NBC announces Ford and GM promises but overlooks Cybertruck

[rodmacpherson]

NBC News found it newsworthy to announce that Ford promises to, yet again, double their production of electric pick up trucks. Also newsworthy is that GM has promised to make an electric pick up truck. Where all of the batteries to fulfill these promises will come from, they do not mention.

...

Maybe they just don’t know ??

For GM they will come from the Ultium battery Gigafactory they just built.
https://insideevs.com/news/554044/gm-ultium-cells-plant-november23/

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[rodmacpherson]

For GM they will come from the Ultium battery Gigafactory they just built.
https://insideevs.com/news/554044/gm-ultium-cells-plant-november23/

The claimed 30GWh/year if divided into 150kWh packs = 200,000 [edited] cars per year, and they will be building a second factory in the USA for 2023. GM's battery plans are nothing to ignore.

 

[Cybertruckee]

The paranoids strike again!

Overthinking the conspiracy theories again. News focus on "news". Tesla is old news.

Companies locate where they get the most tax incentives -- mostly from desperate states where land and labor are cheap and where governors are willing to kneel and give in to all that's asked so they can list it to their accomplishments in aid of re-election..

Tesla got a Giga from Nevada with tons of incentive. They still have enough unused space since and to-date to do the CT and all other models they can think of but decided to build Texas giga anyways (guess what, incentives).

Techies and engineers in Tesla Fremont are being showered with perks to agree to move to Texas. Few takers. Now they are optimizing their congested garlic building in the Bay Area and Elon pretending all is well.

 

[RVAC]

Companies locate where they get the most tax incentives -- mostly from desperate states where land and labor are cheap and where governors are willing to kneel and give in to all that's asked so they can list it to their accomplishments in aid of re-election..

Tesla got a Giga from Nevada with tons of incentive. They still have enough unused space since and to-date to do the CT and all other models they can think of but decided to build Texas giga anyways (guess what, incentives).

That's a whole lot of misinformation.

The tax incentives Tesla received in Austin were laughably small for a project of that size, they had zero bearing on the decision. The expansion of the Nevada Gigafactory is primarily limited by the available workforce in the area.

 

[Crissa]

Both are important points, @Cybertruckee @RVAC . Tesla doesn't generally chase these tax advantages as much as they do logistical and labor advantages... but other companies definitely follow those tax advantages and those tax advantages tend to bend the entire industry as a whole.

-Crissa

 

[Ogre]

The claimed 30GWh/year if divided into 150kWh packs = 4.5 million cars per year, and they will be building a second factory in the USA for 2023. GM's battery plans are nothing to ignore.

30GWh can make 200,000 150 kWh vehicles.

30 Gigawatt hours = 30,000 Megawatt Hours = 30,000,000 Kilowatt Hours.

30,000,000 / 150 = 200,000.

Or 400,000 75 kWh vehicles.

A decent start, but your numbers are an order of magnitude off. Which is incidentally what GM needs to do, increase their plans by an order of magnitude. They need 300 Gigawatt hours online by 2025 or their sales are going to continue along their current downward spiral.

 

[rodmacpherson]

30GWh can make 200,000 150 kWh vehicles.

30 Gigawatt hours = 30,000 Megawatt Hours = 30,000,000 Kilowatt Hours.

30,000,000 / 150 = 200,000.

Or 400,000 75 kWh vehicles.

A decent start, but your numbers are an order of magnitude off. Which is incidentally what GM needs to do, increase their plans by an order of magnitude. They need 300 Gigawatt hours online by 2025 or their sales are going to continue along their current downward spiral.

You are correct. I must have failed to clear the calculator from another calculation. Not sure how that ended up at that number. I will fix the original post. It is still a lot more than most people think they are capable of on their own. everyone assumes they are buying whatever is leftover after Tesla cleans out the supply in China.

 

[Ogre]

You are correct. I must have failed to clear the calculator from another calculation. Not sure how that ended up at that number. I will fix the original post. It is still a lot more than most people think they are capable of on their own. everyone assumes they are buying whatever is leftover after Tesla cleans out the supply in China.

