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Hundreds Speak Against Rollback Of Clean Car Standards At Public Hearings

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Published on October 17th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Hundreds Speak Against Rollback Of Clean Car Standards At Public Hearings

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October 17th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

The US DOT and EPA recently held three days of hearings in Fresno, Dearborn, and Pittsburgh on the Trump administration’s proposal to reverse existing federal fuel efficiency and emissions standards, and members of the public had a chance to comment.

The hazardous effects of tailpipe emissions are concerning (Image: Charged)

Hundreds of people, including physicians and health advocates, former EPA officials and technology entrepreneurs, environmental advocates and local officials, testified against the plan, vastly outnumbering the handful that came out in support. Even representatives of automakers and the aluminum industry opposed the effort to water down the standards.

A former EPA analyst who spent years working on emissions policy testified that the technical analysis for this proposal was the “most biased and dishonest” he had witnessed in his 40-year career at the agency.

The DOT’s own Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) concluded: “The Proposed Action [the Trump administration’s rollback proposal] and alternatives are projected to result in an increase in energy consumption, an increase in most criteria pollutant emissions…Overall US health impacts associated with air quality (mortality, asthma, bronchitis, emergency room visits, and work-loss days) are anticipated to increase across the Proposed Action.”

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s David Pettit pointed out several shortcomings of the DOT’s DEIS at the Fresno hearing. “The alternatives analysis looks only at reductions in the CAFE standards, not increases,” he said. “None of these alternatives increases fuel economy with respect to the no action alternative, none conserves energy, and none represents maximum feasible CAFE standards. These are fundamental errors. The DEIS is fundamentally flawed and needs to be withdrawn.”

Rolling back clean car and fuel economy standards means more gasoline fill-ups for ICE vehicle owners (Image: Natural Resources Defense Council)

According to the NRDC’s Luke Tonachel, who testified in Dearborn this week, adopting the proposal would mean fewer innovative jobs, more smog, soot and carbon pollution, and higher costs for drivers filling up at the pump. The agencies’ own analysis shows that halting progress on emissions will mean 60,000 fewer jobs, an outcome that would be especially bad for Michigan, which is home to 69,593 jobs in 224 facilities that make materials or components for more fuel-efficient cars.

The agencies also admit that the plan will mean more carbon pollution. If the plan is adopted, an additional 73 billion gallons of gasoline will be consumed by the vehicles directly regulated under the proposal – an additional cost of $170 billion dollars for American drivers.

The administration’s argument that halting the pollution and mileage standards would save lives by reducing highway deaths was undercut by the EPA’s own analysts, who showed the flaws in its assumptions.

A spokesman for an aluminum industry trade group testified that the administration’s claim that automotive lightweighting would lead to more highway fatalities is false. “Numerous flawed assumptions in the draft rule are misleading and overstate potential unfavorable impacts on safety,” said Mario Greco, Chairman of the the Aluminum Transportation Group. “Automakers are not reducing the weight of small cars, but instead are prioritizing weight reductions where it offers the most promise to boost fuel economy and reduce emissions – their larger, heavier cars and trucks.”

Sources: Natural Resources Defense Council, Aluminum Transportation Group

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Tesla Pushes To Improve Service Center Coverage Density As Model 3 Deliveries Climb #ElonTweets

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Published on October 17th, 2018 |

by Kyle Field

Tesla Pushes To Improve Service Center Coverage Density As Model 3 Deliveries Climb #ElonTweets

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October 17th, 2018 by Kyle Field

Tesla CEO @ElonMusk took to Twitter to admit that Tesla had found some gaps in its global service center coverage and is now hard at work to improve its coverage over the next 3–6 months.

Specifically, Elon shared that Tesla would push to ensure full coverage of North America with its service centers over the next 3–6 months. Looking ahead, he shared that Tesla would be working to ensure similar levels of coverage in all countries where Tesla has operations by the end of 2019.

The news comes on the heels of Tesla’s successful ramp up of production and deliveries of the Model 3 which saw tens of thousands of Teslas sent out into geographies that hadn’t seen much action in the past. The latest wave of woes for Tesla started when its Model 3 went into production in June of 2017 and was followed by a full year of production hell.

Tesla and Elon pulled out all the stops to reach the target production rate of 5,000 Model 3s per week — and they did. The herculean effort required flying in new production lines from Germany, building a new general assembly line in a “tent” in the back lot of Tesla’s Fremont factory, and calling all hands on deck to put the hurt on the production lines and force them to comply with the will of Elon.

Emerging from the darkness, Tesla’s production troubles quickly morphed into birthing pains as Tesla’s delivery teams across the US choked on the 3× increase in deliveries. Deliveries of the Model 3 are spread across a distributed network of stores spanning the United States, making it difficult to quickly deploy improvements and standards.

Just the same, Tesla calmed the storm over the course of a couple of weeks as minor production issues and the overblown panel gap issues were tuned out on the production lines. In parallel, delivery teams improved their pre-delivery check processes and squeezed out most of the delivery issues.

The look at service centers is a look at the inevitable flow of Tesla’s vehicles that will either be forced in for service after an accident or require service for something that’s just not quite right in the car. That can be something as small as replacing a door handle all the way on up to the replacement of a full drive unit.

