Battery gigafactories hit Europe

LockH

LockH

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Ummm.. Started out in Victoria BC Canada, then sta
There are even more gigafactories planned for Europe. Tesla is still looking for location, and apparently a cluster of european manufacturers are also looking for battery plant in Europe. There was some talk about a Chinese plant in Europe as well, but it is a long time since I've read anything more about that.

Makes totally sense the way shipping rules and batteries are done today. Battery also goes well with robots I've heard, and if that is the case the higher salary in Europe is no obstacle as long as the plant is build from the get go to use robots for the better part of the process.
 
I was reading our main financial paper at the weekend and this caught my eye..

.....China's BYD, the world's largest battery and electric vehicle maker, .."...
.....BYD's single battery factory near the southern city of Shenzhen that is more than eight times larger than Musk's in the Nevada desert......."

Read more: http://www.afr.com/business/transport/automobile/chinas-byd-has-overtaken-tesla-in-the-battery-and-electric-car-business-20170517-gw6wa1#ixzz4hqx5O1m3
Click to expand...

Needless to say , i was puzzelled by these obviously wildly incorrect statements, especially considering that this is a respected publication and the report was compiled by a reknowned , prize winning, journalist !
There were also other articles in the same issue claiming BYD home battery packs (ie, Powerwall equivalent) were more successful than Tesla's , and were the trendsetter in the market price reductions of all Li battery systems.

Is this an example of "Fake News" permeating the previously respected media ?

One fact that also slipped out was that BYD have a 30% lower production cost for cell manufacture because they have replaces automation and robotic assembly, with masses of cheap labour !!
( BYDs "Gigafactory" also has a "Giga dormatory" alongside to house the many thousands of low paid workers !)
Somehow, i dont see that manufacturing advantage being transferred into many countries outside China/Asia.
And as a manufacturing guy, i KNOW that all those manual processes are not a good thing for consistent or reliable quality control !
 
99zip I think you should put out the bong now, try to keep it to weekends only.

To end on a serious note, what other options are there really? Rely solely on third party for battery if aim is to scale up production of electric vehicles? I think to risky in the long run. And with the ever stricter emission rules we will see tenfolds of electric cars the coming years. Where there are car manufacturers there will be battery factories. Some solely own by car manufacturers others will take a Tesla and do it in partnership with existing battery manufactures or even produce strictly on license.

Thinking about the China company could it be that was the mother company of Volvo that is looking for EU location for battery plants?
 
UPDATE:Angela Merkel has broken ground...:
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/...breaks-ground-£431-million-ev-battery-factory

In part:
The new facility in Kamenz, Germany, is described as Europe’s first true electric car battery making 'gigafactory' and marks the second stage in a broader €1 billion investment made by Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler in its Accumotive energy storage subsidiary as it prepares to enter the electric car ranks with its first unique styled EQ-badged model, previewed by the Generation EQ SUV, in 2019.
Click to expand...

... and:
Accumotive produces battery modules using individual cells supplied by a number of different companies, including Samsung SDI and LG. Earlier plans by Daimler to produce its own cells were shelved when it shuttered its Litec battery development subsidiary in 2015.
Click to expand...
 
Yes more battery production in America is great but not very ez to get or at a fair price. Remeber A123 Wouldn't sale to us and it's high prices. Then fell because nobody was watching the robot. When are the Tesla cells going trickle down so we can get our hands on them and afford them. New.
 
[youtube]iBhFTJ-aJbE[/youtube]

Pretty informative :)
 
Thanks Jonescg..very informative indeed.
Im a little surprised at the ammount of manual operations, and the general slow rate of production.
Maybe they are still on pre production learning curve runs, but a manufacturing specialist would say there is a lot of "Muda" ( wasted time) in those processes.
Im guessing that was a Smart car pack at the end ..339v, 17.6 kWh, 169 kg, 52Ah. ?
But what was the 48v battery they refered to for the new Merc ICE cars. ? Are they finaly going to progress from 12v ancilliaries ?
 
macribs said:
....... Battery also goes well with robots I've heard, and if that is the case the higher salary in Europe is no obstacle as long as the plant is build from the get go to use robots for the better part of the process.
Click to expand...

...but dont you find it ironic that the cheapest cell/battery production, and the main force driving down all cell prices, is that BYD deliberately changed from automated robotic manufacturing, to manual, labour intensive, production methods !
 
Very surprise I thought I would be 95% automated with cameras all over the place as inspecting the product coming off the Line with serial numbers. Peole in white suits in clean rooms. Mercedes-Benz
 
Hillhater said:
Thanks Jonescg..very informative indeed.
Im a little surprised at the ammount of manual operations, and the general slow rate of production.
Maybe they are still on pre production learning curve runs, but a manufacturing specialist would say there is a lot of "Muda" ( wasted time) in those processes.
Im guessing that was a Smart car pack at the end ..339v, 17.6 kWh, 169 kg, 52Ah. ?
But what was the 48v battery they refered to for the new Merc ICE cars. ? Are they finaly going to progress from 12v ancilliaries ?
Click to expand...

I bet they're still faster than Holden in Adelaide :lol: I shouldn't laugh, I want those guys and girls to have jobs next year.

Yes these were smart car battery packs, as well as stationary energy applications. Agreed, rather slow and human, but they are probably in the process of tooling up.

48 volt auxiliary systems mean smaller wiring so that's a big plus.
 
Hillhater said:
macribs said:
....... Battery also goes well with robots I've heard, and if that is the case the higher salary in Europe is no obstacle as long as the plant is build from the get go to use robots for the better part of the process.
Click to expand...

