Tesla Austin

john_pifer said:
I’m still waiting on Tesla to come out and announce that the “Cybertruck” was a joke, and then release the ACTUAL Cybertruck.
Click to expand...
The way I see it, Cyber Truck was designed to make the SpaceX rocket cheaper. It uses the same alloy of the SpaceX rocket and then use it to make that weird shape (because it is hard to stamp), and because of that weird shape they might as well make it unibody.

This sort of make building the Truck near SpaceX rocket launch pad a lot of senses. This other than the tax reason is why IMO they move the truck production and build a giga factory there.
 
PandaBear said:
The way I see it, Cyber Truck was designed to make the SpaceX rocket cheaper. It uses the same alloy of the SpaceX rocket and then use it to make that weird shape (because it is hard to stamp), and because of that weird shape they might as well make it unibody.

This sort of make building the Truck near SpaceX rocket launch pad a lot of senses. This other than the tax reason is why IMO they move the truck production and build a giga factory there.
Click to expand...
When I first heard of the body and glass … military use crossed my mind … stealth ?
Found this now

AEE08637-F273-4232-92DF-7D5C8841CA44.webp
 
JeffKeryk said:
So when do I pick up my butt-ugly Cybertruk? Time's a wastin'....
Click to expand...
I’m sticking with a short life prediction like the civilian Hummer … then they produce something sharp - and let that F117A on wheels go military … 😷

Plus, you know a truck gotta have a big “grill”

803CD79B-EA50-48F9-842A-161255C382AF.webp
 
Last edited:
In Fremont, before production started, they fired up each mfg line and made 20 (maybe 200?) cars with regular line workers. Those cars are the final test before production; they are not sold. I believe Giga Texas is past this; they are down to some final paperwork.
Currently, Fremont's annual capacity is about 600K vehicles; There are 10,000 direct employees.
Giga Austin, once ramped, will have well over 1M annual capacity, will provide 20K direct and 100K indirect jobs. Tesla has invested $1.1B and will invest about $10B in Austin. I think Giga Texas is expected to deliver about 450K Model Ys this year.
I understand the solar panels are being installed; Austin will be primarily solar powered.
This factory is huge...
1643165975394.png

Tesla is a great American company. Amazing. America is leading the world after having ceeded so much over the past 50 years.
 
Last edited:
JeffKeryk said:
In Fremont, before production started, they fired up each mfg line and made 20 (maybe 200?) cars with regular line workers. Those cars are the final test before production; they are not sold. I believe Giga Texas is past this; they are down to some final paperwork.
Currently, Fremont's annual capacity is about 600K vehicles; There are 10,000 direct employees.
Giga Austin, once ramped, will have well over 1M annual capacity, will provide 20K direct and 100K indirect jobs. Tesla has invested $1.1B and will invest about $10B in Austin. I think Giga Texas is expected to deliver about 450K Model Ys this year.
I understand the solar panels are being installed; Austin will be primarily solar powered.
This factory is huge...
View attachment 86123
Tesla is a great American company. Amazing. America is leading the world after having ceeded so much over the past 50 years.
Click to expand...
I'd be highly suspect of the plant being primarily powered by solar. I assume it will run 24/7, so there will be a significant period of time where all the power comes from the grid.

This study for example, gives us some data:
An Empirical Study of the Energy Consumption in Automotive Assembly

The total energy consumed during the complete life cycle of a car can be summarized into four main stages: Raw material processing, car manufacturing, car use and car recovery (Fig. 1). According to Bhaskar et al. [15], the manufacturing of a car (Press, body, paint and assembly shops) may consume up to 700kwh/vehicle. This energy cost is about 9-12% of the total manufacturing cost.
Click to expand...

There's a table on the following page.

So, let's be kind with Tesla and assume they are more efficient than say VW and can produce a car with 500kWh/vehicle. 1 million vehicles is 500GWh; 1/2 a TWh.


Also, as an aside, these panels are apparently coming from China:
https://cnevpost.com/2022/01/05/tesla-giga-austin-reportedly-using-solar-panels-from-chinas-longi/

And another source:
https://insideevs.com/news/559094/tesla-giga-texas-opening-soon/

So, I google maps measured the building, I'm getting 419,000 square meters if every inch of the roof is covered in solar:
Screen Shot 2022-01-25 at 10.41.31 PM.webp


So, a 1.6square meter solar panel is 265W, so we get 165W per square meter. This yields 69 million watts; 69,457kW; 69MW of capacity.

Using the figures from here:
https://wellssolar.com/news/solar-farms-in-texas/

They get an annual capacity factor of 28%. But this is a dedicated solar farm, which will have better panel angle than the roof. So, let's go with 25% CF. Probably still too generous, but hey, why not?

