancing tech about. These will create jobs and reduce waste. The real problem is the zillions of screws and washers make it labor intensive. The second good reason

    • Is this going to create "well-paying jobs for humans"?

      Let's hope not.

      Let's hope they are as automated as possible, thereby helping reduce the cost of living, thereby raising the standard of living for ALL people, minimizing workplace accidents and injuries, and freeing up currently very scarce labor for other, more productive and valuable occupations.

    • In ye olden days, manufacturing jobs paid pretty well. In the modern era of globalization, not so much.
      They still do.
      You only need to stay on the level of the automation.

      My grandfather worked for Kuehnle Kopp und Kausch, making turbo chargers. He was a worker amoung others in an roughly 100 men troop.

      So they started introduce more advanced engine lathe. He was the first to ask: how does it work, how can I get a course?

      A few years later he was supervising a couple of such machines and the few crew. Needless

  • Will the Democrats (and the green lobby) acquiesce and open up domestic mining to feed all these plants with the needed raw materials? Building domestic factories does nothing if they don't have the domestic supply chain.

    • Will the Democrats (and the green lobby) acquiesce and open up domestic mining

      Lithium production does not require mines. We can produce lithium carbonate from surface salt and brine. We can extract Li2CO3 from evaporation ponds. Lithium can be co-produced with the desalination of seawater.

      The Greenies are not an obstacle.

      Building domestic factories does nothing if they don't have the domestic supply chain.

      Nonsense. Li2CO3 is a globally traded commodity, and domestic factories can use lithium from anywhere.

    • Will the Democrats (and the green lobby) acquiesce and open up domestic mining to feed all these plants with the needed raw materials?

      No, the Republicans will do it when Biden loses the next election. And they will make sure the pork goes to their home states, and their pockets.

      Building domestic factories does nothing if they don't have the domestic supply chain.

      What? That's bananas. Batteries don't care where the materials come from.

  • Satisfactory (Score:4, Funny)

    by pr0t0 ( 216378 ) on Tuesday December 28, 2021 @07:09PM (#62123667)

    I'm making a ton of batteries for the drone ports on the rooftop of my large factory. I'm over producing, so I'd be happy to lend a hand if needed.

  • I'm still not sure why 'battery factory' turned into 'gigafactory'. Are ANY battery factories gigafactories? Or only ones of a certain size? I'm baffled as to why this term even caught on, when it isn't even clear what it means.

    • I'm baffled as to why this term even caught on, when it isn't even clear what it means.

      Because Elon willed it so.

    • Elon Musk coined the term, he was referring to a factory that can build more than 1 GWh of battery capacity per year.
      His factory in Nevada reached 18 GWh/year in 2018.

  • I have to question the sanity of anyone building major new operations anywhere in the midwest or eastern U.S.. Have they not payed any attention to what's happening with extreme weather events in those places? How many weeks a year can they afford to have their operations stalled due to weather? Just build it in AZ or NV and keep things running 24/7/365. Duh...

  • Is a Gigafactory really 1,000,000 times bigger than a factory?

  • Yes, we are heading toward cleaner energy options and at the same time helping to destroy the Earth by adding more carbon. 1) The building of these plants is great, but will add carbon to the atmosphere without any offset.2) The Mining of the necessary minerals is still being done by fossil fuels, so there is no offset there either.

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