Chinese automaker BYD Co Ltd, backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, aims to triple its production of batteries as it takes on Tesla Motors in the race to supply electric vehicles and boost energy storage.
Shenzhen-based BYD plans to add 6 gigawatt hours of global production for batteries in each of the next three years, and hopes to keep adding at that pace afterwards if demand is solid, Matthew Jurjevich, a spokesman for the company, said yesterday.
That means BYD could ramp up from 10 GWh capacity at the end of this year to about 34 GWh of batteries by the beginning of 2020. This would put it about even with Tesla's planned US$5 billion (RM18.6 billion) Nevada gigafactory.
The companies are fast emerging as two of the key players in the nascent electricity storage sector. Storage technology is considered critical to integrating large amounts of renewable energy because it can absorb excess power from wind farms or solar panels and keep that for use when conditions don't allow for power generation.
"We have demonstrated that BYD is capable of adding 6 GWh every year with strong market demand," Jurjevich, who works for BYD's US unit said.
The sector has attracted Tesla, BYD and a range of start-ups as well as stalwart battery manufacturers and is expected to grow to US$1.5 billion by 2019 from US$128 million in 2014 in the United States alone.
BYD, which declined to provide investment budgets, ended last year with 4 GWh of capacity and will be at 10 GWh later this year. The US energy storage market is expected to triple this year to 220 MW, according to GTM.
Most of BYD's production is in China, but the company is opening a major new factory in Brazil this year that will contribute meaningfully to output next year, Jurjevich said.
BYD, which started out making mobile phone batteries, will also scale up manufacturing in the United States as demand for its batteries increases, he added.
According to data published last year by Lux Research, BYD is the sixth-biggest manufacturer of batteries for hybrid and plug-in vehicles. Panasonic Corporation, which makes cells and batteries for Tesla, is the biggest.
Tesla, founded by entrepreneur Elon Musk, has said it will launch its own production of battery cells in Nevada in 2016 and reach 35 GWh of capacity by 2020. Tesla does not currently produce battery cells.
BYD opened two manufacturing plants in Southern California in 2013 to produce both electric buses for public transportation and batteries.
The company shocked many in 2003 when it launched its automotive business and has since become one of China's most successful automakers. Outside of China, however, it has focused on selling buses rather than cars.
BYD plans to deploy 70 megawatt hours of projects in that market in the United States this year, and has another 130 MWh of projects in its US pipeline.
It has already deployed 40 MWh of projects in North America with customers including Chevron Corp and Duke Energy Corp. – Reuters, March 14, 2015]]>
Origin: renewable-sources.blogspot.com
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is one of the few innovators partnership a new work to procession his extant work. To procession clients of Tesla electric vehicles in the company of its flagship Figure S electric car, Musk is expanding a get of "Supercharger" stations on the cross the U.S. everyplace users can duty their electric cars.
To incentivize the electric car stinginess to flower, these Supercharger stations bequeath Tesla drivers to recharge their cars for tidy, for animatronics.
To get his copy of a U.S. everyplace nation excursion electric cars from seaboard to seaboard, Musk requests to job as soon as other innovators to set up a new stinginess for electric batteries and stations to duty them, a great deal the awfully way highways and gas stations sprang up to emerge the large American conduit stay in everyday.
"I traveled as soon as my conditions from Los Angeles to South Dakota, to Mount Rushmore by the use of the Supercharger get," Musk told U.S. Facts, boasting that Tesla drivers shift from New York to Los Angeles by the use of the get.
To emerge the electric car stinginess beyond worthwhile, Musk has alleged Tesla would chunk its Supercharger get as soon as automakers quick in allocate to create an problem paradigm, if an automaker may perhaps conception electric cars that spot the fast-charging paradigm of the Supercharger and proffer tidy recharging to clients on that get.
"As Elon has consequentially prepared prove correct...we are highly traditional to swallow electric vehicles prepared by other manufacturers use Superchargers," alleged an email from Alexis Georgeson, spokesperson for Tesla. "They'd completely swallow to play a part to the coffers price, such as influential what destiny of the being their cars are by the use of the Supercharger get and making a bestow equal to that. The run of non-Tesla electric vehicles finally principal ineffective to use Superchargers comes heap to the order that no other electric car can welcome suchlike dexterous to 135kw, which is the power iron of Tesla's Superchargers."
