There is speculation on the capability of the V4 Superchargers being deployed in Europe but the truth is, this information is not publicly available. The chargers look a whole lot like the Megacharger design, so they may share the same spec, but that would be wild speculation. Whatever the case, V4 Superchargers are about to sweep across Europe like an Aryan purge.
The V4 Supercharger is probably going to be cited as 600K Watts but that number will only be achievable at 1000V. The rest of the story will be down to the voltage a car can take and if Tesla limits voltage. ... but I would expect charging performance of V4 Superchargers to be roughly the same as V3 on current Tesla models.
I wonder if Tesla will get Boring Company to build a tunnel between Giga Texas and Giga Mexico or if they will just repurpose one of the myriad existing tunnels.
Apparently, I haven't been paying sufficient attention to what's going on at Giga Shanghai. This is an update. There is a major bridge being installed right now (3 lanes, each way) and two new high bandwidth approaches that are already online. They currently have five and will shortly have six. Model Y production is now at 700,000 units of annualized production. The new foundations being poured on the east side have not been built on. I don't know what they are for but there seems to be no hurry to build on them. Video from yesterday shows no activity related to implementation of phase 2 in which they intend to double Giga Shanghai capacity. Meanwhile, the cell production buildings on the west side of the street look nearly complete. From what I can tell, the pace at which Giga Shanghai is built and expanded is unrivaled elsewhere. Giga Berlin is the slowest, by far. Tom Zhu is in charge of Giga Mexico. He says it might be possible to build it even more quickly than Giga Shanghai. I will believe that when I see it. With regard to Giga Mexico. The last I heard Elon talk about the naming convention, it was "Giga <state>". So... Giga Nevada... Giga Texas... But, now we have Giga Shanghai and Giga Berlin. One day, we will probably have Giga California. It would make a lot more sense to use "Giga <city>" and they may have adopted that. Not sure.
Giga Nevada. It's been over a month since we have had a satellite pic that wasn't obscured by clouds. Very frustrating. But, we have a fresh pic this morning... The roof of Giga Nevada is partially stripped of it's membrane. I'd say 15% of it is stripped. I don't see any pile operations or anything that looks like expansion. This is odd, as they mentioned construction began some weeks ago. I'm sure Tesla is doing a good job on their construction but there is remarkably low activity, given how many permits and expansion projects they have under way. The only real work is at Texas and Berlin. Even at these two sites, the work is extremely far from peak activity.
You came to the wrong guy for an argument, Emmett. The legislation that happens in California boggles my mind. Morgan Stanley says, Tesla is out.... Ferrari is in... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-06/tesla-replaced-by-ferrari-as-morgan-stanley-s-top-us-autos-pick?leadSource=uverify wall
Toyota once again is withdrawing from the battery electric space. They are doubling down on hydrogen. I give hydrogen zero chance at the car level. It starts to make sense at the long haul semi space. I hope I am wrong, for Toyota's sake.
Tesla has provided magazine level engineering education to the masses. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people continue to be as stupid as a box of rocks. Not a Gabion cage of rocks. Those are pretty clever. I'm talking about a slightly wet cardboard box containing dirty rocks. The 4680 battery platform is way late but it is moving as quickly as it can. The task was substantially underestimated by Tesla (Musk and his battery team). While they have dry electrode working and yields are now decent, they are having trouble with bearing longevity in the production equipment. Dust from the electrode material is getting into the bearing races and killing them in extreme low time. They are working on it. What's more, Tesla is working at absolute best speed. They are trying two different solutions to the bearing issue. It will be a bake off between two ideas. It's a race to fix the races. In other words, battery development is not cash constrained. They are making no effort to save money nor have they made any conservative choices. The first time we saw this type of engineering was with SpaceX. SpaceX developed their booster landing system in full public view to a chorus of people claiming how foolish they were to put their failures on display for all to see. Now, we are seeing Tesla develop entirely new ideas in real time and somewhat in public view. I hope the lesson learned is that it's OK to fail and we need to be aggressive to move things forward. Unfortunately, it is clear no one else will chose this path, despite it being objectively proven to be a world beating approach. As objective proof, I cite the rocket industry vs SpaceX and the auto industry vs Tesla. The reason I crapped on Ford's F-150 Lightning is because the batteries are going to be crap. There will be problems and recalls. Remember when Porsche was bragging about having more range and faster charging than Tesla? No big deal. lol! They ended up burning down a lot of garages and replacing every single Taycan battery. Yeah... no big deal. My point is that Ford needs to continue engineering their battery platform and work through the problems like Tesla did. Nobody gets a pass. This isn't a failure. It's development. This is how engineering works. We need less CEO BS and more engineering. Less talk. More rock. This is why I stay away from companies with braggadocios CEOs. It was an instant red flag with Trevor Milton. Mary Barra, also. I look for "We did <this>" as a positive and "We are going to <thing>" as a negative. You don't have to have an engineering doctorate to see what is happening in the EV space.
