The gamble on Tesla’s gigafactory in the Nevada desert - battery power storage

RENO —
For months, Randy Walden sold 30-
Manufacturing week course at Reno kee Community College, located at Renault warehouse campus-
Tahoe International Airport
He called the employment preparation agency, looked for students, and inserted classes on the school's website.
Two people signed up.
It took him four more weeks to get enough courage.
"I am preparing to cancel it," he said . ".
On September, electric vehicle maker Tesla announced that it would build the world's largest battery plant outside Reno, Nevada.
It and its partner Panasonic
This will make the lithium battery that Tesla will bundle into the battery pack to run the car-
6,500 employees will be employed.
The phone poured into the grass of traki.
The first category grew to 14 people.
There are 45 in the second, nearly 400.
Waiting list.
For Tesla and Nevada, success will depend on the ability to quickly send more skilled staff.
Tesla's deal is $1.
3 billion the incentive package to set up the plant set off a frenzy to prepare the Nevada people, whose taxes are now subsidized at a rate of $190,000 per position.
Tesla's deal is one of the highest awards for American economic development in nearly a decade.
A member of parliament told Reuters that this is at least the "biggest thing" since the Hoover Dam in Nevada ". ” Gov.
Brian SandovalR)
State councillors expect it to create 20,000 jobs and $100 billion for states suffering from recession for more than 20 years.
But this agreement also comes at a time when economists and scholars question the wisdom of being bigger --
Ticket betting for a single company.
Tesla founder Elon Musk said that despite the promise of employment and growth, the company was not likely to make a profit until 2020, when he hoped to sell 500,000 cars a year.
Tesla reported last week that sales reached a record 10,030 units in the first quarter.
Trendy electric car manufacturers in the United States match one of the best cities
As we all know, if Northern Nevada is already a hotbed of engineering or advanced manufacturing, it will not be so obvious to the beaten casino. It is not.
According to a report from the 2014 Brookings Institution, Nevada ranks last in the percentage of labor in the science, technology, engineering, and math professions.
Only 15% of workers work in these areas, compared to 21% in the country.
"Our biggest concern is the capacity," said Jim new, president of traki Meadows, who visited Tesla's car factory in Fremont, California twice.
Understand its needs better.
By the fall, the school plans to renovate the warehouse to expand capacity, open on Saturday and allow students to come in anytime between 7. m. and 9 p. m.
"What we're talking about is getting thousands of people ready every semester, usually 50," New said . ".
Renault's biography is one of prosperity and depression: Silver
Mining in the 1850 s, half divorced
After this century, casinos began in the 1930 s, and during the housing bubble, housing was driven by cheap land and easy mortgages.
The housing crisis and recession have dragged Nevada to a very low level, leading to an unemployment rate of 13.
The evening of 2010 was 7%, 4 points higher than the national average.
It remains the highest unemployment rate in any state as of January, at 7. 1 percent.
The arrival of the Darling stock market has left locals optimistic that Renault may be a Silicon Valley outpost anchored by Lake Tahoe and the Burning Man festival.
The median price of a single-
Family home is one-
Third in the Gulf.
There is more than 300 days of sunshine here, and locals brag about themselves on the nearby slopes 30 minutes after work. Apple co-
Founder Steve Wozniak recently tweeted that he came to Renault through the mountains --
At Tesla, of course.
After fierce competition in California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, Nevada secured a gigabit factory deal, all costing hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives.
It successfully offers 980 acres of rock, barren land
Donated by private landowners
Get lithium deposits, tax breaks, and proximity to Tesla's California auto assembly plant.
When Tesla chose Nevada as its factory, its shares soared to more than $280 a share.
Twelve years after Musk was founded, the company has a market capitalization of about $24 billion.
It's not the first tech company to land here, it's the other one.
Most companies have
Office business with a much smaller number of employees.
Apple's data is large and Microsoft's operations center is nearby.
On January, Switch, based in Las Vegas, announced that it would build a $1 billion data center.
Tesla is largely committed to production work in Nevada, not high.
Musk calls it a "software company, just like a hardware company.
2020 Musk said he hopes to produce 35 gigawatts of battery power each year, a catalyst for bringing his car to the mass market. It seems a far-
Off target: in 2014, the company sold about 18,750 Model S sports cars at a price of about $70,000.
Tesla says the batteries will help reduce the cost of the future Model 3 to about $35,000.
No one really knows how big the new, competitive market for electric cars will be.
And other auto giants.
Ford, Nissan, GM
Progress is being made.
To ensure that the Neva people find jobs and get Tesla the people it needs, there is a need for extensive cooperation between the company, the school and the government.
Renault's stakeholders are painfully aware of how close the California border is, and about 250 miles along the interstate crossing Lake Tahoe National Forest, for engineers or managers considering a weekly commute.
"I think it's possible that there will be commuter workers," said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
A report on the state's labor force was written.
"If there is no skill, then the quality of the battery product will not be there, which will make things more complicated for Tesla and Nevada.
"One challenge for some educators is to determine what kind of workers the company needs and when they are needed.
In its subsidy application, Tesla outlined 6,500 jobs created over the past eight years, including 4,550 production assistants, 460 equipment technicians, 360 quality technicians and 200 material handlers,
It also sets out 930 jobs for engineers and senior staff with an average income of $41.
