Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, said he will detail his plan this week to build a large factory that produces electric vehicle batteries --
So big, he called it the Gigabit factory ".
"Compared to the Tesla swoopy electric limousine, the lithium
The ion battery pack doesn't sound sexy.
But Tesla clearly believes the plant is critical to its strategy.
Reason: stable supply.
Tesla will prove that it needs its own source of battery packs.
It makes no secret that by trading with Panasonic, it can't get enough batteries to meet the demand for S-type electric cars.
The company said the current shortage will continue until the first half of this year.
Other sources of income.
The factory can provide batteries for other car manufacturers and other uses.
Musk, also chairman of SolarCity, announced plans to sell Tesla battery packs to the company for emergency backup power storage. Future models.
Tesla has developed a more mainstream electric vehicle in a few years.
But it needs to significantly reduce battery costs and increase supply to create a large scalemarket vehicle.
Musk told analysts last week that he expected "more than one partner for the plant" and noted that Panasonic is already a major battery supplier for Tesla.
But just a few days before he made the comments, reports that Musk's meeting with Apple last year sparked speculation about whether the computer giant will find partners for battery demand.
Musk assured analysts that the plant and its place of work would "provide a lot of power from renewable energy, wind and solar," which seems to point to a desert location in the West.
Some people question the need for more batteries. Manufacturing capacity.
A 2102 study by Roland Berger, a consulting firm, found that large enterprises had overcapacityformat lithium-
In the ion battery market, some big manufacturers have gone through bankruptcy restructuring.
But Tesla's battery pack design is different from most other manufacturers, and sales of electric vehicles have also increased.
Number of plugs-
According to the electric vehicle transport association, car sales almost doubled last year to 96,702 vehicles.
Analysts are also weighing the impact of Tesla.
Efraim Levy, equity analyst at S & P Capital IQ, worries about Tesla-
Owned factories will lock automakers in a single battery type and it will be difficult to turn if there is a more promising technology.
But Brian Johnson, an analyst at Barclays, pointed out that by generating new revenue for Tesla to sell batteries to other companies, the construction costs of the plant may be offset.