<story><title>Tesla and Panasonic freeze spending on $4.5B Gigafactory</title><url>https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-and-Panasonic-freeze-spending-on-4.5bn-Gigafactory</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MuffinFlavored</author><text>What do the Tesla betters need to evolve into&amp;#x2F;achieve to not be deemed crappy anymore? What are the metrics we want to see that we don&amp;#x27;t have yet?</text></item><item><author>samfisher83</author><text>Its pretty bad news. I think the most important part of the electric car is the battery. Electric cars were more popular that the gas car car a 100 years ago. The crappy battery is why gas is more popular today.</text></item><item><author>yungchin</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is bad news for Tesla, I&amp;#x27;d say it&amp;#x27;s mostly bad news for the rest of us.&lt;p&gt;Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don&amp;#x27;t need to be posting losses anymore), and I&amp;#x27;d imagine they can continue to grow, if  more slowly, without the rapid expansion of battery production capacity that this story is about.&lt;p&gt;But the great aim behind the gigafactory (at least, how I read it) was to drive battery cost down very aggressively, that is, working on the supply-side economics. This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner, without all the subsidies (which have been a demand-side hack that didn&amp;#x27;t even work very well). If this means a slower clean transition (and I think it does) that&amp;#x27;s a sad outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zdragnar</author><text>I recently made a 1600 mile trip by car. In all of the places we stopped, I saw exactly one place that had EV charging set up.&lt;p&gt;Tesla, and non-hybrid EV in general, have a co-dependent relationship with charging stations to overcome &amp;quot;range anxiety&amp;quot;. This is especially true for those od us who live in cold climates and must drive in conditions unfavorable to operating batteries, such as -20 to -40 degree weather.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m also very curious to see what the electric pickup trucks that all the manufacturers are not-so-secretly working on end up being capable of. A frequent consequence of rural life is needing to haul heavy things, such as wood for repairing out buildings or outdoor furnaces, or towing boats to go fishing.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tesla and Panasonic freeze spending on $4.5B Gigafactory</title><url>https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tesla-and-Panasonic-freeze-spending-on-4.5bn-Gigafactory</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>MuffinFlavored</author><text>What do the Tesla betters need to evolve into&amp;#x2F;achieve to not be deemed crappy anymore? What are the metrics we want to see that we don&amp;#x27;t have yet?</text></item><item><author>samfisher83</author><text>Its pretty bad news. I think the most important part of the electric car is the battery. Electric cars were more popular that the gas car car a 100 years ago. The crappy battery is why gas is more popular today.</text></item><item><author>yungchin</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not sure this is bad news for Tesla, I&amp;#x27;d say it&amp;#x27;s mostly bad news for the rest of us.&lt;p&gt;Tesla has reached enough scale to be more or less sustainable (in the sense that they don&amp;#x27;t need to be posting losses anymore), and I&amp;#x27;d imagine they can continue to grow, if  more slowly, without the rapid expansion of battery production capacity that this story is about.&lt;p&gt;But the great aim behind the gigafactory (at least, how I read it) was to drive battery cost down very aggressively, that is, working on the supply-side economics. This would then make EVs (not just Teslas) accessible to more people sooner, without all the subsidies (which have been a demand-side hack that didn&amp;#x27;t even work very well). If this means a slower clean transition (and I think it does) that&amp;#x27;s a sad outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>samfisher83</author><text>I am not saying tesla specifically. I am saying the reason why gas car beat out the electric a 100 years ago was because of the battery.</text></comment>