Tesla has some competition. A Gigawatt Battery Factory is Coming to New York

1 GWh lithium-ion battery factory is coming to New York

One company's loss is another's opportunity. At the end of January, a consortium of companies seeking to establish battery production in the New York bought up the assets of the former Alevo USA Inc. manufacturing facility in Concord, North Carolina, for a total price of $5 million.

 From article, (At the end of January, a consortium of companies seeking to establish battery production in the New York bought up the assets of the former Alevo USA Inc. manufacturing facility in Concord, North Carolina, for a total price of $5 million.

According to Australia’s Magnis Resources, which has partnered with New York battery technology company C4V and several other companies in the Imperium3 New York (IM3NY) consortium, over $200 million was initially invested in these “near-new” manufacturing assets. The equipment includes everything from slurry making to cell assembly, formation and even testing.

IM3NY has long been planning to build a lithium-ion battery plant in Broome County, New York, and is now in the process of moving this equipment there. Magnis and C4V are co-investing in the property, and Magnis has recently raised $5 million to increase its share in the partnership.

The New York plant is planned to have the capacity to produce of 1 gigawatt-hour (GWh) of batteries annually, which Magnis notes is a higher volume than Alevo was producing but is possible with the assets that it purchased. Alevo had produced a novel non-flammable lithium-ion battery based on inorganic materials, but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last August.

“The previous manufacturers constrained production to bespoke lithium-ion batteries that had limited commercial appeal, while the facility itself was equipped to manufacture large volume batteries for the auto industry or power walls for home usage which are now growing in demand,” notes the company in a press statement.

“The IM3NY team thoroughly reviewed the technology and confirmed the procured plant can easily and cost-effectively be calibrated for such large volume manufacturing runs.”

This will actually be a reduction from IM3NY’s earlier plans for a 3GWh factory; however Mangis notes that the 1GWh factory is at a much lower capital cost. The company says that re-location is beginning “immediately”, with the first battery production planned for the first half of 2019.

The company says that the new factory will incorporate IM3NY’s “materials and IP processing technologies”. It will also introduce additional cylindrical battery production.)

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Daimlers new Electric Truck Programs may be very far behind Tesla's Semi.

Tesla Semi defies laws of physics and is passing us by if true, says Daimler's head of trucks

Daimler has several electric truck programs in the works and today it revealed the latest progress on the eActros heavy-duty electric trucks. During the event, an executive compared the vehicle to the Tesla Semi and cast doubts about Tesla delivering on its promises.

From article, (Daimler has several electric truck programs in the works and today it revealed the latest progress on the eActros heavy-duty electric trucks.

During the event, an executive compared the vehicle to the Tesla Semi and cast doubts about Tesla delivering on its promises.

 The German truck manufacturer already unveiled the FUSO eCanter program, a small electric truck meant for urban routes with a range of only 100 kilometers (62 miles) and a load capacity up to three and a half tons, and a bigger all-electric eTruck, which has a 26 ton capacity, a massive 212 kWh battery pack, and ~125 miles of range.

They are now using a similar powertrain as the one in the bigger truck concept for the new eActros electric truck. Today, they announced that they delivered the first 10 trucks to customers for operational testing until the planned production in 2021.

Now, the truck doesn’t compare favorably to Tesla’s electric semi truck prototypes, which the company claims can travel up to 500 miles with a 80,000-lb full capacity.

At the launch event for the eActros test fleet today, Daimler’s head of trucks, Martin Daum, told reporters that he has doubts about Tesla achieving those specs (via Bloomberg):

“If Tesla really delivers on this promise, we’ll obviously buy two trucks — one to take apart and one to test because if that happens, something has passed us by. But for now, the same laws of physics apply in Germany and in California.”

Tesla has also been testing its electric semi prototypes with customers and last year, a Tesla Semi test program partner said that performance specs are for real – though they couldn’t confirm all of them.

The California automaker says that Tesla Semi will go into production as soon as next year.)

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PC, and MAC computer sellers? Be afraid, very afraid. The old thinking was you had to upgrade to a new computer to keep up with new Computer programs, and games. Not Any More!

Shadow virtualizes a high-end gaming PC on your desktop clunker

The Shadow system has already found widespread adoption throughout France and most recently made its US debut at CES last month. The idea is relatively simple: instead of having to buy, maintain and upgrade your own hardware, you pay Blade a monthly subscription to use theirs.

From article, (In the early days of computing, local storage and processing weren't actually a thing. Instead, your individual computer acted as a terminal, pulling data from a central processing server. Well, the French startup Blade likes it that way and has released a similar system but with a 21st-century twist. Its cloud-computing system, dubbed Shadow, can impart the performance of a $2,000 high-end gaming rig onto any internet-connected device with a screen. And now the company is bringing Shadow to California.

The Shadow system has already found widespread adoption throughout France and most recently made its US debut at CES last month. The idea is relatively simple: instead of having to buy, maintain and upgrade your own hardware, you pay Blade a monthly subscription to use theirs. It's a concept similar to what NVIDIA did with its GeForce NOW cloud service, Parsec or HP's Omen PCs, save for the fact that those three are dedicated to gaming while Shadow enables users to run everything from Steam to Photoshop to a host of other business-related applications.

Shadow will cost you $35 a month with a year-long contract, $40 a month with a three-month commitment, or $50 to use it for a month with no strings attached. That's a pretty hefty fee for the ability to remotely rent someone else's computer.

 Shadow launches on February 21st in California and will expand throughout the continental US by summer of 2018 as the company completes construction on seven server farms localized throughout the nation.)

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