...but dont you find it ironic that the cheapest cell/battery production, and the main force driving down all cell prices, is that BYD deliberately changed from automated robotic manufacturing, to manual, labour intensive, production methods !
Click to expand...


Well in China young adults sits outside in the backyard of a factory and hand assemble parts for cell phone if the demand for those parts is rising faster then they can build up their automated production lines. This is possible only due to the cheap labor. What happen with BYD and why they went from automated process to fully manual labor I don't know. Maybe their initial investment in robotics was failure? Did they put their money on cheap chinese robots maybe? :wink:

Look at welding robots, so much better to make the same seam over and over again then the human hand. And much cheaper. Batteries also have repetitive motions well suited for automation. Robotics are the future.
 
999zip999 said:
. Remeber A123 Wouldn't sale to us and it's high prices. Then fell because nobody was watching the robot. ....

A123 is desperate to sell A123 pouches through its dealers as Storetronics.
Proof?
Storetronics went so far as making 80 /!!!/ pictures of pouches , sent it them in emails to me,
over 80 pictures to be exact attached in emails to me. So I can accept cells for buying.
they sell only min 20 cells.
Click to expand...
 
Not to mention child labor is keeping families alive. I know it sounds bad but that is the reality in many parts of the world.
 
LockH you are next.
Click to expand...
This is an automated reply to this thread. Please do not adjust your viewing device.

Video from Mercedes "... 400 employees..." Yes. Many of their robots looked very human/life-like..

(Now back to original programming. Thank you. Over and Out.)
 
OK which witch is this Lockh is that you it sounds very robotic. Put a feather under his nose to see if it breaths robots don't breathe. Put a mirror in front up his mouth to see if it fogs up. Then prick it with a sharp object. Robots don't bleed.
 
Affordable A123 20ah pouches @ $70.00 times 20 thats $1,400 for 20s 20ah that's 70v charged. Very heay but with 1,500 cycles or more. Plus shipping then the parts to Assemble without a BMS. Adding up to no deal.
 
Hillhater said:
I was reading our main financial paper at the weekend and this caught my eye..

.....China's BYD, the world's largest battery and electric vehicle maker, .."...
.....BYD's single battery factory near the southern city of Shenzhen that is more than eight times larger than Musk's in the Nevada desert......."

Read more: http://www.afr.com/business/transport/automobile/chinas-byd-has-overtaken-tesla-in-the-battery-and-electric-car-business-20170517-gw6wa1#ixzz4hqx5O1m3
Click to expand...

Needless to say , i was puzzelled by these obviously wildly incorrect statements, especially considering that this is a respected publication and the report was compiled by a reknowned , prize winning, journalist !
There were also other articles in the same issue claiming BYD home battery packs (ie, Powerwall equivalent) were more successful than Tesla's , and were the trendsetter in the market price reductions of all Li battery systems.

Is this an example of "Fake News" permeating the previously respected media ?

One fact that also slipped out was that BYD have a 30% lower production cost for cell manufacture because they have replaces automation and robotic assembly, with masses of cheap labour !!
( BYDs "Gigafactory" also has a "Giga dormatory" alongside to house the many thousands of low paid workers !)
Somehow, i dont see that manufacturing advantage being transferred into many countries outside China/Asia.
And as a manufacturing guy, i KNOW that all those manual processes are not a good thing for consistent or reliable quality control !
Click to expand...
Great article.
I don't get where your coming from saying they went from automation to manual labour, the article seems to be claiming massive robotic automation only, nothing else.
Quote from article "Inside, the 8.6-gigawatt factory, which spans five buildings of four floors each, is 99 per cent automated. Robots hand components to robots in near silence, as preprogrammed cranes move batteries around the factory floor."

If they did move from automation to more manual labour its obviously to keep the people/jobs/government-socialist ideals happy.

As for BYD being the biggest lithium cell creator by GWh it sounds about right to me. Some of their electric buses have battery packs just under 1MWh.

Personally, I think Elon has gone from thinking theres money in electric cars to money in batteries and hoping that electricity becomes so expensive he can sell storage solutions, but now I think Elons main goal of making big money is replacing people in autonomous driving. Considering truck drivers are the USA's single biggest job industry I would be surprised if the USA government allow autonomous vehicles outright, I think there is a longer term future in heavy smart driver assistance, as in it doesn't matter how much of a shit driver you are the car will slow down and deliberately steer you away from collisions etc.
 
Too bad the FT article is behind a toll booth. The cheap ones among us we can't read it.
 
U da man! tks

The battery approach taken by China has echoes of the one it took on solar power a decade ago, when China dominated the industry by lowering costs and driving prices down by 70 per cent and could do the same for batteries, says Mister Orr, former Asia chairman of McKinsey. That would make electric cars more competitive — batteries account for up to half the total vehicle cost — but it could also mean a drastic loss of market share for manufacturers in the rest of Asia, the US and Europe.
Click to expand...


What China did in solar power was slaying a whole industry in the west. Jobs vanished and companies went belly up. Over several years the solar market was milking the early adapter market, charging an arm and a leg. Some argued they didn't over charge, but looking at the companies bottom line before Chinese entered the solar game shows profits on the high side, much higher then one would expect from a mature industry.

If China once again uses state incentives, subsidiaries, and cheap government money to start ups for batteries there will be the exact same outcome as with the solar market. Prices will plummet. I welcome new players especially if they bring quality control and innovation to the table as well. I think the article goes a long way in showing us that this is actually happening right now. The Chinese are not fcuking around.
 
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