The flow of Model 3s out into the wild will result in a similar spike in requests for service at Tesla’s service centers, though the tail of requests will lag behind deliveries, as accidents and some other service requests don’t happen on a schedule.

Elon Musk and the team at Tesla started working on service center service times a few weeks back, as soon as Model 3 customers started voicing complaints of lengthy service times, with waits of several months for repairs being the norm. As part of the push, Tesla brought body shop work in-house at a few key locations in an attempt to streamline the repair process for its vehicles.

Early reports on the new service were positive, with some customers getting their repaired vehicles back in just a few hours. Same day turnaround is still far from the norm, but it showed that Tesla was working towards solutions and had some results to show for its early efforts.

Today’s tweets from Elon confirm that there is still work to do just to achieve the critical mass of service centers that would be required to get Tesla’s cars serviced. Beyond the base coverage, there is still work to do to ensure that all of its service center personnel are sufficiently trained and that the centers have the parts needed to get its vehicles repaired in a reasonable amount of time.

Tesla has pushed the envelope in just about every piece of its business, and service is no exception, as it has historically utilized its service teams to come pick up vehicles for service, leaving a loaner vehicle with the owner. Doing this drastically reduces the amount of effort required from the owner and from personal experience, it makes service all but a non-issue.

That wasn’t good enough so Tesla kept on innovating, deploying a roaming network of repair personnel, which it calls Rangers, that were trained and equipped to fix just about any issue on a Tesla that didn’t require a lift. That was estimated to be around 80% of all repairs and Tesla delivered in spades.

I utilized Tesla’s Ranger service to have the door handles on our Model S replaced. The service went off without a hitch and was actually a great experience. Tesla had already committed to doubling its mobile service fleet by the end of this year and the renewed focus on service center coverage is surely a part of its efforts to ensure timely and efficient service for all of its customers.

With every new day, there comes a new challenge. Today, it’s service center coverage; tomorrow, the moon!! Okay, so maybe Mars is the target, but the moon sounded better.

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About the Author

Kyle Field I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. TSLA investor.

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Breaking News — Tesla Seals The Deal For Gigafactory 3 In China

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Published on October 17th, 2018 |

by Steve Hanley

Breaking News — Tesla Seals The Deal For Gigafactory 3 In China

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October 17th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

It’s official. Tesla has acquired just under 1300 acres of land in the Shanghai Lingang Equipment Industrial Zone for its Gigafactory 3. The factory is expected to cover about 1200 of those acres. The official signing ceremony for the transfer of land to Tesla took place in China on October 17, today.

Tesla is pushing hard to get the Gigafactory 3 project moving forward. Thanks to the tit for tat trade war initiated by the current US president and his crack team of economic advisers, Tesla cars manufactured in America now must pay an import tariff of 40%, making it hard for them to compete against locally produced automobiles. Cars built in the new factory outside Shanghai will be exempt from that tariff.

Tesla plans to be a major force in the Chinese new car market, especially as China institutes its latest EV policy starting January 1, 2019. After that date, every manufacturer building cars in the country will be required to produce a certain percentage of electric cars, known locally as new energy vehicles. Battery electric cars will get the most credits under the system. Plug-in hybrids will get a smaller credits.

Companies who wish to continue building cars with gasoline or diesel engines will be required to buy credits in order to do so. That will raise the selling price of those cars, making new energy vehicles more competitive in the marketplace.

Last month, Tesla began advertising numerous jobs for construction workers to help build the new factory, which is expected to have a capacity of 500,000 vehicles a year. Tesla expects the factory to begin producing cars in fewer than 2 years time — an incredibly short ramp up from breaking ground on the factory to getting cars rolling off the assembly line and into the hands of customers. But when have short timelines ever been a problem for Tesla?

It reportedly has increased the funding committed to the Gigafactory 3 project to $681 million. And as Vincent indicates on Twitter, local banks in the Shanghai area are actively engaged in lining up the additional funding needed to build GF3.

With the biggest new car market in the world, China is an important market for Tesla. Just how important is indicated by the fact that it is moving forward aggressively with plans for a Chinese factory before committing to a factory in Europe. Check out this video from the World Economic Forum on the rosy prospects for electric cars in China:

Check out more Tesla China news if this isn’t enough for you.

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Steve Hanley Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Rhode Island and anywhere else the Singularity may take him. His muse is Charles Kuralt — “I see the road ahead is turning. I wonder what's around the bend?”

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Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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Published on October 16th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Fixing Salvaged Teslas, The Ingineer Way

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October 16th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

All automobiles are supported by an ecosystem of services, which traditionally includes dealerships, repair shops, and fueling stations. One of the ways Tesla has redefined the auto industry is by vertically integrating these services. You can buy a vehicle directly from Tesla, have it serviced at a Tesla service center, and charge it at a Tesla Supercharger. On the whole, most customers seem to be happy with this arrangement, but some believe that there is an unmet need for independent repair shops, and a community of DIY Tesla repair techs has developed. Because Tesla doesn’t support their activities, there’s an underground, hacker vibe to the scene.

A totaled Tesla Model 3 that Phil Sadow plans to repair (Image: InsideEVs via Ingineerix)

A recent Motherboard documentary told the story of Rich Benoit, aka the Dr. Frankenstein of Teslas, who salvages Tesla parts and uses them to repair cars damaged in crashes, fires, and floods.

