Volkswagen announced its plan to build six battery factories in Europe, each with a capacity of 40 gigawatt-hours. VW’s first 40 GWH battery plant will be operational by 2023.
VW is developing a way to recycle nearly all (95%) of its battery components and to cut the price of electric vehicles by 30 to 50 percent.
VW is building another 3500 Electrify America fast chargers in North America in 2021 along with increasing the number of charging stations from 560 to 800. In Europe, VW said, it is going to increase the number of chargers in operates by five times, to 18,000 total chargers. It also plans a major expansion in China.
VW has a goal of producing one million electric vehicles a year by 2023 and 1.5 million a year by 2025.
Volkswagen is developing a new battery cell it calls a unified cell. This battery will reduce costs for entry-level electric vehicles by 50 percent and for its mainstream vehicles up to 30 percent. Thomas Schmall, CEO of Volkswagen Group Components, said the cost of the batteries will be brought down below about $119 per kilowatt-hour.
Tesla at its 2020 Battery Day talked about halving the cost of batteries. VW appears to be trying to catch up to where Tesla is in 2020-22 in 2023-2025.
Tesla has had the 35 GWH Nevada battery factory for several years and is making 10 GWH/yr pilot plant in Fremont and making 100-200 GWh/year battery factories in Berlin and Texas.
Tesla announced plans to scale to 3000+ GWH/year in battery production by 2030 while VW is targeting 240 GWh/year by 2030.
SOURCES- Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Volkswagen, Car and Driver
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com (Brian owns share of Tesla).
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
The plants become the problem compared to Space Solar, at least by cost if nothing else.
Did not get email notice of this reply, just saw it. Anyway, The batteries are either isolated from each other, in which case each has to be big for all clouds, or they are part of a grid, and thus not needed so much. If you need a roof covering, and have a structural roof already, cells are likely affordable. Otherwise, you are going to lose to Space installations, far and away, just from land, NIMBY, or wind considerations, also clouds and nite. This advantage increases as the cells become better/almost free. You don't need conduction grid if you are power beaming from Space, even if source is on Earth thru redirectors. Thus, you get the "grid" to balance the rooftop panels too. Grids are small and for convenience, not the base load with Space Solar. See ppg 12-13 for first step to rational system. We need 20-200 TWe, btw.
Of course, that is the Sun, existing fusion. Comm sats are working Space Solar, just too small antennae, otherwise same thing. The great advantage of collecting and power beaming from Space over distributing on Earth from boiled water plants is dramatic, even with free boiling water. You cannot afford to compete with people who are merely collecting the energy you cannot yet make yourself. LSP 1 cent per KWE-h electricity, estimated before cheap Musk rockets. Military about to start small stuff for bases, 3 different forces already announced, which will set the frequencies, very needed. Now, I like nukes to burn nuke waste, and for heat of cities, or perhaps industrial heat, if H not cheaper. Not grid, which itself is also a prob solved by power beaming. All that being said, I only need one more fact to decide, if it is even a close call: Space Solar will open Space BIG.
I'm all for space solar if/when we get it working. But, I see hot fusion, both large plants and modular reactors, coming online before space solar. Though, I think that it likely WILL happen at some point (if for no other reason than us humans being like, "Look what I can do!").
"import base load power over high voltage lines"
Not much of a problem if you just have the sense to put a few large nuclear plants near the city.
To be fair, it looks like batteries and increasingly efficient solar panels on both houses and factories are part of Tesla's Total Electric Domination (TED) plan (OK, I just made up "TED"). If they can generate enough onsite sourced electricity to meet demand, they don't need an elaborate power grid, though other parts of society might. Large apartment complexes and dense cities with dark building canyons won't get enough power through solar panels alone to power all users. Perovskite, thin solar and solar windows will help, but cities like NYC will still need to import base load power over high voltage lines.
And, even worse than "one company":
(Bloomberg)
— China’s top leader warned that Beijing will go after so-called
“platform” companies that have amassed data and market power, a sign
that the months-long crackdown on the country’s internet sector is only
just beginning.
To power all these cars requires energy. Battery EVs need grid, H EVs either that or H. For all electric clean green future: "This endeavor will require around 590,000 sq km (or 227,800 sq miles) of America to be blanketed in turbines and panels, around a tenth of all the land in the contiguous US. . . . .will require the current electricity transmission system to triple in size, an extraordinary rollout of new poles, wires and substations." The Guardian The race to zero: can America reach net-zero emissions by 2050? Oliver Milman, Alvin Chang and Rashida Kamal Mon, March 15, 2021, 5:00 AM Now, they are missing nukes, but the message is bleak. Think of this worldwide, where many have nothing now. OR, we could do Space Solar and solve both generation, intermittency, load variability and distribution!
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2009/70070criswell/ndx_criswell.pdf.html
I definitely agree, here. This was never going to be a single-company or even only a two-company market. It's going to grow through innovation born out of lots of collaboration.
The reason why VW and some other come companies are going to have the upper hand in the EV market is that they involve and get into partnerships with other developing companies in the field. The sum of the startups in a certain field will end up having a greater degree of innovation than one big company. One company will not be able to innovate in all in this new market, just like apple, despite its size and head start was not able to, in personal computing nor in smartphones. We are not going to live in the your simplified version of a mono world, Just wait a couple more years till this multitude of EV start ups that are being seeded now will coming en masse to fruition, than you will find out how a global free market really works!
https://www.investors.com/news/volkswagen-stock-ambitious-ev-battery-plans-after-partners-big-breakthrough/