BESIDE TESLA’S GIGAFACTORY: TREMENDOUS PRODUCTION CAPACITY TO COME

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As the CTO of Aton Energy, I over read the tech news, especially about Cleantech. I usually don’t keep trace of my reading (even if I should), however, I found this graph on my computer, dated on 2013.

Production Capacity in 2013 + Tesla forecast

Production Capacity in 2013 + Tesla forecast

It is interesting to see where we are today, late in 2016. Construction on the Gigafactory began in 2014 outside Sparks, Nevada and the company expects to begin cell production in 2017. By 2020, the Gigafactory will reach full capacity and produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013.

Questions: where are we in 2016? What will be the entire production capacity in 2020?

Latest press releases from leading manufacturers predict a huge competition:

  1. LG Chem is the leading battery maker which plans production capacity of 50GW by 2020.
  2. BYD to have battery capacity equivalent to the Gigafactory by 2020. BYD has a now a 10GW production capacity.
  3. Tesla plans to triple Gigafactory production capacity to 150GWh of battery packs (not confirmed yet).
  4. Daimler would need over 22GWh of battery capacity within the next 10 years. Now Daimler plans to further its own investment in battery production by 1 billion euros in order to support its electric vehicle ambitions with Mercedes and the new Smart electric car lineup.

What we need to remember: about the worldwide production capacity of lithium batteries:

2016 => 40GWh

2020 => 120GWh

That’s actually a great news because mass production always leads to a fast price drop!