Another guerrilla repairman is Phil Sadow, aka Ingineer, an electrical engineer who has been rebuilding and selling salvaged Teslas for three years. A recent article in Fast Company tells us how Sadow also teaches fellow enthusiasts to develop their repair skills. The intrepid Ingineer says he’s participated in almost 400 Tesla refurbishment projects.

According to Sadow, Tesla really doesn’t want cars that have been in serious accidents back on the road, and the company has taken steps to make it almost impossible to repair them. “When a car is totaled,” he says, “they deny parts, [and] they don’t in any way give service information, the service tools like all the electronics and computer stuff needed to work on the cars … except where they’re required to by law. And even then they don’t do that.”

Sadow understands the reason for this policy: given the media hunger for anti-Tesla articles, any incident involving a repaired Tesla would surely be blown out of proportion by the press. “Tesla’s trying to protect their stock price and their mission by eliminating some of this,” he says. “If I buy a salvage car and fix it improperly and it kills someone or burns a house down … it’s not going to be ‘Man fixes Tesla improperly and hurts someone.’ It’s going to be ‘Tesla kills someone.’”

A look at the Tesla Model 3 drive unit (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow is obviously a big fan of Tesla’s mission, but he fears that making it difficult to repair damaged vehicles is a short-sighted policy, because the lack of a market for salvaged Teslas will eventually lead to expensive insurance premiums.

Normally, when a vehicle is totaled, it’s sold at an insurance auction to a shop that either repairs it and puts it back on the road, or sells it for parts. This healthy secondary market allows insurance companies to recoup a substantial part of what they have to pay to replace a “totaled” vehicle. However, because of Tesla’s policies, Sadow says, the market for salvaged vehicles is thin, so auto insurers tend to lose a lot of money on totaled Teslas. “The insurance underwriters figured it out,” he says. “‘Oh, it’s a Tesla, we’re going to eat our lunch on these.’ So they start raising premiums. A lot of insurers consider the Model S and the Model X exotics, like a Ferrari. For that reason, they’re losing their shirt on even relatively minor accidents.”

In the US, only Massachusetts has a “right to repair” law, which requires auto dealerships to make parts and service manuals available to independent repair shops. According to Sadow, even in Massachusetts, Tesla has so far refused to release service information for Model 3. (Tesla told Fast Company the same thing they told Motherboard: owners are free to do whatever they want to their cars, and the company will inspect salvaged vehicles for a fee to assess what repairs are needed.)

A look at the Tesla Model 3 battery pack (YouTube: Ingineerix)

Sadow’s EV-recycling career began in 2015 when he bought a Model S that had been through the Houston flood. He and his girlfriend took the car apart, repaired the damaged electronics, gave it a thorough cleaning and got it back on the road. Soon he partnered with a body shop owner in Minneapolis and the two began regularly buying, repairing, and reselling salvaged Teslas.

Nowadays, Sadow spends more time teaching others to resurrect Teslas than fixing them himself. As more Model 3s hit the roads, more damaged vehicles will be showing up at insurance auctions. “There will be people that want to know how to work on them,” he says, “and that’s basically my full-time job now — helping other people work on these cars.”

Sadow has created his own answer to Tesla’s mobile app, which offers his car-fixing customers access to information such as battery voltages and diagnostic codes. Getting into Tesla’s software required gaining root access — something like jailbreaking a phone. It took Sadow about four months to figure out how to reverse-engineer Model S’s systems, but it took him only three weeks to get the same access to Model 3, as many of the new car’s systems were based on the older model. Tesla hasn’t tried to stop him, but it does employ some software counter-measures to limit what owners of damaged cars can do. When Tesla becomes aware that a particular vehicle has been in a catastrophic accident, it “blacklists” it, meaning that it will refuse to sell the owner any parts.

A look at the Tesla Model 3 cooling system (YouTube: Ingineerix)

That’s not a problem for Sadow and his fellow renegade rebuilders, because salvaged parts are plentiful and cheap. Sadow is proud of the fact that his revenant Teslas have been problem-free, and hopes that, as long as that remains the case, the company will leave him alone and let him get on with his business. “As long as it keeps them out of the news,” he says, “and as long as they don’t see one of the cars I helped repair burn down or burn down someone’s house or neighborhood, then they’re completely don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Sources: Fast Company, Ingineerix

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Conflicted German Automakers Struggle With EV Transition

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Published on October 13th, 2018 |

by Guest Contributor

Conflicted German Automakers Struggle With EV Transition

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October 13th, 2018 by Guest Contributor

Originally published on EVANNEX.
By Charles Morris

It’s no secret that legacy automakers are making the transition to electric vehicles only reluctantly, in response to regulatory pressure from governments and to competitive pressure from Tesla. Contrary to what many seem to believe, Big Auto’s reluctance to embrace EVs is not merely the usual corporate fear of the future, nor is it the result of any oil industry-fueled conspiracy (as far as we know). It’s a simple matter of money — there are good reasons to believe that electrification will take a major bite out of industry profits, as BMW and Daimler execs recently acknowledged.

