Gigafactory locations and products

[MC3OZ]

This is my original 14-factory model, updated slightly in phasing.

I tend to agree with you that Tesla will be slow to put any of its own 4680 cell manufacture in China. The US-IRA clearly makes it more attractive to build out in USA faster now so #9 might come forwards and switch with #5 since India doesn't want to get with the programme. It is still not clear whether they will take some locations to >2m each, for example the footprint of Austin is ginagerous and might get to 5m/yr if labourforce (or cars/labour ..... ) allow. Clearly if the upper size grows >2m then fewer sites are required.

But always when I look at this I find it most odd that Tesla are guiding for 1.8m in 2023, as that would create major ramp difficulties in subsequent years. I am still mulling over what to finalise as my own projection for the year given this. It seems wrong to play pretend-no-growth.

View attachment 900590

The only real change to my thinking is that there will be fewer larger 4680 factories and all vechicle factories need to be located close enough to cell factories.

Outside of the US, Canada and Germany I am finding it hard to imagine 4680 production anywhere else. My reasoning is that a large portion of the 4680 team would need to relocate to the city where production was being set up for 6 months or more.

And sufficent suitably skilled engineers need to be available
.
From a geography point of view Indonesia, India and Australia is a possibly suitable location.

There might be others.

 

[MC3OZ]

Do we need a separate thread for Highland, or should we post on it here?
It is potentially another large speculative rabbit hole.

 

[Buckminster]

Do we need a separate thread for Highland, or should we post on it here?
It is potentially another large speculative rabbit hole.

New thread:
Project Highland (Investor impact etc.)

 

[CorneliusXX]

Do we need a separate thread for Highland, or should we post on it here?
It is potentially another large speculative rabbit hole.

It sounds super speculative to me. We are going on a single name and trying to make a connection.

 

[Buckminster]

It sounds super speculative to me. We are going on a single name and trying to make a connection.

We pretty much know the following:

1. There will be new gigafactories
2. There will be an updated M3
3. There will be a new platform including RT
4. There will be a new masterplan about massive scale
5. Alien dreadnought is a target

It is very unlikely that these are all not connected directly to one another.

 

[MC3OZ]

It sounds super speculative to me. We are going on a single name and trying to make a connection.

It is speculative, becuase the source video is speculative.

That is why I think it is best to speculate outside the main thread.

The speculation does include how significant and important March 1 and Highland could be.

 

[Buckminster]

FSD took me to Lathrop today, so I thought I would take some pictures. Lots of activity, but I didn’t see any actual mega packs because the fence was masked and most activity was in the building or the tent. I estimated about 300 employee cars in the parking lot. Security was tight.

View attachment 901932View attachment 901933View attachment 901934View attachment 901935

 

[Buckminster]

Did anyone else listen to this? I had it on in the background and I think the main points were

• Revenue from MegaPack is about 6 month lag. (He said this easily 30+ times)
• As more and more get deployed the money printer goes brrrrrrrrrt (Reoccurring maint + Virtual power plant (VPP) = $$$$)
  • 50% margin on the MegaPack itself. 100%+ margin on the software [maint + VPP (I think i heard that right?)]
• Once Sodium Ion battery patent expires (maybe it just did recently?) The cost of Energy storage is going to drop significantly
• Backlog of orders for 2 years, so no point to advertise

Sounds like Tesla Energy 2nd half 2023 is going to be just the tip of the iceberg and we haven't seen ANYTHING yet

Can Tesla swap to sodium ion with some effort or is it a start again situation?

 

[BrownOuttaSpec]

Can Tesla swap to sodium ion with some effort or is it a start again situation?

Someone smarter than me would have to answer that directly but it sounds like they could swap to it but it needs to be researched and validated more before mass production. It might have been answered in the QA section of that call but I had stopped listening (and started drinking) Here are 3 sources that have some more information that I skimmed but didn't have a direct answer to your question.

• Video: The Electric Viking: The new battery that is cheaper than lithium with 4 times the capacity
• Can Tesla Make Use of This Battery Chemistry That is More Efficient Than Lithium? | Torque News
• Tesla Could Soon Replace Lithium with Sodium-ion Batteries

 

[Buckminster]

Reuters through US News - 11:53 am EST
Tesla to Expand Operations to Mexico, Official Says

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630239412738232320

 

[Buckminster]

Mexico President says location of Mexico factory will be in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon. Luckily the U.S. took California from Mexico or having 2 Mexicon Monterey's would be awkward.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630569383100571650

David Lee @DaveT tweeted about the new factory - the referenced tweet with a link to the live press briefing about this:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630572839823712257

 

[Buckminster]

IMO, this is where the Model 2 or whatever it will be called will be built.

Mexican president says Tesla will build a new plant in Mexico

Tesla will build a new plant in Monterrey, Mexico, and adhere to a series of commitments to address water scarcity

www.cnbc.com

 

[Buckminster]

One of the many reasons for Mexico is that the Mexico treaty with Mercosur allows significant duty-free auto imports. That permits cheap entry to Brazil, Argentina and Chile. Assuming Tesla also buys Sigma, that establishes a basis for even more attractive tradeoffs, previously employed most effectively by Mercedes Benz and Boeing, both of which have benefitted from adept use of these trade benefits. This subject has been mostly ignored at TMC, but it is of huge consequence to Tesla now as scale increases.

