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The environmental impact shouldn't be significantly more than any other hunk of metal of the same mass. And that has to be weighed against the fact that cost-efficient battery technology can make solar/wind viable and cost-effective relative to fossil fuel plants.

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Just as a thought experiment, compare the environmental impact of producing a hunk of steel, nickel, lead, gold, plutonium of the same mass. These are vastly different.

There's about $10,000 worth of work in a battery. It's not just a hunk of metal, it goes through a very complicated and energy intensive creation process.

The cost of the raw lithium is about 1% of the cost of the battery. It's engineering it in a very precise way that's expensive.

The battery costs $3000 - that is likely a cap on the cost of the work involved in producing it.

You'd think, but that depends on how many times you can sell the same battery. As others have said, it's plausible that this is a way for Tesla to make use of used car batteries.

I really doubt that's true, just because it's too early for it. There are approximately zero used Tesla batteries available right now. The fleet is just too new. Maybe in another ten years.

When the used batteries start piling up, it's best for tesla if this system is already in place. Entirely possible that this will be new and subsidized batteries initially. They will need to find a use for the old car batteries.

Could be, but they're jumping the gun a lot if that's the main idea. Tesla sales didn't really ramp up until 2014, and the batteries will probably last at least 10 years in the cars themselves.

In any case, they wouldn't need to subsidize these batteries. $350/kWh is a pretty decent price, and consistent with estimates of what they cost in Tesla's cars.

The large packs are priced at $250/kWh which I think is the real news. That means their cost is very likely under $200. Don't think the other car manuf are close to that.

Is the precision itself so energy-intensive, though?

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