German automakers remain conflicted about how to transition factory production lines from gas-powered cars to EVs (Image: Werner Budding)

Now Volkswagen has warned that its stated plan to offer an electrified version of each of its models will cost more than it estimated. VW previously predicted that the coming shift to battery power would cost some €20 billion ($23 billion). CEO Herbert Diess, in an interview published in VW’s internal newsletter, indicated that this figure was too low, but didn’t offer a new estimate. “The burden for our company, such as the cost of bringing to market electric cars, will be higher than expected,” Diess says. “This is particularly so since some of our competitors have been making more progress.” (Hmm, who would that be?)

A recent article in the Financial Times discussed the challenges legacy carmakers are facing. Whereas industry disruptor Tesla started from a blank slate to design its vehicles and has “bet the company” on EVs, incumbent OEMs can’t go down that road — the risks are too high. Analysts have warned that a substantial number of Germany’s 800,000 auto industry jobs could disappear along with the internal combustion engine.

FT points out that VW, BMW, and Daimler have each earmarked billions of euros for electric technology, but are taking different approaches — some automakers hope to build EVs using the same architecture as legacy vehicles, whereas others intend to introduce new platforms. The choice of strategy “will re-sort the carmakers in profitability,” says Christian Senger, head of the VW’s e-mobility line. “Those who [take] the hardest road will be more successful than the others.”

Germany protects its car industry as EU goes for just 15% cut in CO2 car emissions by 2025 (Source:Transport & Environment / Image: Plugin Cars)

Volkswagen is leveraging its scale advantage — earlier this year, it awarded €20 billion worth of contracts for battery supplies as part of a plan to introduce 50 pure EVs by 2025. This represents an about-face from VW’s previous strategy — the e-Golf and e-Up, introduced in 2013, were basically existing models stuffed with batteries.

“To make it a fully fledged electric car, you need to start with a battery pack between the wheels and then you build up the car,” Herbert Diess, CEO of the VW Group, told the FT. “Then you have an effective battery system, the range, and you get a lot of freedom for the design of the car, to make more interior space with the same footprint.” (His words echo what Tesla designer Von Holzhausen said back in 2011.)

The first VW model designed this way, the ID Neo, is to come out late next year, the first of several models belonging to the ID electric sub-brand. Although recent reports suggest the program could be delayed.

VW’s ID concept car appears to be another unconventional design approach typically relegated to Big Auto’s electric car efforts (Image: Charged)

BMW seems to be taking the opposite tack, touting the advantages of “flexible architecture” that can accommodate fossil, hybrid or electric powertrains. BMW plans to offer all of its models with a choice of powertrain starting in 2021. “We can’t afford having two factories standing still,” says CEO Harald Krueger. “With a flexible approach, you can always manage the capacity of your plants. But if you have a specific EV architecture, what do you with the old one? What do you do with the people?”

Daimler is combining both approaches, designing purpose-built architecture for its EQ sub-brand while also setting up its production plants to accommodate all types of powertrains, including fuel cells. “We have hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric cars and maybe robo-taxis tomorrow,” says Daimler Production Chief Markus Schaefer. “It’s hard to predict volumes for the best way in an uncertain world, so this is the most efficient approach to supply the market.”

Some analysts think the flexible approach is too complex in both design and production. “I don’t see how they can consolidate traditional platforms, from small hatchbacks to large SUVs, and at the same time try to include EVs in the equation,” says Pelham Smithers Analyst Julie Boote. “That’s incredibly complicated.”

In another revealing move, Audi decided no e-tron inventory for its US dealerships would be made available (Source: Charged / Image: Automobile Propre)

Others see merit in the flexible approach, pointing out that it’s hard to predict how quickly the shift to electric cars will take place. “Most carmakers proceeding with EVs are following an ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach,” says Bernstein Analyst Max Warburton. “If you have a dedicated EV platform and the demand doesn’t come, you’ve lost a lot of money.”

Sources: Financial Times, Bloomberg

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Order A Tesla By Monday To Get Full $7,500 Tax Credit

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Published on October 12th, 2018 |

by Paul Fosse

Order A Tesla By Monday To Get Full $7,500 Tax Credit

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October 12th, 2018 by Paul Fosse

Tesla has put up a new note in its design studio. The note informs its customers that if they order any of Tesla’s three models (the Model 3, Model S, or Model X) by Monday, October 15, they will receive delivery by the end of the year and will thus be eligible for the full $7,500 tax credit.

In case you haven’t been following closely, Tesla delivered its 200,000th electric car in the US in July, which means the maximum federal tax credit for Tesla buyers will be reduced to $3,750 after the end of the year.

I see this note when accessing the design studio from my desktop browser (but I don’t see it from either Chrome or Safari on my iPhone for some reason):

Let us know in the comments if you see it on Android or other platforms.

Unless something changes with the federal tax credit, the tax credit for Tesla buyers will phase out next year and be gone in 2020 — unless legislation to extend and expand it is passed.

I wouldn’t bet on any extension passing right now, but with Democrats expected to take the House next year, this could be something that could be passed, as there are always deals made to get things in and with a divided government, the administration will need to compromise more to get spending bills passed. However, I don’t see Democrats making this a priority, but maybe I’m wrong.

So, if you’re on the fence about whether to order a Tesla, perhaps this will get you to make a decision to order by Monday!

