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Take an Inside Tour of the Gigafactory With Tesla's JB Straubel
With such enormous interest in the new mass-market Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle, it's imperative that Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] get their massive battery factory, the Gigafactory, constructed and fully operating on a tight timeline. In addition, Tesla's got significant demand for it's stationary storage products, the Powerwall and Powerpack, which also depend on heavily on the Gigafactory. To get a 'Gig' status update, Lauren Sommer from KQED Science* got an exclusive interview with JB Straubel, Tesla co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, and offers us a rare, inside look at progress.
Sommer writes, "Tesla's Gigafactory is a lot like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory: it's mysterious, it's big and few people have been inside... It's tucked away in a dusty valley, half an hour east of Reno. Driving up Electric Avenue, the factory is a stark contrast on the horizon. It's a sleek white building with a red stripe, almost like one of the company's cars." In her interview with Tesla's top brass, Straubel proclaims, "It's really hard to get a sense of scale. I mean, it's huge... I think it's on the order of around a hundred football fields." Straubel says, the Gigafactory is about scale. He believes scaling up could drive down the cost of batteries 30 percent or more. "We think we'll probably be able to exceed that," Straubel says. "Our vehicles can be more affordable. More people can have access to them."
