AndyH said:
GRA said:
Andy, that assumes that there will be absolutely no hiccups anywhere in any of those processes, which is hardly realistic. Tesla has been consistently late and/or overbudget on every one of their cars and projects; why would you think that any of the other companies, especially the extractive ones, will proceed smoothly uninterrupted by the real world? ISTR that the Keystone XL pipeline was first mooted back around 2008? Molycorp Minerals just got fined by the EPA for lack of hazardous waste containment, solar plants in the desert have been delayed for years or put off entirely due to environmental and cost issues, and so on. At the moment some of Tesla's Superchargers are being delayed by easement and/or permitting issues. I don't believe Tom or I is saying that this will never happen, only that there are likely to be numerous delays and interim accommodations necessary before Tesla arrives at their ultimate goal, and it's likely to come in costing considerably more than they claim.
No - it doesn't assume anything. We're not talking about the KXL, solar plants in the desert, or charging stations so your points are dead on arrival.
My points were to illustrate the sort of 'friction' (to borrow from Clausewitz) that inevitably occurs in any major project, especially one subject to environmental review, not those specifically related to this project.
AndyH said:
Hiccups are a concern with a single point of supply, but that's not a factor either. The fact remains that the raw materials the project needs are available in the US and Canada today, and in addition new sources are being developed.
As the price of oil continues to climb, emissions requirements on ocean-going ships tighten, and China continues to advance their progress on climate change, it's going to be more cost effective to source in NA than ship across an ocean. That gap continues to widen as we move into a more carbon-constrained future. Mining stock prices are already rising, the industry's already reacting to the announcement.
Sure, and none of them will suffer any delays, or cost more than the alternatives. Just to take a single case, you mentioned lithium production in Nevada. You might want to get ahold of "Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy", by Seth Fletcher. Fletcher devotes a chapter or two to world lithium supplies and production, and visits projects in Chile, Bolivia, and the one you're referring to in Nevada. The one in Chile is established, on an industrial scale and benefits from the fact that unlike Nevada the lithium can be extracted via evaporation ponds, i.e. a major cost advantage. Bolivia has the world's largest reserves of lithium and would have similar extraction benefits, but their attempts to develop it (at least at the time the book was published in 2011) are small scale, amateurish, and inefficient. Nevada has some major companies involved, but is still small scale, and not only are the wages and salaries they'll have to pay higher and their extraction and purification costs greater, but they also have to comply with stricter environmental and safety regulation than is the case in South America or most of the rest of the world where mineral resources are extracted; transportation remains a very small part of the total cost, even assuming tighter environmental regs on shipping (see http://www.amazon.com/Ninety-Percent-Everything-Shipping-Invisible/dp/0805092633" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ). At the moment, on-shoring is being driven largely by higher wages and salaries in China, not shipping costs (although as you point out that may change, depending on fuel costs).
But every single one of those new sources that Tesla will need will require environmental permitting, development, financing, etc. Tesla has conflicting requirements: they _want_ to source here, but they _must_ seriously reduce the price of batteries to make the Model E affordable. Given Tesla's track record to date, being late and/or overbudget on every project they've started (and that was sourcing most of their stuff off-the-shelf from already established suppliers with excess capacity), the Model X just being the most recent case, the odds of them being able to be the moving force behind establishing multiple new supply sources in several different high capital areas, while _simultaneously_ reducing their costs are somewhere about nil. At the moment they can't even convince Panasonic to invest in the Gigafactory, and they're Panasonic's best customer.
So, while they may get there eventually, initially they'll have to go for low cost and available over ideal. At the moment they benefit from a near complete lack of competition, but that's unlikely to be the case in the future.