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Paul Fosse I've been a software engineer for over 30 years, first working on EDI software and more recently developing data warehouse systems in the telecommunications and healthcare industry. Along the way, I've also had the chance to help start a software consulting firm and do portfolio management for several investment trusts. In 2010, I took an interest in electric cars because gas was getting expensive. In 2015, I started reading CleanTechnica and took an interest in solar, mainly because it was a threat to my oil and gas investments in my investment trusts. Tesla investor.

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Tesla May Double Size Of Gigafactory 1 & Triple Its Workforce — If Infrastructure Permits

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Published on October 11th, 2018 |

by Steve Hanley

Tesla May Double Size Of Gigafactory 1 & Triple Its Workforce — If Infrastructure Permits

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October 11th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

Nevada governor Brian Sandoval hosted a technology and innovation conference at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 on Tuesday. When he took office in 2010, unemployment in Nevada was 14%. More than 175,000 residents of the state lost their jobs after the Republican-induced financial meltdown of 2008, and the rate of bankruptcies and home foreclosures were the highest of any state in the nation.

Sandoval spearheaded an economic renewal program that convinced Tesla to build its first Gigafactory in an undeveloped industrial park outside the city of Sparks, not far from Reno. Nevada offered Tesla an attractive package of tax incentives to lure it to Nevada, but the benefits were tied to a set of specific performance goals that Tesla has to meet in order to receive them. So far, Tesla has hit every target set forth in the agreement it signed with the state, and it is ahead of schedule building the Gigafactory.

Since Tesla came to town, the community around Sparks has flourished and other tech companies such as Apple, Switch, and Google have set up shop in Nevada. But growth comes at a cost. From roads and schools to hospitals and fire departments, the infrastructure necessary to support a community has lagged behind the influx of new workers. Home prices and apartment rents have increased by 50% or more in the past few years.

At the conference, Elon said he can foresee doubling the size of Gigafactory 1 and tripling the workforce from 7,000 today to more than 20,000, according to a report in the Reno Review Journal. “The biggest constraint on growth here is housing and infrastructure,” Musk said. At last report, the median price of a new home in the Reno/Sparks area is over $389,000 and average rentals are creeping close to $1,400 a month. “We’re looking at creating a housing compound on site at the Gigafactory, using kind of high-quality mobile homes,” Musk said. (Perhaps he read our fake story about Tesla cities on April 1, 2017.)

He praised governor Sandoval for how proactive he and his administration have been in addressing the need for community infrastructure and affordable housing. The governor told the audience his administration is working with housing developers to address the shortage of dwelling units. “We’re constantly looking at ways to allow for the construction of that affordable housing,” Sandoval told the press.

The road forward has not always been smooth. Just this week, Tesla settled a lawsuit brought by the state of Nevada which claimed the company was in arrears by $665,000 on unemployment insurance payments. Tesla says the deficit was the result of a clerical error. But the money has now been paid and the lawsuit dismissed.

When Tesla first started building Gigafactory 1, no one really knew whether it would be an expensive boondoggle or a success that would attract other businesses to the area. Now that that question has been answered, the hard work of fashioning a new community needs to move forward. Musk told the governor on Tuesday, “Nevada’s a real get-it-done state. Just keep being you. Don’t change, and we’ll be fine.”

CleanTechnica visualization of some nearby housing around the first Gigafactory.

CleanTechnica contributor Chanan Bos has created a rendering of what a housing area near Gigafactory 1 might look like. Elon’s use of the phrase “high-quality mobile homes” may not have been the ideal choice of words. Mobile homes remind people of the FEMA trailers the government used to house the homeless after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. One assumes Musk was referring to manufactured housing, which can be quite spacious and even elegant.

The idea harks back to the traditional company town where workers lived near the mills that employed them. One such community, the Siemensstadt Housing Estate near Spandau, Germany, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. We can assume if Elon is behind the idea, it will be more than an ordinary trailer park.

Hearing Musk say he is considering doubling the size of the Gigafactory and greatly expanding its workforce is the reward Governor Sandoval and Nevada get for taking a chance on Tesla when it was still a fledgling organization. The agreements the state and Tesla signed have worked out exceedingly well for all parties so far. It appears that more good news is around the corner on Electric Avenue, Sparks, Nevada.

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Tesla Is 2 Years Ahead Of Schedule On Gigafactory 1

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Published on October 1st, 2018 |

by Dr. Maximilian Holland

Tesla Is 2 Years Ahead Of Schedule On Gigafactory 1

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October 1st, 2018 by Dr. Maximilian Holland

Tesla’s 2014 vision for the Gigafactory

Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada is solidly on track to achieve a battery production volume of 35 GWh per year (annualized run rate) by the end of 2018. This is two years ahead of the original 2020 target date for achieving these volumes.

Whilst Tesla is often criticized for slipping on its targets, let’s take a moment to recognize the remarkable Gigafactory volume achievement.

Tesla Gigafactory 2018

Where’s My Model 3?
With the obvious advantages of EVs being increasingly recognized by consumers, many folks are getting impatient for affordable EVs to arrive in volume. On the other side of the fence, commentators and incumbents across the automotive and fossil fuel industries, along with their lapdogs in the media, are dishing out daily disdain and skepticism upon the disruptive notions of electrifying transport and accelerating the move towards sustainable energy.

