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.

Progress comes to Electric Car Operation and Charging

Me, "The progress of electric cars is advancing, with it new charging stations and less battery charging times. 

Electric cars are easier to fix because they have less moving parts. 

Where as a gasoline car has many parts that can leave you scratching your head and forcing you to take it to a repair station, an electric car has a battery, and an electric motor. (Obviously there are more things that go into a car then just its engine and power source, ex. radio, windshield wipers, a/c and heat.) But fixing an electric car is easier to do. The only draw back is replacing the battery when it reaches the end of its life; that could be expensive. But even that can be looked at as a, (do you want a new car with a new battery or your used car with a new battery mentality. The problem has always been charging times. People want to be on the move, not sitting around waiting to be on the move. The idea of ExpressPlus, to be able to scale up to handle faster charging as electric cars are able to handle faster charges is as important to how fast a gasoline car can fill up. It has always been better to be as convenient to the customer as possible without drawing their wrath.

If you have more electric car charging stations, with faster charging rates, even though an electric car may cost more, you win out over car life servicing than for a gasoline car. It comes down to more parts that can break or less. Which do you prefer? Are gasoline cars going away tomorrow? No. But electric cars have a lot more positives going for them now."

From article. "ChargePoint's New Stations Promise Fast Charge In Minutes For Your Electric Car"

(Electric vehicles are changing rapidly, with 200-mile-plus range models equipped with bigger batteries set to proliferate in the coming years. The advantage of ExpressPlus, Romano said, is that it's flexible and scalable: It can charge today's electric vehicles, like the Chevrolet Bolt EV, at their maximum rate, but can be easily upgraded to handle the charging requirements of next-generation plug-in vehicles, including electric buses and trucks.

Instead of having to rip out equipment that quickly becomes obsolete, or over-investing in high-power chargers that won't be fully utilized for a few years, ChargePoint designed ExpressPlus as a modular system that can grow to support a range of 200 volts to 1000 volts, and can serve up to a megawatt across as many as eight charging stations, with each station capable of charging from 50 kilowatts to 400 kilowatts.)