[PhantomPholly]

The EU is building its own Gigafactory. This, kids, is the beginning of the "Early Adopter Phase" of the technology adoption lifecycle.

Edit: Some excellent supporting information in this article. They predict EVs to be cheaper by 2026 (that prediction varies depending on how much range you think a vehicle must have), and have a nice chart showing projections for the crossover:

 

[Karter2]

Hmm ?
VW have said they think 40 new Giga factory scale battery plants will be needed by 2025. !
http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170710/COPY/307149996/industry-needs-40-gigafactories-vw-says

EHRA-LESSIEN, Germany — A massive shortage of lithium ion battery cells could plague the global car industry in the coming decade if capacity equivalent to 40 Tesla gigafactories is not added by 2025, according to estimates from Volkswagen Group.

 

[PhantomPholly]

Hmm ?
VW have said they think 40 new Giga factory scale battery plants will be needed by 2025. !
http://europe.autonews.com/article/20170710/COPY/307149996/industry-needs-40-gigafactories-vw-says

Mathematically that is correct, and although it sounds daunting it is entirely possible.

24M's promise is to build factories which produce the same volume of storage as a $1 billion plant today for only about $12 million, or just a tad over 1% of the current startup costs. Their first plant is scheduled to come online this year. Once they work out the bugs, it should be possible to build the equivalent of 100 Tesla gigafactories for the price of the original Tesla gigafactory - and to do so in the span of only a few years.

Aquion hoped to do something similar, but they ran into the problem that their performance per dollar simply wasn't competitive with the advances that occurred in LiIon during the time from which they developed their technology until they brought it into production. 24M's tech is actually slightly better than most current LiIon, so it should still be cost competitive in the next 5-10 years.

 

[PhantomPholly]

24M has delivered production batteries already.

 

[Karter2]

That article is near a year old, and there is a deathly silence in the media since then regarding 24M.
...except for this little local news item..

Australia’s first battery storage “gigafactory” is likely to be built in Darwin, with a new consortium planing to establish a large-scale lithium-ion manufacturing plant by the end of 2018.

Energy Renaissance, a company backed by engineering group UGL (now owned by CIMIC) says the first phase of the $100 million plant will create four distinct production lines, and will target niche utility and industrial scale markets in Australia and Asia.

Energy Renaissance is partnering with US battery storage company 24M, .......

http://reneweconomy.com.au/battery-storage-gigafactory-planned-darwin-2018/

 

[PhantomPholly]

That article is near a year old, and there is a deathly silence in the media since then regarding 24M.
...except for this little local news item..

http://reneweconomy.com.au/battery-storage-gigafactory-planned-darwin-2018/

Excellent find - and here is a recent (last month) news article from Energy Renaissance's website.

More articles here.

This is actually much faster progress than I had expected - and once the first factories have worked out the kinks, I expect future factories to spring up much more rapidly.

 

[PhantomPholly]

Follow-up. Another battery pursued by the same power company was a new chemistry from Nissan. However, we can assume that Nissan would plan on making traditional batteries from their new chemistry.

If a new silicon battery chemistry works and they apply the 24M manufacturing model, it could be another doubling of capacity for the same price in the next few years. Assuming "factory" startup cost of only $25 million (their initial plant is actually 4 manufacturing lines @ $100 million), as contrasted with $1 billion new-plant pricetag for traditional battery plants, I would not be a bit surprised if we didn't start seeing multiple plant openings per month at some point.

 

[Karter2]

And another Giga factory for Australia...
This time with EV manufacture combined also !
http://www.manmonthly.com.au/produce-electric-vehicles-australia

CEO of startup A2emCo, Michael Molitor, has revealed that the company aims to produce almost completely Australian made, fully autonomous vehicles by 2020.

According to Molitor, the vehicle’s prototype is already designed, with six evaluation prototypes being built overall. While these prototypes are being built overseas, Molitor intends to move production to Australia.

“We’re looking at Q4 2019, Q1 2020, we’ll have vehicles on the road in Australia. And we like to under-promise and over deliver, so it may be better than that,” he told RenewEconomy.

In order to power these vehicles, A2emCo wants to build an energy storage gigafactory, much like the one recently built by Tesla. Molitor has already consulted with Peter Carlsson, Tesla’s former head of operations who built the company’s gigafactory in Nevada, Las Vegas.

 

[PhantomPholly]

And another Giga factory for Australia...
This time with EV manufacture combined also !
http://www.manmonthly.com.au/produce-electric-vehicles-australia

That might make sense - 24M is not claiming their batteries are suitable for vehicles. Perhaps the goo inside get scrambled with repeated motion.

 

[Karter2]

Australia is unlikely to be a big EV manufacturing location.....we dont even have a single ICE car manufacturer in the country now, when we used to have most of the 5-6 major names with production plants.
Labour costs are too high. And the market is too small.
No, the market for batteries in Australia will be for domestic Solar storage, Grid scale storage, and any major industrial storage applications.

 

[PhantomPholly]

24 million is not a tiny market. Too, Australia's import taxes might make the cost attractive despite high labor costs. In any event, it looks like someone thinks it is worthwhile, so we can get the popcorn until it has clearly succeeded or failed...