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Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

The number for Tesla is outdated. 35 GWh was initial plan.

The current estimate 150 GWh by 2020 (https://insideevs.com/elon-musk-says-gigafactory-output-coul...).

Which is kind of needed to build as many cars as they want.

Only half of batteries will go to cars (the other half to residential powerpacks and commercial deployments like the one in Australia) which is 75 GWh.

At average 75 kWh batter per car, it's just enough to build 1 million Tesla 3 cars a year, which is not that much and well within Tesla's projections by 2020.

That doesn't include even more battery hungry Tesla trucks and roadsters and S and X, which is why it's safe to say that before 2020 Tesla will have to start building another Gigafactory to deliver the cars they've already promised.

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The next Tesla giga factory might even be in China or India instead of the US they already plan to build a car factory in China. Depends on the capacity utilization if all the batteries produced in the US can be used in NA and Europe it would make better sense to build another giga factory in China or India for the Asian market. Toyota so far has been pro hydrogen instead of pure electric but that has changed in the last few months to me once Toyota goes all in on electric the world will move to electric cars a lot quicker than most are expecting.

> "once Toyota goes all in on electric the world will move to electric cars a lot quicker than most are expecting."

I don't know what the car market is like where you live, but where I live the majority of people only buy used cars (because of the lower cost). This is possible because of a surplus in supply of once-new cars. If we're going to get past the tipping point for electric cars, I'd suggest we'd need to see one of three things happen:

1. New electric cars sold at a price point that can compete with the used car market.

2. An increase in popularity in electric car conversions (whether DIY or done by a professional).

3. Wait until the early electric car models trickle down to the used car market.

4. Air pollution regulations in cities make owning ICE car more expensive or banning them outright.

electric cars depreciate ridiculously fast right now. I can buy a couple year old leaf with really low miles for $5000 right now in seattle, and i have tons of choices. Even the up-range models from the past years are under 10k. This also applies to up-market stuff like the I3, etc.

We haven't seen how this will hit say, stuff like the bolt, but basically everyone but tesla got hit was outrageous depreciation.

If that keeps up, electric cars could become a similar price choice for a lot of people who don't need to drive all that far, even if they're the earlier low-range models. This could be further incentivized by stuff like free HOV access and free charging some places a lot of locations enjoy.

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