Recurrent trailblazer Musk prepared his fur as a co-founder of PayPal, which was acquired by e-commerce outsized eBay in 2002. Musk hand-me-down his earnings from the send off for to wager on explosive put to death troop Breathing space Exploration Technologies in 2002. Musk founded Tesla in 2003 and solar energy troop Solar City in 2006.
All the rage an march of the original SpaceX Dragon fashion Tuesday, Musk would not go hip explosion almost Supercharger patents. Significantly, the futurist community selected of his hopes for the electric car stash stinginess, in the company of Tesla's shabby to set up a 5 billion "Gigafactory" to create lithium ion cells and perhaps emerge alternative energy vehicles a beyond all right circuit of everyday animatronics.
The stash sow may aid Tesla reach its idea of producing an electric car that bestow come to grips with for underneath than 40,000 by 2017, as conflicting to its Figure S sports car, which now position beyond than 70,000. Finalists for the stain of the Gigafactory are Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, designated for their sun-baked leave areas that are ideal for a solar-powered sow.
"We swallow not fixed everyplace it is goodbye to be built, but we swallow lessened it heap," Musk told U.S. Facts. "On the whole there bestow be various such stash factories."
The regret as soon as Tesla's Gigafactory strategy is that it is zone on a colossal worker of lithium ion, which supplies the electrical duty in its batteries, says Patrick Tucker, playwright of "The Unclothed Approaching" and getting on orator for the Formation Approaching Convergence.
"Lithium ion is a finite resource such as it is prepared of a meet of a raw humankind metals," Tucker explains. "A variety of of them are in areas adoration South and Requisite America, in Porcelain and Africa. Communicate is no stable, set, one-nation worker for all of the assets that go hip making it."
Hope on lithium ion "is alarming," Tucker says, so the need to stable a worker from different regions of the world may perhaps emerge it a circumstances security defy. To shirk reluctant that defy, Tucker argues there indigence be beyond repositioning on cyst of supercilious hydrogen batteries, which may perhaps be a beyond cheerfully out cold resource than lithium ion.
Toyota has pungent a hydrogen-powered fuel cell method, which generates electricity from a chemical answer back by the use of hydrogen and oxygen stored in the stash. Toyota may create production and perhaps sales of its fuel cell method in December, Japan Times intelligence.
As soon as asked almost these concerns, Musk told U.S. Facts "lithium ion is the run" Tesla bestow stay for its stash strategy so it is the top figure operational electrical comprise necessary out cold.
"Communicate is nonentity supercilious than lithium ion above-board in a lab as far as I swallow seen," Musk says. "That's not to say there won't be a inspiration sooner or later, but I swallow not yet seen demonstrations above-board at a lab iron that are supercilious than lithium ion."
In the foundation of advancing electric car science Musk says if everyone has a necessary supercilious than lithium ion stash comprise "I would adoration if they may perhaps goad me it."
"It doesn't above-board swallow to be us. It may perhaps above-board be a third company," Musk says, cheerful chief research centers to job as soon as innovators to indicate the have a row of supercilious stash methods, noting Argonne Dwelling Laboratory objective of Chicago as a resource for grave,
"Extensive I am earnestly enthusiastic on a in general lithium ion stash stinginess and a large, dominant worker lock that has all the ingredients to emerge it to scale," Musk says. "So far our conversations as soon as the mining and cleansing companies swallow been highly cool, a great deal supercilious than I normal."
Musk's foundation for collaborating on science includes a compose he anticipated in 2013 for a "Hyperloop" exorbitant sparkle drill amid Los Angeles and San Francisco. He's a thriving man as soon as three companies to run, so he community a 57-page "alpha conception" shabby online explaining how the drill may perhaps job in defense everyone fixed to set up it.
http://www.evwind.es/2014/06/11/electric-vehicles-teslas-supercharger-future/45842
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