Elon Musk: Gigafactory will take battery production 'to another level'

I listened to the Tesla conference call and Elon Musk said that he was calling lithium and nickel mines in Canada, and they were surprised to hear from an end user. The guy knows how to "think from first principles."

Why not Detroit? The labor force is there, the costs (real estate, labor, taxes) must be considerably in favor of something of this scale, and it's in line with the automotive industry. In that Michigan is hurting from the down slide of traditional auto manufacturers, I would think it would endear Tesla to the industry, or at least the workers.

Battery & battery replacement cost is a big piece of ammo for people who fight non-combustible automotive energy sources, so fantastic as always.

I'm interested to know what sort of contributions Musk & Co have been able to make with regard to battery efficiency and longevity in their time with the Tesla line. That, to me, is the big missing piece to take things from "sure, it could work" to "ok I'm ready to switch" for many.

I fear it might prove to be premature. Take for instance Japan Power Plus. If their battery tech proves to be true, then in a few years lithium batteries will be on the decline, and Elon will be caught holding the proverbial bag. Even if Japan Power Plus proves to be a bust, there is so much research going on in the field that it seems all too likely that some major new battery tech is around the corner. If Elon can't convert his Gigafactory to that new tech, he'll be hard pressed to recoup his $5 billion.

On a side note I hope the folks at a16 will stop using Tesla as a poster child for their belief that full stack startups are strategically better. Tesla and Musk are constantly working with other players in their ecosystem to accelerate growth.

I still do not see any advantage to skipping over Texas, even Toyota went there. They are simply more business friendly, let alone by far the largest deployment of wind turbines in the US. While many associate it with oil Texas never really sat still, energy is energy.

No one seems to be paying attention to the amount of toxic waste that will be generated from batteries after they are done with their usage. The toxin waste is much worse than letting CO2 in the air IMHO.