How The Electric Car will be made Affordable

Me, "The gigafactory is the most impressive feat of battery investment to be done in the U.S. ever. It shows that Tesla understands it needs to mass produce Lithium Ion batteries, or whatever form of battery dominates in the next couple of years, so, that it has a dedicated supply for its electric car production. There are a lot of people that are not sure if Tesla is up to the task of building bhetween 80,000's to 500,000's of cars a year. But this investment in battery manufacturing should be looked at as a form of determination to do just that.
 There is a market for electric cars. It just needs to get a foothold in the car industry to see its promising potential. Right now you have early adopters and status carvers but this will lead to the masses buying them too. Just remember how Ford started out. It's cars were all put together one at a time by hand. Then mass production was introduced and Ford's cars became very affordable. That's where we are now the early stage. The gigafactory is the start of the mass produced electric car phenomenon."



From article, "Gigafactory Battery-cell production begins"
The start of Tesla Gigafactory battery mass production is a huge milestone in Tesla’s quest to electrify transportation, and it brings to America a manufacturing industry—battery cells—that’s long been dominated by China, Japan, and South Korea. More than 2,900 people are already working at the 4.9 million square-foot facility, and another 4,000 jobs (including temporary construction work) will be added this year through the partnership between Tesla and Panasonic. 

By 2018, the Gigafactory, which is less than a third complete, will double the world’s production capacity for lithium-ion batteries and employ 6,500 full-time Reno-based workers, according to a new hiring forecast from Tesla. The company’s shares, having touched their highest point since August, closed up $10 at $226.99 in New York trading. 
For Tesla to succeed, battery production is crucial—there simply aren’t enough lithium-ion batteries being made anywhere for Tesla to achieve its goal of 500,000 Model 3 sales by 2018. Equally problematic is the fact that current market prices are too high for the $35,000 car to be profitable. Tesla took its unprecedented leap into the desert in the hope that the massive scale of the $5 billion Gigafactory would drive down costs, and demand would arrive just in time to keep it all afloat.

Batteries are the limiting factor for electric cars, but few automakers have made a similar commitment to producing them, choosing instead to let suppliers like LG Chem and Samsung shoulder the risk. In 2015, 88 percent of the global lithium ion cell manufacturing took place in China, Japan, and South Korea, according to a report by the Clean Energy Manufacturing Analysis Center.