Tesla Gigafactory Grand Opening
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (1)
Transcript
0:00Elon MuskWe could, like, maybe take a few questions from the audience. Sure. Like, yeah, right now. Right now we have no. Right now we have about a thousand people working on site.
0:16Elon MuskAnd with the expansion to 150 gigawatt hours, we expect there will be some sort of efficiency that that's gained. But. But it's still probably on the order of 10,000 people working on that.
0:33Elon MuskYeah.
0:38JB StraubelAll the. All the power walls and power packs that we're sending out are built right here today. So that's operational in the building behind you.
0:48Elon MuskSorry. Oh, yeah. So recycling. Good point. I should have mentioned. So we've actually. We'll have recycling at the gigafactory itself. So all battery packs will be recycled, which actually makes a lot of sense because this is a real efficient way to recycle it because we know what the module looks like.
1:07Elon MuskSo we can actually design the recycling machines that are exactly optimized for the battery pack. Because we're not trying to recycle any arbitrary battery pack. We're recycling a known battery pack.
1:17Elon MuskSo we can be really precise about the recycling.
1:20JB StraubelYeah,
1:24JB StraubelAnd recycling is really awesome because most people don't think about this, but a lithium battery, when we build it, and even if you. After you use it for 15 or 20 years, at the end of that time, all of the materials that we built into the battery are still in there.
1:38JB StraubelNone of them have been dispersed into the environment. We didn't burn any of them. All the metals, all of the interesting materials are still there. And today, when we make a new battery, materials are the most expensive part of that whole process.
1:50JB StraubelSo if we can get that same batch of materials back into the factory for almost no cost, the cost of transporting it there, it's a chance to reduce the whole materials budget on that new cell massively.
2:03JB StraubelSo that's kind of what the future holds for recycling.
2:12Elon MuskAnd I should mention also that when the gigafactory factory is fully operational, it will be also completely operated on sustainable energy. So we're using geothermal energy or geothermal for climate control, and then wind, which obviously has to be brought in from other places, and then solar on the roof.
2:32Elon MuskAnd the combination of the wind, geothermal and solar will completely power the gigafactory. So,
2:49Elon MuskYeah, so a question is like, what about putting plants in other parts of the world? It's definitely going to make sense to have at least a gigafactory in every continent because otherwise the logistics cost and the energy taken to transport cars halfway around the world is quite high.
3:08Elon MuskSo we'll kind of reach saturation here. And then we're going to establish a factory in Europe and a factory in Asia, well, in China and perhaps in other parts of Asia as well.
3:21Elon MuskSo. So I think it's going to make a lot of sense to localize the production to the demand. Sherwin, back there, what percentage of the output would be for ARLA versus solar?
3:36Elon MuskYeah. So what percentage of the output is likely to be for cars versus for stationary storage batteries? In the beginning, I think it's probably going to be on the order of like roughly a third stationary storage, something like that called 30, 35%.
3:54Elon MuskBut over time, I think probably they will roughly equalize. There'll be roughly about as much as many batteries for stationary storage as there are for cars. And if you do this sort of really overarching math of like, what is it, what's.
4:08Elon MuskWhat's needed at a very high level to transition the world to a sustainable energy scenario, that that about works out. You need about as much, you need about as much battery capacity in cars as you do in stationary storage.
4:24Elon MuskI'd encourage. Yeah, well, teleportation, Right. Model three is going well. I'm pretty happy with how it's going. I'm really excited by the approach that the Tesla engineering team is taking to production.
4:43Elon MuskI think people have really taken it to heart within Tesla that it's actually even more important to design the factory than it is to design the product itself. This is extremely important for making an affordable, high quality car in volume.
5:00Elon MuskAnd so I'm actually feeling really, really optimistic about it. I mean, we completed design a couple weeks ago, so it's. Design is. Yeah, so design is done. Usually as you do more testing, there's some tweaks required, but we are benefiting from a lot of experience with the Model S and X.
5:22Elon MuskSo I'm feeling very good about it.
