The Breakneck Rise of China’s Colossus of Electric-Car Batteries

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-01/the-breakneck-rise-of-china-s-colossus-of-electric-car-batteries

by neya • 8 years ago

60 19 8 years ago

Any information on what current western car manufacturers are planning for battery production capacity? The story of Nissan and Tesla is known by now. But I don't read a lot about most other producers.

krona• 8 years ago

One I know of is Williams Advanced Engineering who are building a battery factory for Aston Martin. That's fairly low volume, however.

Another is the quite significant investments Dyson are making in EV technology; they plan to build an EV car by 2020 but details are sparse.

Probably the most significant, however, is Swiss engineering group ABB, who plan to build Europe’s largest lithium-ion battery factory in Sweden targeting annual cell production equivalent to 32 gigawatt-hours by 2023, over 90 percent of Tesla’s Gigafactory target. [0]

[0] http://new.abb.com/news/detail/2121/abb-and-northvolt-partne...

kjksf3• 8 years ago

The number for Tesla is outdated. 35 GWh was initial plan.

The current estimate 150 GWh by 2020 (https://insideevs.com/elon-musk-says-gigafactory-output-coul...).

Which is kind of needed to build as many cars as they want.

Only half of batteries will go to cars (the other half to residential powerpacks and commercial deployments like the one in Australia) which is 75 GWh.

At average 75 kWh batter per car, it's just enough to build 1 million Tesla 3 cars a year, which is not that much and well within Tesla's projections by 2020.

That doesn't include even more battery hungry Tesla trucks and roadsters and S and X, which is why it's safe to say that before 2020 Tesla will have to start building another Gigafactory to deliver the cars they've already promised.

ams6110• 8 years ago

I don't think the big US automakers have any in-house EV battery capacity. Conventional car batteries are not a differentiating component and so have always been supplied by outside contract providers.

Chevy Volt batteries are made by LG, originally in Korea but I think they now have a plant in Michigan.

kjksf3• 8 years ago

This article uses outdated numbers which make CATL look better (compared to Tesla) than it does.

They list Tesla Gigafactory as making ~30 GWh and that (well, 35 GWh) was the initial plan.

Current projections are that Gigafactory, when completed in 2020, will make 150 GWh of batteries (https://insideevs.com/elon-musk-says-gigafactory-output-coul...).

CATL is estimated to be 50 GWh by 2020 so only 1/3 of estimated Gigafactory.

In fact, the current projections is that by 2020 Tesla will make 150 GWh, all of China ~100 GWh and the rest of the world ~50 GWh so Tesla will be making half of all world's batteries.

It's also not surprising. Article said that CATL is raising $2 billion. Gigafactory 1 will cost $5 billion (at least $1.6 billion financed by Panasonic).

That assumes no further investment from Tesla and it's almost certain that they'll start building one or two more gigafactories before 2020 (although it does take 6 years to fully build one). Musk was already talking publicly about european factory and this december there were rumors about china factory.

I collect those tidbits of data: https://www.notion.so/Tesla-watch-4bed70edb73b46c380e2762a0b...

adamqureshi• 8 years ago

Do you have info on the battery range increase? For example a tesla 2017 model X 100D has a claimed range of 330 miles. How many years would it take the battery range to double, to say 600 or 1,800 per charge?

kjksf3• 8 years ago

There are 2 aspects to this.

First is: battery density per unit of weight of battery.

According to chart in https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showthread.php?166243-Energy-De..., battery density between 2008 and 2013/14 (i.e. in 5/6 years) more than doubled.

Price per kWH dropped 5x in the same period.

What that means is that for the same weight, we could put 2x more battery in the car and it would cost 2.5x less (5 / 2). That would double the range, all else being equal.

But mileage doesn't depend only on how big the battery is.

The smaller / lighter the car, the more mileage it gets from the same energy. That means Tesla 3 would get a better mileage than Tesla S or X if it used the same battery because Tesla 3 is a smaller car.

There's also aerodynamic efficiency of the car and how you drive it (e.g. accelerating quickly uses up more energy than accelerating slowly).

richardknop2• 8 years ago

Where will Musk get money to build another 2 Gigafactories? If one costs $5 billion, he would need a big round of new funding. Also Tesla as business is burning through cash at a quick pace so that will need more cash to sustain itself as well. Do you think Tesla will need to raise / borrow another 10-15 billion?

greglindahl• 8 years ago

TSLA's market cap is a lot bigger than $5 billion, and they have a history of being able to raise money.

If you want to bet against that, by all means, short the stock.

ak39• 8 years ago

I've spent the weekend watching videos of and reading about converting classic cars (VW Beetles, Porsche 911s and others) into electric powered vehicles (some of them gloriously restored!). It was exciting to learn this:

1. Electric conversion is about three things: batteries, chargers and motors. Of these three, batteries have been the least technologically convenient aspect of converting to electric - until recently. For years batteries have remained heavy and expensive, rendering them inefficient for use to power modern vehicles (it's all about size for the kW). Electric motor tech and battery charging tech have been past their "S" curves and are considered mature, buyers being spoilt for choice.

2. Over the last 5 years, battery tech has improved both in size-to-power ratios as well as in dramatic reduction in costs - and there's more to come. (Soon with graphene and Samsung we will have 5x speed in recharging). The tide is definitely changing on the battery tech front. All three factors for electric conversion now make electric powered vehicles (that can do more than 200km daily) a viable possibility - eve for home DIY conversion.

3. It is not surprising therefore to see a growing cottage industry of DIY electric conversion kits in the US already. (Google "DIY electric car kit")

ICE (internal combustion engine) motor companies have always kept their R&D and production process of powerful and efficient motors as their competitive advantage. That's their mojo. The gas motor and drive train technology is essentially the car that customers have been buying. This is the very heart of the industry at threat. 3 components and goodbye to a century of battle-test crankshafts, pistons, intake manifolds and injection designs! Gone.

It is my humble opinion that we ought to be more excited about the DIY home kits for electric vehicles instead of the Teslas and big automakers.

ZeroGravitas• 8 years ago

As a mid point between DIY and new cars, Jaguar have created a drop in replacement for the xk drivetrain which allows them to (reversibly) convert classic cars to EVs:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/jaguars-restored-this-o...

jacobolus• 8 years ago

[...] we ought to be more excited about the DIY home kits for electric vehicles instead of the Teslas and big automakers.

Can you explain why? Who is “we”? Are you anticipating that a sizable fraction of the 1+ billion gas cars in the world are going to be converted by DIY home kits? I personally can’t imagine hundreds of millions of DIY conversions (or even professional conversions).

Practically what I care about is (a) getting fossil fuel burning out of my neighborhood (and out of places where people live, in general), and (b) dramatically reducing the amount of CO2 we put into the atmosphere, on a global scale. As far as I can tell the way we will get there is by sales of new electric cars largely supplanting gas cars over the next 2 decades or so (also pickup trucks, buses, delivery trucks, freight shipping trucks, etc.).

Policymakers can speed this up by tightening emissions standards for all vehicles, banning ICE cars from some roads or areas, increasing fuel taxes, subsidizing electric cars, funding basic research in battery technology, etc.

The Breakneck Rise of China’s Colossus of Electric-Car Batteries

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