Tesla's New Gigafactory: Stats in the Construction Permits | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's New Gigafactory: Stats in the Construction Permits

inverse.com

25 pointsthe_economist14 comments

> The factory itself is 5.8 million square-feet, which, if my math is correct, means building the damn thing is costing Tesla $55.6 million per square foot.

Your math is incorrect, $332.6 million divided by 5.8 million sqft is $55.60/sqft.

Yup. The author must have divided the number of square feet by the budget, dropping the units, and thought it was in millions of dollars. Oops.

Hope he's not a financial reporter.

Well, they fixed the math but now unfortunately the sentence is now ridiculous:

> if my math is correct, means building the damn thing is costing Tesla $55.6 per square foot. And that’s just the estimated cost of the contracts so far.

Based on a quick look[1] that's a totally average price per square foot for an industrial building. AMAZING.

[1]http://www.brownwegher.com/cost-of-construction-chart/

Some hilariously bad math right here:

> 9. The whole thing has already cost $322.6 million.

> The total cost of the contracts awarded is skyrocketing toward half a billion dollars (though it has a ways to go to meet that mark). The factory itself is 5.8 million square-feet, which, if my math is correct, means building the damn thing is costing Tesla $55.6 million per square foot. And that’s just the estimated cost of the contracts so far.

$322.6 million / 5.8 million sq-ft => $55.6 per sq-ft -_-

//edit all 3 of the first comments were about the math. Love you guys!

"The factory itself is 5.8 million square-feet, which, if my math is correct, means building the damn thing is costing Tesla $55.6 million per square foot."

Sigh, I hope this was a joke.

Really an poor article that just fails on too many levels.

That it should have sufficient solar power to drive production is commendable but I am curious if they are going to have some onsite storage mechanism as I assume this is a 24x7 facility.

The amount of materials that have to be brought in by rail road would a statistic I would find mind boggling. How much water does the plant consume?

It is a battery factory. They will definitely have some on-site storage mechanism. :)

plus Musk wants to buy solarcity so planning to build the power system internally. I wonder if they have taken into account the total covering of the giga factory roof with solar panlels. Actually might produce more electricity than they need even if they have storage system for 24hr usage

I doubt it. They will have to charge the batteries they produce, which will be a lot of energy going out the door.

>batteries, which are more efficient at lower temperatures.

Shouldn't that read less efficient?

Taken in the context of the article, I believe they're talking about how the chiller room will be used to develop batteries that are more efficient at lower temperatures.

This is a LOT of debt to put on the balance sheet of what is (still) a young company facing new entrants into the luxury-electric vehicle market segment.

The thing though is Tesla is also aiming at the energy storage part of the market with has the potential to be much larger.

Assuming their battery technology is competitive there's going to be no shortage of companies interested in their batteries.

True there is a huge potential for growth in the battery market, the electric car market is likely to grow 10X in five to ten years. From 1% to 10% of total cars produced. If Tesla is profitable with the factory in Nevada, then they are setup to build more factories in other locations as well. Quick estimation, 10 million electric cars per year, $5000 per car in batteries, $50 billion annual sales.

Also the Tesla Model 3 at $35k (before tax incentives, etc) is barely in luxury vehicle category.

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