Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has seemingly never-ending ambitions for the electric car manufacturer recently announcing that his company could create its very own “giga factory” to produce its own lithium ion batteries.
Musk believes such a facility may be necessary for the next-generation Tesla pinned to be more affordable than the Model S and to be sold around the world, because there simply aren’t enough lithium-ion battery factories in the world to supply the upcoming Generation III Tesla.
What’s more, Musk went as far as to say that Tesla could eventually sell 500,000 cars annually and that the biggest hurdle preventing the company from reaching such a goal is not finding customers, but finding enough batteries.
Consequently, Musk said, “If we are to produce 500,000 vehicles a year… we need cell capacity commensurate, which is bigger than all lithium- ion production today.”
This potential factory could be built somewhere in North America and would see the raw materials such as nickel, cobalt, aluminium and lithium coming in one end while battery packs will ship out the other end. This factory could be so big in fact that it would be “something comparable to all lithium ion production in the world, in one factory”.
Whether or not you’re a fan of electric vehicles and with hydrogen fuel cells seemingly not progressing, electric cars are shaping up to be the future.
[Via The Wall Street Journal]