Lux Research has produced a decidedly bearish report on the much-lauded $4 billion battery cell factory being developed by Tesla Motors and Panasonic. Lux believes that the operartion will only deliver modest reductions in battery costs, will result in questionable margins for JV partner Panasonic and will likely produce more cells that will be required in Teslas e-cars.
The Gigafactory will only reduce the Tesla Model 3s cost by $2,800, not enough to sway the success of the planned lower-cost EV, said Cosmin Laslau, Lux Research Analyst and the lead author of the report.
Lux compares the Tesla/Panasonic cost reduction goals unfavorably to those of the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium which is targeting costs of $125/kWh by 2020. This compares to the goal of $274/kWh of Tesla. By contrast, Ford EV uses batteries costing $520/kWh currently.
Panasonic looks to come off second best as a result of the deal, writes Lux, as revenues of only $7 billion, on sales of 240,000 electric vehicles between 2017 and 2020, will deliver razor thin margins on its investment of $1.4 billion.
In a final bearish flourish, Lux has added that the Gigafactory is likely to result in 57% overcapacity. The analysts predict that Tesla Motors is likely to fall short of its plan to cell 500,000 electric cars, instead reaching sales of only 240,000 by 2020.
This 57% overcapacity is unlikely to be filled either by rival carmakers or Teslas own plans to sell some stationary battery packs to developers like SolarCity for residential photovoltaic integration and other uses, writes the reports authors.
The Tesla-Panasonic Battery Gigafactor: Analysis of Li-ion Cost Trends, EV Price Reduction and Capacity Utilization was released today.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.