From both sides, Tesla, the world’s leading producer of EVs, is subject to heavy scrutiny of all of its plans and timelines. Even whilst folks queue around the block to get in line for an unseen car, they wonder and get impatient when it takes longer to arrive than they’d hoped.

The Model 3 was infamously 6 months delayed in reaching its 5,000 units per week production volume target, and the company came in for much criticism from all quarters. Most of us forgot that achieving even this interim volume target has put Tesla’s Model 3 at well over double the next best selling EV (the Nissan Leaf). In fact, even while the Model 3 is being produced and delivered at a volume that makes it the 5th best selling car in the US in terms of monthly unit sales, much attention is focused on possible remaining Tesla production challenges.

The habitually optimistic projections of Tesla have come to be taken with a pinch of salt by experienced EV watchers, and it is often joked that the company’s stated timelines need conversion from “Elon time” into the time scales that most of us live in.

Bucking the Trend
Tesla’s Gigafactory progress significantly bucks this trend. When the Gigafactory was first announced in early 2014, the plan was to hit 35 GWh of battery production in 2020. We covered the story extensively at that time, and saw Tesla and Panasonic formally sign onto the joint plan in July of 2014.

Related to bringing forward the timeline for the Model 3’s production in response to its massive and unexpected demand, at the start of 2017, Tesla announced an ambitious accelerated Gigafactory timeline. It brought the 35 GWh goal forward to the end of 2018. Given the focus on production delays of the Model 3 itself during the past couple of years, many of us (myself included) assumed that the seemingly over-ambitious Gigafactory production targets were likewise slipping.

But a couple of months ago (July 2018), news emerged that the accelerated Gigafactory production targets were indeed within reach by the Tesla–Panasonic partnership. Then, just last week, Zach covered the latest updates from Yoshio Ito, head of Panasonic’s automotive business. The news was of the further bringing forward the July plan, to even more quickly add 3 new production lines that were previously slated for “the the end of the year [2018].” This further advance means that the lines will be installed and operating well before the end of the year, thus giving real credence to the 35 GWh run rate being achievable by the end of 2018.

It’s worth pausing to celebrate this rare but strong example of Tesla being two full years ahead of schedule on the timeline it originally set out for the Gigafactory back in 2014. From an initial 2020 target, we now find the 35 GWh annualized production volume goal looks set to be achieved by the end of 2018. That’s 4 years to reach a goal that was initially planned to require 6 years.

Tesla and Elon Musk have come in for a lot of flack recently, but the progress on the ground at the Gigafactory should serve to remind us that — away from the negative press and frequent skepticism about the revolutionary company’s broader mission — Tesla is achieving remarkable goals to accelerate the move towards sustainable transportation and energy.

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Xing Mobility Is Leveraging Its Modular Batteries For Electric Vehicle Retrofits

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Published on October 1st, 2018 |

by Kyle Field

Xing Mobility Is Leveraging Its Modular Batteries For Electric Vehicle Retrofits

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October 1st, 2018 by Kyle Field

As the curtain is pulled back, the inner workings are exposed. What once was a lobby, suitable for the average passer by to see is no longer, as the gears and wires, batteries and motors that bring the machines inside to life are exposed. In an instant, it became clear that Xing Mobility (think “ZING”) is anything but a battery company. Xing invited CleanTechnica to its headquarters in Taipei, Taiwan, to chat with its top brass and to take a peak behind the curtain.

Fueled by innovation
Xing is a company that brings things to life. A company that energizes, powers, and tames the wild beast. In this case, in the back corner of the workshop that would be more at home in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein than in an automotive factory, lies the stripped bones of the beast that lives in a perpetual state of evolution.

She’s called ‘Miss R’ and is the third in a line of a revolutionary racing vehicles that started off, of all things, with an internal combustion engine. That’s not a topic we frequent around these parts but as it turns out, the original dino-powered race vehicle was quickly followed by her much faster electrified progeny.

Xing Mobility was founded as a racing company. Not long thereafter, Azizi Tucker came on board fresh off of a stint at none other than Tesla Motors, and as you might expect, he joined Xing with a bias towards electrified powertrains. His passion for electrified powertrains led to the second generation of its race car being fueled with electrons and propelled by a set of electric motors.

Change is the only constant
At Xing, change is the only constant. As it built up its second generation vehicle, the company designed a battery pack that was flexible, as it had to be to keep up with the ever-evolving designs at Xing. Change was the price of entry, as it’s in their blood. The same can be said of the powertrain, as Xing upgraded its design from an internal combustion-powered car to one powered by a much smaller and much more efficient electric motor.

The conversion filled the veins of the team at Xing Mobility with a passion for improvement which paired well with the skillful young engineers they staffed up with as Xing grew. In the mad scientist’s lab that is the Xing Mobility headquarters, it is clear that this passion continues to fuel them today. In one corner of the lab, a Xing engineer preps a battery pack for its own destruction as Xing continues to validate the safety of its industry-leading immersion cooling battery tech.

The core of Xing’s business model is indeed its battery modules, but Xing is not a battery company. It is a full service emobility company that has been hard at work defining the building blocks of electric vehicles. Imagine you’re a tractor company and you want to build electric tractors, but the company you normally buy motors and transmissions from doesn’t have any options for you, so you call up the team at Xing.