The supply of batteries and raw materials for batteries is going to get exceedingly tight. Tesla is talking about needing 3 Terrawatts of capacity. They are gobbling up supply as quickly as they can to meet that need.

If GM wants any chance of staying the same size through this transition they need that order of magnitude increase online within the next 4 years or so. It doesn't sound like that is in their plans. Every EV produced is sold months in advance, every day they lag on ramping up production is hundreds of lost sales.

GM is talking about selling off batteries for boats and things like that, that doesn't make any sense at all. They won't have enough batteries to keep up with demand for their own car production, let alone boats and other toys.

 

[Cybertruckee]

That's a whole lot of misinformation...

The expansion of the Nevada Gigafactory is primarily limited by the available workforce in the area.

I'm not sure what you know. My son when working with Tesla was involved in recruiting for Nevada Giga and he was not lacking in candidates on all skill levels. He was even approached by those in Fremont wanting to relocate as they'll have lower cost of living, bigger houses and shorter commute with the bonus of Lake Tahoe as their backyard and playground.

I used to work for a company that built a factory in Texas where the builder had to re-design machine controls to have pictures like that of McDo cash registers for operators. Got a traffic violation citation from a police in San Antonio and the write up is grossly mis-spelled even on simple word, lol.

 

[Crissa]

I'm not sure what you know. My son when...

That's argument from anecdote. We know some people moved. And at times, the Bay Area has actively shrank - but for the most part our metro continues to grow and factories that leave don't seem greatly reduced labor costs.

The argument is that it's inherently difficult to get exactly who you want when they could live near the beach where the weather is fine.

Tech labor is famously mobile - and expensive, as your anecdote about the officer who wasn't required to know spelling. But they also seem to like mild weather.

-Crissa

 

[Cybertruckee]

That's argument from anecdote. We know some people moved. And at times, the Bay Area has actively shrank - but for the most part our metro continues to grow and factories that leave don't seem greatly reduced labor costs.

The argument is that it's inherently difficult to get exactly who you want when they could live near the beach where the weather is fine.

Tech labor is famously mobile - and expensive, as your anecdote about the officer who wasn't required to know spelling. But they also seem to like mild weather.

-Crissa

Exactly, as the cerebral and insightful Kara Swisher said, these big names makes a big splash of moving out of California, when actually they surreptitiously kept their houses in the state and then comes back in a year or two.

 

[RVAC]

I'm not sure what you know. My son when working with Tesla was involved in recruiting for Nevada Giga and he was not lacking in candidates on all skill levels. He was even approached by those in Fremont wanting to relocate as they'll have lower cost of living, bigger houses and shorter commute with the bonus of Lake Tahoe as their backyard and playground.

I used to work for a company that built a factory in Texas where the builder had to re-design machine controls to have pictures like that of McDo cash registers for operators. Got a traffic violation citation from a police in San Antonio and the write up is grossly mis-spelled even on simple word, lol.

I think you may have misunderstood, I didn't mean it in a disparaging way. It's just a matter of population numbers, the Reno metro area is ~470k whilst the Austin metro area is ~2.28M.

I don't know when your son was working with Tesla but the job & housing market in the area has changed dramatically in recent years from what I know.

 

[Crissa]

We'll see what Texas is like when they can't widen the freeway more.

-Crissa

 

[Cybertruckee]

I think you may have misunderstood, I didn't mean it in a disparaging way. It's just a matter of population numbers, the Reno metro area is ~470k whilst the Austin metro area is ~2.28M.

I don't know when your son was working with Tesla but the job & housing market in the area has changed dramatically in recent years from what I know.

Actually, I was disputing your assertion that Reno, Carson, Tahoe... have limited hi tech human resource.

And my other argument is based on my background on financial and strategic planning where I would be against my own company having undue asset/depreciation burden of underutilized manufacturing facility and then adding some more.

But Elon is Elon, as those key Tesla executives who left would say.

 

[Crissa]

Actually, I was disputing your assertion that Reno, Carson, Tahoe... have limited hi tech human resource.

Alas, it is true, though. You have basically a very rural, remote area with less than half the population of San Jose - and an sixteenth of the population in the greater Bay Area.

-Crissa

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