What about LG Chem and Samsung? Do you also think they are behind Tesla in terms of pricing and/or energy density by 2016-2020?
Why did so many (especially Western) car makers sign supply contracts for LG cells lately? Renault, VW Group, Volvo, GM etc. etc.
Same for Samsung, to reiterate again this source states they will have the same cell output capacity as Tesla by 2020:
Hello, Gigafactory! Samsung Moves To Compete With Tesla - Asia Stocks to Watch - Barrons.com
There are inherent reasons why pouch and prismatic cells cost more than cylindrical. It goes into waste and quality control. If Tesla felt that prismatic or pouch cells were the way to go, they would do that for the Gigafactory. Again, I've posted this before, you need to view all of the Tesla Energy presentation given by JB Straubel last year at an energy conference. He also delves into the cells in the Q&A.
Further, the chemistries we know that are viable to ship in 2016/2017/2018 are pretty well known. You can follow this with the DoE and ARPA-E reports. If they choose NMC, that will guarantee that the specific energy is lower than Tesla's solution. If they choose NCA, as Audi has claimed with the R8 e-tron, then they have to deal with a much more complicated BMS and pack design. It isn't an issue of them doing it, it's an issue of testing and time. You can deal with the overhead of moving to NCA either in really expensive products like the R8 e-tron, which is likely well over $200,000 equivalent in Europe and won't come to the U.S. If you choose something else, good luck shipping before 2020.
The biggest reason why they sign with LG is because LG is both quite good and has lots of capacity, as it relates to the general battery industry. The problem becomes the comparison to Tesla and Panasonic. Panasonic is every bit as good as LG if not better. That's why there are so many Panasonic fakes on Alibaba and the like. Further, LG has lots of unused capacity, but the "lots" amount is a really big number for the number of BEVs being sold today ex-Tesla, but a really small number relative to Tesla and especially if you factor in the Model 3. Remember, in 2013, the Ochang factory was something like 20% utilized and then it went even further down as the Holland MI plant ramped to 0.7 GWh.
Counting in PHEVs and BEVs, Panasonic is 2.9 GWh so far this year according to ev-sales.blogspot.com:
EV Sales: Batteries - September 2015
That's 38% of the market. Even though Nissan ships more vehicles, the battery packs are small, so they only have 1 GWh so far this year. LG Chem is in 3rd place, even though they have nominally somewhere between 5 and 6 GWh of capacity.
If you plan on shipping a small quantity of BEVs... say with 30 kWh of battery capacity and, say, 20,000 units a year. That's 0.6 GWh.That's the entire current production level of the Holland, MI plant - the one that was built with huge amounts of U.S. government money and sat idle for quite a while, then ran at 1/3 capacity for quite a while. You can't source that from very many places other than LG, or you basically have to help fund the expansion of someone else. An idle plant is very bad on the balance sheet. If you follow the battery industry, a number of big manufacturers built out capacity in the 2009 to 2011 timeframe in anticipation of coming EVs only to discover that the market wasn't going to happen. Huge write-offs came and a very tepid outlook on EVs came as a result. This was a big issue for Tesla in 2013, as Panasonic was still spilling tons of red ink and here was a piss ant automaker that kept asking for batteries. Panasonic had shuttered plants and stopped the expansion in Suminoe. We are still in the midst of what amounts to be a negotiation between the consumers, the automakers, and the battery manufacturers. The battery manufacturers would rather see demand before expanding again. The automakers are pretty tepid too. The consumers want better, more affordable EVs. As usual, Tesla takes on the chicken and the egg problems and just says, well, we'll do it all if no one else is willing to do it.
Therefore, signing up LG to supply cells is not a big deal. What matters is how much money these automakers put down in order to aggressively fund the expansion of the battery plants. So far, we've heard precious little on significant money actually put down... instead, we see a public negotiation - basically the battery companies asking the automakers to show us the money.
Therefore, the problem becomes trying to build 100,000 BEVs per year that can go 200 EPA 5 cycle miles. That's at least a 55 kWh battery, or 5.5 GWh per year. That's basically all of LG's current capacity. That's roughly Gigafactory phase 1. I estimate that is about 85% of Panasonic's current nominal capacity. You can't get there without putting up some significant cash. Then it takes time to build it out. Therefore, if VW/Audi/Porsche/GM/Ford and others all order from LG, they are divvying up 100,000 possible total. That's not even counting anything going to PHEVs, which is a huge slice. So on the BEV side, we're talking less than 50,000. At least BMW is going with Samsung SDI. So you have a strange conundrum... right now LG Chem has lots of extra capacity that the automakers aren't using. But it doesn't have enough to compete against Tesla's 2017/2018 projection. LG Chem certainly would want firm commitments of orders in order to expand, but even headliner projects like the Bolt is only 30,000 a year, or 1.8 GWh at a full 60 kWh (unlikely). Why would LG Chem expand at that order level? Therefore, what we are really seeing is that the big automakers are looking to ship token quantities of BEVs in the 2017-2019 time period, waiting to see market demand. Tesla isn't waiting, they already see market demand.