Xing Mobility is the realization of a dream that CEO Royce YC Hong and CTO Azizi Tucker shared. They met at a TEDx Taipei conference and their mutual angst to do, to create, to start seemed to have a carry-on effect that grew and grew until before they knew it, they were partnering to bring their dreams to life through Xing Mobility.

Sitting big and bold at the center of the Xing Mobility logo is an oversized X. They believe that the X is the crossroads. That’s where things meet up, where things are encountered. Where people meet and where symbiotic ideas are joined together. Xing is an intersection, a crossing. It’s the place where they are bringing together an impressive team of engineers that share a passion for building the next generation of electric vehicles.

Xing Mobility electric delivery van retrofit prototype. Image credit: Kyle Field

More than that, the company is creating, testing and making production ready all of the disparate parts of an electric powertrain. Xing knows electric powertrains. That’s what it does. The team specializes in solving problems, especially when those problems are related to powertrains, electric motors, battery control units, vehicle control units, and all the little bits and bytes that bring the total system to life.

Modular Batteries = Endless Configurations
At the core of its system is its battery modules which, as the name implies, are truly modular. It’s not just that they can bolt together, but that they were designed to be bolted together. It’s much like Lego in the sense that they were designed to literally stack on top of each other or to be bolted onto each other to form a battery pack.

The multi-layered, variable configuration battery packs that Xing builds utilize a revolutionary immersion cooling technology that takes a unique non-conductive fire resistant liquid developed by the chemistry geeks over at 3M to replace the aging Halon fire systems. The new solution, called Novec, is also great at dissipating heat and acts as a fire retardant.

Flexible Components
On top of the modular battery pack, Xing has built a set of electric vehicle components including its own homegrown torque vectoring gearbox that dynamically optimizes the power output to all wheels in the vehicle, which maximizes the amount of power expended that is actually translated into forward motion.

Xing has also built up competency in electric motors, battery management systems, cabling, and all of the other components that are required to retrofit or build up the powertrain of an electric vehicle from the ground up.

To validate its approach, Xing is, in addition to working with numerous partners on in-flight projects, retrofitting a delivery van of its own. The process is being performed to get more intimate, hands-on experience with retrofits to allow them to more rapidly deploy retrofit kits for specific platforms. Delivery vehicles, with their low mileage per day, low average speeds in urban environments, and high impact on urban air quality make for great targets to retrofit to electric.

Retrofitting internal combustion vehicles with electric vehicle battery and powertrain kits is a much more resource efficient method of converting fleets and privately owned vehicles to electric. Xing is working to capitalize on this simple fact with an early push into the retrofit space, leveraging its mastery of modular batteries and durable, high performing electric vehicle propulsion systems.

A Veritable Electric Vehicle Laboratory
In the single day I spent at Xing Mobility’s office and workshop in Taipei, Taiwan, the company was working on electrifying a concrete moving vehicle for the construction industry, an autonomous personal electric vehicle, new PCBs for its battery management system, an upgrade to its infamous electric supercar Miss R, and a variety of other projects.

From this long list of projects in progress, you might expect that it employs a team of dozens or hundreds of engineers, but the reality is that they are only a handful of highly motivated, highly trained engineers, pushing the envelope for what electric vehicles might be. What they can be. Xing Mobility has established itself as a force to be reckoned with in the electric vehicle retrofit space and is leveraging Taiwan’s impressively diverse and localized supply chain to get there.

The Future
What immediately became clear when talking with Royce and Azizi about Xing Mobility is that Xing is not just a showy battery company, nor is it an electric supercar company. They aspire to do much more with the technologies they have built today as they continue to build competency in electric vehicle retrofits, one project at a time.

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Economies Of Scale — From The Tesla Gigafactory To A Chain Of Terrafactories

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Published on September 30th, 2018 |

by Chanan Bos

Economies Of Scale — From The Tesla Gigafactory To A Chain Of Terrafactories

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September 30th, 2018 by Chanan Bos

Economies of scale: a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased volume of production.

The reason Tesla names its Nevada battery production factory the Gigafactory was to help people understand that only when operating at a larger economy of scale does EV battery production truly become profitable.

Tesla’s mission is “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” Now, I don’t want to predict whether Tesla will have to do all of the heavy lifting to completely transition the earth to sustainable energy or if it only needs to get the ball rolling and make the blueprints. My goal is simply to help people understand where we are now and what it is going to take to move the world to sustainable clean energy through battery power. The real world is much more complex, but this simplified math should give a good general image of the situation.

Battery Uses
First off, let me start by explaining that there are 4 main uses for batteries.

Up until recently, the most common uses for batteries were all kinds of consumer electronics. A single AA battery has an energy capacity of approximately 3.75 watt-hours. But for the sake of round numbers, let’s say that a single AA battery has 4 Wh or 0.004 kWh of capacity.

The second most common use for batteries is electric vehicles. EV batteries come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from 16 kWh all the way to 100 kWh. As a couple of examples, a Volkswagen e-up! has about 18.7 kWh of battery capacity and a Tesla P100D has 100 kWh.

The size of a home battery storage unit ranges from 2 kWh to 17.1 kWh per unit. According to Tesla, most households need or will need about 27 kWh, which is why its 13.5 kWh Powerwalls are sold starting with 2 units.

