Panasonic selects Kansas City for what it claims will be largest battery plant in the world This will create 4,000 jobs in Kansas City, Kansas (not Missouri). The new plant will specialize in lithium-ion batteries.
I'll believe it when I see it... These deals often fallen apart as quickly as they come together. The corporations are constantly trying to get ridiculous tax breaks that can make a city go broke and once the city adds up the numbers the deal falls through.
I tend to think it will go through. There is no doubt that there will be great demand in the future for batteries. And you have to build capacity a year or two in advance in order to be able to get the contract for a new production line Mike
Alot more than a year or two... More like 10 years in advance... This is precisely why Tesla's market value has been so high in recent years relative to all other major auto makers. For a long time automakers thought the fix was in and they had to maintain their relationships with the fossil fool industry because they were convinced that Tesla was going to be destroyed by everything the oil companies promised to destroy other auto makers with over the decades if they shifted to electric cars. Then big oil lost and Tesla won and it's been a mad scramble among automakers to do a decade of electric car innovations in just a few years. Meanwhile more than 50% of new car buyers are waiting for a good price on an electric car and some major automakers are going to not have enough funding to cross the finish line and will shut down.
Tesla and Panasonic agreed in 2014/2015 that Panasonic would build batteries for the Model 3. Limited production started in 2016 and they were in production in 2017. Mike
Yes, but Tesla started planning the Giga factory in 2013 after 5 years of production made them realize mass-production of batteries from a dedicated factory so huge that it could speed up manufacturing and lower cost was essential to making an affordable mass-produced electric car. Compare that to other major car makers who are barely getting started in mass production of EVs.
3 years are what is needed before volume production. I would expect volume in 2025 if Panasonic is moving fast.
Companies like VW have shown it's way harder and takes way longer than just a few years to retool all your factories to build electric cars. And Tesla had a distinct advantage in that they 1) didn't have to re-tool, they simply had to build brand new factories, 2) they were able to bring one of the world's largest battery makers into their own factory because they proved to Panasonic that they had a better manufacturing strategy that was more than just for vehicles, but also for disrupting the power grid with giga packs that are replacing power plants simply by being able to store electricity during off peak hours.
More than that, they can provide electric buffering within sub-seconds of a grid problem. That speed was so fast the Australians at first had no way to measure (and pay) for every grid incident. Bob Wilson
Yep... Then you add in a new decentralised grid where everyone's roof is generating power and storing them in power walls and vehicles with all the extra going to the nearest giga back and perhaps you might eventually one day have enough power to defeat the fossil fool monsters that run most of the major militaries for their own advantage in ways that set the planet on fire...
Why would Panasonic do that when they can use those enslaved by the Chinese government to work for free and make the product cheaper than hell
These plants are highly automated, which means unit labor cost is fairly low. With the new US plug-in incentives, north American production of batteries will get a tax credit far exceeding the labor cost on a battery pack. Chinese battery plants for Chinese made plug-ins, and North American plants for North American made plug ins just makes sense given the 2 governments incentive structure. I don't think there is any Chinese prison labor in the chinese produced packs, but perhaps you could share a link.
If you're an engineer or some other valuable person in China you think the government is going to let you go on vacation to the US, lmao
Aren't all of the videos you posted the answer to your question? You build things outside of China in order to strengthen the economies of countries that act more inline with your values...as much as possible. Mike