5:25JB StraubelYeah, there's some really cool innovations. We can't talk about all the stuff inside of it, but it is definitely a third generation of a lot of the components and a lot of the systems that we designed originally for Roadster and then Model S and X.
5:38JB StraubelSo it's come a long way.
5:41Elon MuskAll right, I'll just do a few more questions because I think this could go on for a while. All right. Yeah, sure. Oh, hey, Norway. Love Norway.
5:55Elon MuskPardon me? Chips for recycling. Oh, ship.
6:01JB StraubelOh.
6:01Elon MuskOh, it's like chips. You mean ships? Ships, yes. So there's definitely, I mean, ultimately all, you know, all forms of terrestrial transport will go electric. I don't currently anticipate Tesla doing ships but if someone else doesn't do.
6:27Elon MuskSure, yeah. So, yeah, the lithium question comes up quite a bit. The nice thing about lithium is it's very plentiful. So lithium is the third most common element in, in the universe, first being hydrogen, second being helium.
6:47Elon MuskNow the hydrogen is all bound up in water on Earth, water and hydrocarbons. So you don't find naturally occurring hydrogen on Earth. And then the helium, being a noble gas, just doesn't combine with anything and basically floats away.
7:03Elon MuskBut lithium is a metal and does not float away. So there's an enormous amount of lithium in almost any salty solution. Some amount of lithium. So enormous amounts of lithium in the ocean, any kind of dried lake bed where there was a salt lake that dried long ago, there will be enormous amounts of lithium.
7:23Elon MuskSo the, the actual amount of lithium in the world is. Is far in excess of what's needed for electrification or transport. Lithium only constitutes about 2% of the. The battery.
7:34Elon MuskSo it's, it's, it's. It's called lithium ion, but it's sort of the active ingredient. But it's only about 2% of the battery.
7:44JB StraubelYeah. So there's plenty of lithium to convert every car in the world to electric. That won't be a constraint at all. And even after that's done, we can start recycling it.
7:53JB StraubelSo we won't keep using lithium. It's not like oil or something like that. I've heard a lot of those comparisons, like peak lithium, which is kind of nonsense because once you build this fleet of electric cars, you.
8:04JB StraubelYou don't need any more of it. It's just. You can just keep reusing it and reprocessing it forever.
8:12Elon MuskWell, just a couple more questions. Forklift batteries. Well, we do need to focus, so we won't be doing forklift batteries in the short term because there's just. We need to kind of stay focused on the Model 3, particularly in the short term, and then probably a compact SUV is the next priority.
8:37Elon MuskWe have an interesting concept for creating kind of like a minibus on the Model X platform. And it's actually quite surprising how many people you can get on a Model X if you make it sort of look a bit like a little bus.
8:53Elon MuskSo. But focus is critical because there's so many things that could be done. But if we don't focus, then it puts risk that we won't get anything done.
9:08Elon MuskI think in terms of how can you help, I think just sort of spread the message. And, you know, that's like. I mean, I know you guys think Global warming is real.
9:16Elon MuskBut the crazy thing is like a lot of people out there don't. It blows my mind. And you know, and there's quite, there's a nonstop propaganda campaign from the Fox fossil fuel industry because you kind of, I mean they're just defending themselves.
9:32Elon MuskSo it's kind of what you, what you'd expect. But, but they just, it's non stop and they have like a thousand times more money than we do. So this is, I mean this revolution is going to come from the people that's, it's, you know, so,
9:54Elon MuskSo I just like, you know, fight for propaganda. Like that's the, Things are going to get real nutty with the US election and all that, man.
10:08Elon MuskAll right, we'll take one more.
10:15Elon MuskNext roadster. Well, we'd love to do the next roadster, but we got to fake. We got to focus on affordable mass market cars. I would love to do the next Road Oyster.
10:26Elon MuskAre you kidding me? Of course. But that's, that's got to be dessert. You know, we, there's, there's a lot
10:35JB Straubelof, a lot of stuff to do already on our plate, but I think, I think we better wrap it up with that. So thank you guys very much.
10:42Elon MuskThis is, thank you very much. We really appreciate.