So, 69MW at 25% CF gives us 151,110MWh/year; 151GWh. We've determined earlier that our plant demand could be 500GWh, so the solar panels might provide ~30% of the plant's power over the course of a year. And again, that's being generous with CF.

The plant will likely produce excess power during the middle of the day, probably able to export that power to the grid, while pulling power off the grid during the morning/evening and night.

Now, the question will be whether they directly use the grid or if they have their own gas cogen facility, which I understood was the direction they went in Germany and what a lot of large industrial customers do, because it's generally cheaper.
 
JeffKeryk said:
Musk did say if the Cybertruck fails he will change over to a more conventional design.
Of course he says lotsa things...
Click to expand...
By the time if Cybertruck fails he would have gotten a free loan for so many years, inflated away the interest, and the alloy also used by SpaceX already reached economy of scale for the rocket need. It's not like he has any emotional attachment to the design.
 
Last edited:
OVERKILL said:
I'd be highly suspect of the plant being primarily powered by solar. I assume it will run 24/7, so there will be a significant period of time where all the power comes from the grid.

This study for example, gives us some data:
An Empirical Study of the Energy Consumption in Automotive Assembly



There's a table on the following page.

So, let's be kind with Tesla and assume they are more efficient than say VW and can produce a car with 500kWh/vehicle. 1 million vehicles is 500GWh; 1/2 a TWh.


Also, as an aside, these panels are apparently coming from China:
https://cnevpost.com/2022/01/05/tesla-giga-austin-reportedly-using-solar-panels-from-chinas-longi/

And another source:
https://insideevs.com/news/559094/tesla-giga-texas-opening-soon/

So, I google maps measured the building, I'm getting 419,000 square meters if every inch of the roof is covered in solar:
View attachment 86128

So, a 1.6square meter solar panel is 265W, so we get 165W per square meter. This yields 69 million watts; 69,457kW; 69MW of capacity.

Using the figures from here:
https://wellssolar.com/news/solar-farms-in-texas/

They get an annual capacity factor of 28%. But this is a dedicated solar farm, which will have better panel angle than the roof. So, let's go with 25% CF. Probably still too generous, but hey, why not?

So, 69MW at 25% CF gives us 151,110MWh/year; 151GWh. We've determined earlier that our plant demand could be 500GWh, so the solar panels might provide ~30% of the plant's power over the course of a year. And again, that's being generous with CF.

The plant will likely produce excess power during the middle of the day, probably able to export that power to the grid, while pulling power off the grid during the morning/evening and night.

Now, the question will be whether they directly use the grid or if they have their own gas cogen facility, which I understood was the direction they went in Germany and what a lot of large industrial customers do, because it's generally cheaper.
Click to expand...
Most "power by renewable" companies are just buying and selling to hedge / swap credits around. So in a nutshell if you have a new solar farm in Arizona, you buy up the production regardless of cost, dump them to the grid as "non renewable", then you buy dirty power next to your datacenter (and maybe just 1 hop to the grid in a Y), you can then claim that your data center is "renewable powered". Don't take this too seriously. The only thing matters is the duck curve.
 
PandaBear said:
Most "power by renewable" companies are just buying and selling to hedge / swap credits around. So in a nutshell if you have a new solar farm in Arizona, you buy up the production regardless of cost, dump them to the grid as "non renewable", then you buy dirty power next to your datacenter (and maybe just 1 hop to the grid in a Y), you can then claim that your data center is "renewable powered". Don't take this too seriously. The only thing matters is the duck curve.
Click to expand...
Oh yes, I'm WELL aware of how REC's work, but in this specific case it was claimed that the panels on the roof could provide most of the power to the factory, which is why I decided to take the time to show the work on why that's not happening.
 
OVERKILL said:
Oh yes, I'm WELL aware of how REC's work, but in this specific case it was claimed that the panels on the roof could provide most of the power to the factory, which is why I decided to take the time to show the work on why that's not happening.
Click to expand...
@OVERKILL respectfully, that's not exactly what I said. I said the primary source but I did not say the roof panels were the only panels.
Based on what I have read, Tesla has not disclosed the size and spec of the final system.
This is similar to Giga Nevada. Will solar be the primary source? I guess time will tell.
But your calculations show that the installation would be substantial.
Giga Nevada already features a 3.2 MW system despite being only partially complete.
My understanding is Tesla pulled back on earlier expectations.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

y_p_w
New Trader Joe’s opens across the street from existing location. Both staying open.
2
Replies
38
Views
573
y_p_w
Back
Top Bottom