$83 per hour, $80,000 per year.
Since then, the dean of traki Meadows has obtained the required positions and a more specific breakdown of qualifications.
The work and description listed include paint robot technicians (
Requirements: "expert in robot programming.
Good computer skills. ”)
Inventory Control Manager (
"The change control process must be understood. ”).
Officials also said they expected Tesla to hire about 300 interns, and the students interviewed said they believed in the jobs needed to work at the Fremont plant before returning to Renault to open a factory.
Taylor Glasgow, 23, an engineering student at the University of Nevada in Reno, said he was an operation intern during the interview to help expand the Fremont plant.
This fall, the school will launch a minor course in battery science.
"They walked too fast," he said . "
"I think everyone wants to start with them.
"At the UNR, Tesla held a career fair with more than 200 people queuing up with resumes in their hands.
"This is a three.
Wait five hours.
Rand Kennedy, a 24-year-old engineering student, said.
Like many software companies, Tesla is keeping secrets.
The public can only watch the construction of Geely's factory itself by driving along steep rocky trails and passing wild horses and wind rolling grass on the road.
The perimeter has put up a soil embankment, limiting the View, said Stan Thomas, executive vice president of the West Nevada Economic Development Bureau, who expects Tesla to acquire the surrounding Ridge.
"They will buy the mountains around so they can't see it," he said . ".
Officials at Tesla and Panasonic declined to discuss recruitment or staff preparation at Geely's plant.
"Now, we are focusing on building a gigabit plant," said spokesman Khobi Brooklyn . ".
"We are building in stages and working with many partners in the construction work.
Because we are built in stages, we will constantly adjust resources according to the scope of work at that time.
"Tesla's agreement with the state requires it to make two contributions to education --
University of Nevada, worth $1 million-
Related research and $37.
Improve K-500 million12 education.
But some people think the company's secrecy is a barrier to job preparation.
Ann Silver, executive director of JOIN, a non-profit organization for employment training funded by the Department of Labor, said that despite the visit of the Panasonic representative, she has been unable to obtain from the company the information she needs about job descriptions and skills.
"I don't want my client to be the ninth to 10,000 people at the job fair, from North Dakota to Utah to Arizona, and everyone is standing in front of them, she said. Silver, a 25-
Senior people at the New York company's human resources say every company should know what kind of people they need, at least six months later.
"I know priority should be given, but what does that mean if we don't get training and ready in advance," she said . ".
"How can it be too early to train personnel for these jobs?
Ray Bacon, executive director of the Nevada Manufacturers Association, said the state would need several years to prepare for Tesla's job.
"We don't have this technical experience right now," he said . ".
"No one can argue that we did it.
If they do, they are smoking.
So it takes some time to keep up.
Another problem is the intruder. “Forty-
9% of the work is likely to flow to California people, so for us, California smells like a rose, "said Greg Le Roy, executive director of advocacy group Good jobs First.
"They will get a lot of benefits without paying any price.
Steve Hill, who negotiated the deal for Sandoval, said that if Tesla's number of employees was lower than the agreed total or did not invest $3, the state had protected itself.
It has promised 5 billion.
Hill said that these work will be audited every quarter, and if at least half of the employees are not from Nevada, all subsidies have been canceled, Tesla will need to repay any benefits received with interest.
Tesla said in its first audit that it had hired 455 people to work in construction, 80% of them from Nevada. “The $3.
"5 billion of the investment and the Nevada people, 50 percent years old, are light switches," Hill said . ".
"They either continue or leave.
If they go, it's over.
If Tesla doesn't pass, Hill says, he has another hurdle: lithium batteries built in northern Nevada can be packaged into other electronics and equipment.
"People tend to forget that the demand for batteries is more about renewable energy than about Tesla's electric vehicles," Hill said . ".
"Of course we support Tesla and hope that will work.
But the opportunities for utility sales and distributed generation storage are indeed much larger than Tesla's needs, at least in the next five or ten years.
There are some arguments about this.
Richard Chamberlain, Boston Chief Technology Officer
Global supplier of lithium-
The ion battery product says Panasonic's "18650" battery may "have the potential to be used in many different applications ".
"Other experts believe that lithium batteries are already in excess and that the market for Panasonic batteries is drying up as laptop and tablet designs develop.
In any case, local officials have begun to believe that Tesla will do more than just make batteries.
Mike kazmilsky, chairman of the Western Nevada Economic Development Bureau, said he had seen a series of companies after Musk arrived at Renault.
"Who would want to say they have Renault's address before year 45? ” he said.
In a manufacturing lab in Truckee, half
More than a dozen students were repairing the machine the last afternoon.
John renez, 45year-
The old man who owns a beer bar in a local shopping center was replaced by a Cheesecake Factory.
After selling something on eBay for a while, Jessica Irwin, 31, decided to switch to manufacturing.
And Terrence Nearn, who has just celebrated his 50 th birthday, read about the Tesla factory in a newspaper in Orlando.
Before starting the course, he flew to Reno and moved in with his family.
"There are a lot of job opportunities here," Nearn said . ".
"But what really caught me was Tesla. e. ”