The last and newest battery usage that recently became popular is industrial/utility-scale battery storage. The Tesla Powerpack has a capacity of 210 kWh per Powerpack. The current largest battery installation in the world is in South Australia. It has 129,000 kWh, which is about 614 Powerpacks.

Some Fun with Statistics
According to one statistic, in 2017, there were almost 71 million passenger cars sold worldwide. Now, let’s assume all of the following to be true:

All 71 million cars are electric.
Every car has a 70 kWh battery pack (this is average for cars with what is now considered an adequate range).

The Tesla Gigafactory 1 is the largest battery factory in the world. As of the end of July 2018, the Gigafactory had a production rate equivalent to ~20 GWh/yr. By the end of 2018, Tesla planned to be at a production run rate of 35 GWh per year. Once the construction of the Gigafactory is complete, it is supposed to have a total capacity of 105 GWh of battery cells and 150 GWh of total battery pack output per year (which includes EV batteries, Powerwalls, and Powerpacks).

Now, obviously, this has been oversimplified. Passenger cars are not the only vehicles on the roads. Nonetheless, if you wanted to meet the world’s 2018 demand for cars purely with EVs, with every Gigafactory not producing any Powerwalls or any other products, you would need 34 factories that are almost 8 times larger than the largest battery factory in existence today. In other words, if you build the factories the size that the current Gigafactory is today, you would need 249 of them.

A lot of people currently believe that the worldwide battery shortage will be met within the next 2 years. That is beyond ludicrous. To meet the worldwide battery demand for EVs alone, we need a chain of Terrafactories, not Gigafactories.

Powerwalls & EVs in the United States
Unfortunately, there is very little information on housing and electricity usage per household per country across the world. Thus, it’s extremely difficult to calculate how many Gigafactories we would need to supply the entire world with Powerwalls. (There are also numerous other factors that must be considered to determine how many home storage batteries are needed.) So, instead, let’s try to calculate how many Gigafactories we would need to provide the entire United States with Powerwalls so that, in combination with solar or wind, all households could become self-sufficient. (There are reasons why this is not the logical solution — not every home needs to be equipped with an energy storage unit, and handling storage on the utility scale is largely more efficient. But it seems useful to include in this thought + math experiment.)

There are 126 million households in the US. On average, most households need at least 2 Powerwalls. One Powerwall has a usable capacity of 13.5 kWh. However, in reality, the battery probably has at least 15 kWh. This is to make sure that you can’t charge it to the maximum and always have a minimum reserve. This way the battery will have a longer lifespan. So, in total, we need two 15 kWh Powerwalls (30 kWh per household). That is a total of 3,780 GWh for the entire United States. Let’s assume that a Powerwall needs to be replaced every 10 to 30 years depending on how you use it. Let’s calculate how many Gigafactories we need in order to manufacture 3,780 GWh of energy storage every 10, 20, or 30 years.

We know that Gigafactory 1 will devote 45 GWh to Powerwalls and Powerpacks and 105 GWh to battery packs for cars, so let’s make 2 separate calculations for the potential 10, 20, or 30 year product lifespan.

Now, let’s redo the previous calculation about cars but only for the United States. In 2017, there were 71 million cars sold worldwide, and there were 11.3 million sold in the United States. That means we need 791 GWh.

Now, if energy and car demands don’t rise from 2017 levels and if Powerwalls last at least a little over 10 years, then 8 Gigafactories should be enough to cover all passenger car and residential Powerwalls needed in the United States.

In Conclusion
At this point, I feel inclined to point out that I don’t care how quickly the Chinese, the Germans, Tesla, or anyone else can build large factories — they are not in competition as much as they are in cooperation on the macro scale. There is a shortage of lithium-ion batteries and there is absolutely no way that we can build enough batteries for our needs quickly, not in the next 2 years, not in the next 20 years.

We are going to need much larger and more favorable economies of scale and a cost per kWh that is a lot lower than the $100 per kWh world record that Tesla has just achieved. In addition to that, factories need to become even more space efficient. Tesla’s improvement from 35 GWh to 150 GWh is a notable achievement in that direction, but even they can and will do better eventually. I just hope that other brands will learn from them.

We are not going to need Gigafactories, we are going to need Terrafactories or even Petafactories that are built everywhere around the world and not just by Tesla — by everyone. This is the only way that we will be able to meet the constantly increasing global demand for batteries. Companies should be on their knees begging Tesla for its technology and Gigafactory blueprints if they want to stay relevant in the industry.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we will look at past, current, and planned battery factories — what products they produce and for whom.

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About the Author

Chanan Bos Chanan grew up in a multicultural, multi-lingual environment that often gives him a unique perspective on a variety of topics. He is always in thought about big picture topics like AI, quantum physics, philosophy, Universal Basic Income, climate change, sci-fi concepts like the singularity, misinformation, and the list goes on. Currently, he is studying creative media & technology but already has diplomas in environmental sciences as well as business & management. His goal is to discourage linear thinking, bias, and confirmation bias whilst encouraging out-of-the-box thinking and helping people understand exponential progress. Chanan is very worried about his future and the future of humanity. That is why he has a tremendous admiration for Elon Musk and his companies, foremost because of their missions, philosophy, and intent to help humanity and its future. He sees Tesla as one of the few companies that can help us save ourselves from climate change.

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