How many auto companies were going to put Tesla out of business? How many battery technologies were going to make Tesla obsolete? Tesla seems to be still in business long after solid state batteries were said to have killed them. In any engineering race, bet on the team with their head down and working hard. Those guys always succeed.
I've been monitoring satellite images of Giga Nevada and they peeled back about 12% of the membrane on the roof 5 weeks ago and there are no visible changes since. Whatever is happening, they don't seem to be in a rush. They have permits for expansion and those expire so I would guess they would send a couple of guys out to Sparks with hard hats and shovels, at some point. That point is not today. If I were forced to opine on what is going on, of course I would decline, but if I was pressured at gun point I might speculate that Panasonic is behind schedule with their 4680 program. Tesla will not make cells at Giga Nevada, as long as Panasonic is in the building. Only Panasonic cells will be made in that building but Tesla does make packs and some other stuff there. This is why they have a huge second building beside Giga Nevada where they warehouse some stuff and have plans to make cells there. No ground has been broken over there, either. I speculate things have slowed down on the platform development side. They are still struggling to get R7 of the electrode roller ready for high volume production, as far as I know. Once that platform has proven itself for a while, they will make the production tools for Austin, Shanghai, Berlin, and Kato before they start making cells in Sparks. In fact, I speculate they won't send equipment to Sparks for another version or two after 7 but that is just wild speculation.
Two note worthy changes at Tesla. Tom Zhu is now officially the senior vice president of automotive. JB Straubel is now on the Tesla board. These are both positive events, IMO. Two outstanding individuals in these gentlemen. In completely irrelevant news that I will mention so we can pretend it matters, solar panels are being installed on a roof at Giga Shanghai. I am not aware of any strategy to cover other roofs with solar, or of any fraction they are trying to achieve. All I know is that somebody borrowed an extension ladder and there are roughly 750 panels on one of the roofs in what is certainly an unfinished project.
I just had a quick look at solar irradiance for the port of Shanghai and it is even lower than Vancouver, Canada. These solar panels seem most likely to be political and not high value generation. Sometimes, a system like this can be an outstanding battery backup system. Some solar and a few megapacks could be a cheap alternative for an ICE backup generator. By now, Reddit will be buzzing with theories that Tesla has developed a new type of cell that can harvest energy from cloudy, overcast, environments they are testing in Shanghai. I like those guys but my gawd....
Oh yeah, almost forgot... A couple of days ago, Tesla laid out a roadmap for future vehicles and cell requirements. The roadmap includes a super affordable car, van, bus, etc. If demand has cooled for Tesla vehicles, and we do not yet know that it has, they can just work on more of their road map. The reason the truck and semi were delayed is because of the cell supply issue. They can also ramp up grid storage. Meanwhile, Tesla has two world beating individuals on warm standby in Tom Zhu and JB Straubel. It's great news to hear JB remains involved and Tom Zhu is now the top non C* employee. For those who are concerned that Elon is losing his freaking mind, Tom Zhu is the next CEO designate so this could restore some sanity. I have no idea what Tom Zhu's politics are or his social views. That, I would contend, is a good thing.
I managed to find a sufficiently clear satellite image of Giga Shanghai (tough at this time of the year) and there are two roofs with a lot of panels. I estimate 2000 panels and a lot more to come.
The Shanghai CATL plant continues to move forward, albeit at a medium pace (non-Tesla pace). CATL is rumored to bring the first employees on site in July. This makes some sense and seems plausible, if construction can meet that deadline. They obviously won't be anywhere near complete at that time but they just need a building or two with enough space to start training and work on setting up and calibrating equipment. Tesla is rumored to bring the Model 2 to market around 2024. They are going to need some cells from CATL to help with this so it all stitches into a plausible timeline. There is also the thought that CATL could well be supplying batts for other Tesla Gigafactories where they are constrained by cell availability. Berlin could use a bunch of 4680 cells and so could Austin. And then there is energy storage which can literally use every 4680 cell they can get their hands on. These guys are literally twiddling their thumbs, waiting for overflow cells from the car business. Get along, CATL. Swing that hammer. Bend that saw.
Tesla put out 8400 cars from the Austin plant, last week. They are scaling heavy. That puts them well beyond 2M of annualized production. Elon made a note that Fremont and Berlin are also scaling heavily. I don't have current production counts from those plants so I have no way to know how far beyond 2M annual units they are. I believe the only possible explanation for this is the 7th Gen 4680 platform is here. While this won't be the final iteration, they are deep into a viable production platform. Assuming my guess is true, that means dramatically higher production and reduced cost, across the board. How would you like to compete against a company that makes its own production equipment, engineers its own battery chemistry, and is scaling to be one of the larger volume battery manufacturers in the world? Lol. Hang on, gentlemen. This is getting good.