To be clear, such regional and country specific treaties are common. With Tesla reaching scale not seen before we will now see numerous sourcing of materials plus factories fo various types that will be located to benefit by these rules.

Coming soon:
-Indonesia battery-related facilities;
-More EU locations;
-Something in South Korea

Raw material sourcing, materials refining, anode, cathode, other parts sourcing all will take advantage of trade agreements, materials quality and other factors. The road to 2030 as will be described tomorrow, will, whether detailed or not, be strongly influenced by cost optimization driven also by costs imposed/minimized due to trade agreements.

The simple solutions are disappearing for Tesla. Now there is logistics and more logistics.

Mexico has 2-3 decades of auto assembly experience, they have a very good labor force for this.

Furthermore, Teslas have far fewer parts than ICE and even EV competitors (I'm looking at you Mustang Mach-E).

Quality of assembly should not be an issue.


(there is no salt water near Monterrey, FYI)

 

[heltok]

Intersting thing I learnt today. Nevada has the highest unemployment in US:

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com

Seems like a good opportunity for Tesla to snap up some of those unemployed workers for their expansion.

 

[Buckminster]

Tesla officially announces Gigafactory Mexico to build next-gen electric vehicle

 

[Buckminster]

Yes, I found the place after a couple of minutes looking around Santa Catarina in satellite view. It is indeed a (reasonably) sloped terrain.

25°42'15.2"N 100°34'14.4"W

View attachment 912934

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631342984317870105

Dave Lee with a good tweet:
“What’s the rationale from Tesla in choosing Monterrey, Mexico as the site of the next Gigafactory? Why not just double the footprint of Austin instead?” Dave asks a Tesla exec yesterday.
1. Tesla will expand in Austin and Mexico Gigafactory is not taking away from Austin expansion plans.

2. Mexico Gigafactory is for new markets, not the U.S. The idea is to build cars in Mexico for Mexico, Latin America, etc.

3. Monterrey has a lot of auto suppliers in the area, so good place for Tesla to be.

4. Monterrey is close to Austin, just a 1 hr flight.

5. Monterrey has an affluent area with good engineers.

 

[Buckminster]

A few notes:

1) The optimus video absolutely was not CGI. The slow movement patterns and unsteadiness are classic remarks of a robot with a somewhat rudimentary balance control algorithm.

2) Someone who attended had a chance to speak with Tom Zhu and asked about Mexico factory - the product out will NOT be shipped to the U.S. and is for the Latin American market. I presume that to mean it's the compact seden over the van coming out of their.

3) Monterrey is almost 2,000' above sea level, so Tesla can ignore battery supply constraints and just roll the cars down the hill into the ocean w/o batteries.

 

[Buckminster]

GigaMexico will be 2x the size of GigaTexas, ground breaking in 3 months.

Site of Tesla Mexico factory near double size of Texas plant, local official says

Tesla Inc's planned factory in Mexico's northern border state of Nuevo Leon will be built on a site spanning several thousand acres, almost twice the size of its factory site in Texas, with construction slated to start in three months, a Mexican official said on Thursday.

www.reuters.com

Thats just the size of the land - not the actual factory building.

Site is 2x larger but I haven't seen anything that says the actual building is 2x. So could be but let's not jump to conclusions just yet without confirmation.

"MEXICO CITY, March 2 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) planned factory in Mexico's northern border state of Nuevo Leon will be built on a site spanning several thousand acres, almost twice the size of its factory site in Texas, with construction slated to start in three months, a Mexican official said on Thursday.

True however there are some crazy details.

"Tesla will initially spend about $5 billion and hire some 5,000 people, but will ultimately pour a total of $10 billion into the project with up to 10,000 workers, Nava added."

This part is crazy because the initial spend for giga Texas was 1.06 billion. So something crazy is going down. Even with inflation I can't imagine building a gigafactory in Mexico being very costly.

Someone managed to find the exact location in Mexico that matches the render that was shown for the Gigafactory

https://twitter.com/x/status/1631453499132190726

Google Earth

earth.google.com

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Rob Mauer just commented in his Tesla daily that the gigafactory render in Mexico looks like 2 gigafactory in 1 comparing to the render of gigatexas.

If I am correct I have read that for the new Monterrey plant processes Tesla has agreed to use waste water.
That would mean that Tesla will also build a Waste Water Cleaning Installation, because the techniques being used to clean water to an extent where it is really clean, are likely not yet or rarely being used in Mexico.
This can be done by special hyper filtration techniques, making the water even drinkable.

A couple of years back I was invited to drink sewer water that was cleaned in this way.
Try to imagine a cup being held under your nose, would you drink it?
I did, but that didn't come easy...

So, we may expect Tesla to have to build this facility, with storage, ducts etc., etc.
Really great, setting quite an example here.

Hmmm. Maybe the Mexico factory is where they’ll make all their 48v parts … and also sell them to any other OEM that wants to move to 48V. Point being is that it’ll be more than just a vehicle factory. Oh, and of course, they’ll make cells and batteries there too. Maybe Teslabots too. We really have no idea what Tesla’s plans are here…