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Tesla Gigafactory Investor Thread

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It's moving along!

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Guessing all the pics are from the Fortune article or the associated video.

So, if they are only building section one where are the other 4 going?

From the RGJ story:


Phase 1: Sept. 2014-Sept. 2015
• Phase 2: Dec. 2014-Dec. 2015
• Phase 3: April 2015-May 2016
• Phase 4: May 2015-Dec. 2016
Phase 5: Aug. 2016-Dec. 2017

Very likely what you are seeing right now is just Phase 1. It looks like from the picture you posted that the factory is sectioned into 5 parts. My guess would be that Most of Phase 1 is getting all the groundwork done for the whole site focusing first in the area they plan to stand up and then expanding to the other sections after and finally they will focus in on the building of the first section fully which will likely complete in Sept 2015. They will then have section two completed in Dec 2015 and so on.

So the last section will be finished in Dec 2017 and if the timeline is correct from previous where they will come online in 2016 with section one. I would anticipate that section 5 will come online in late 2018/2019 just in time for the 100% capacity mark to pump out the 50GW target for 2020.

This is all speculation of course, but it seems to fit with the timelines.
 
Hope they remember to make a safety track for those tours Elon talked about. ;)

But seriously, it would be a nice flow of extra cash for them if they do it. Who wouldn't want to go see the world's biggest battery building that makes the most advanced car out there?
 
But seriously, it would be a nice flow of extra cash for them if they do it. Who wouldn't want to go see the world's biggest battery building that makes the most advanced car out there?

Do you think they'd charge people money? I don't think so. It would go against what they stand for and what they are trying to do. They'd want to encourage people to see the factory for educational and inspirational purposes.
 
I thought somewhere there had been a thread specifically about materials sourcing for the gigafactory but, other than one devoted to lithium, now I cannot find it, so am presenting here an article in tomorrow's (23 Nov) Alaska Dispatch News regarding GRAPHITE.


It turns out there is a significant, and long-known, graphite deposit in western Alaska, in the Seward Peninsula (its location is at Graphite Creek, which is why I safely can say it's 'long-known'), that has been targeted for the past three years by a scratch exploration firm. From the article:
the expl'n company had a drilling campaign this summer, core samples...show anywhere from 4.5 percent to more than 12 percent graphite, potentially making the deposit the second-largest graphite resource in the world.

The exploration company is from Vancouver; name is Graphite One Resources. I'll try to find out more about it.

Article:
Residents of Seward Peninsula villages meet with graphite mining company on Imuruk Basin deposit | Alaska Dispatch
 
That was it - and now I remember that one is, for the most part, "your" thread. I'm sorry I couldn't find it last night.

What I did unearth is that Graphite One appears to be your bog-standard junior miner: focused on a single product and, in this case, a single expl'n area (many juniors have a small stable of prospects - these are, for the most part precious metal plays). Undercapitalized, as also is the norm. G1 did, however, just finish a re-capitalization exercise so that immediate danger is away for a while. They claim their burn ratio is very low - that's good.

The prospect covers an extremely large area; very shallow. That portion of the Seward Peninsula is no stranger to mining - a very large # of gold scratches there about this time last century. However, the infrastructure there is either rudimentary or none. I'll look again to see how close the deposit is to the Kougarok Road, but on the face of it material probably would have to be barged out from some kind of port in the Imuruk Basin to get to the deep water of Port Clarence - now I see they say they're 18 miles off the Teller Road, which is a tough push in that country but not necessarily a mine-breaker. The Teller more closely resembles what most people consider a "road" than is the really rough Kougarok. But access to either of the roads still only gets the material as far as Nome, which is not to be confused with Fremont, Reno or even Sparks. It's a start, though.