Battery Pack Prices Fall As Market Ramps Up
As a rule of thumb, a 10x increase in production of something halves the price. Purely through economies of scale. Much of what's been seen in lithium-ion batteries is just that.<p>Has Tesla got their act together with their US "Gigafactory" in Nevada yet?  They had a lot of problems, most of them in plant management related to starting up a big plant in an isolated area.[1] Plus feuding with Panasonic.[2]<p>Eventually somebody will get this right, and there will be automated plants with very few employees. This is the ideal situation for automation - making huge numbers of identical products. It just takes a long time to get the automation working.<p>A big problem in the US is that few people go into manufacturing engineering. It's a big thing in China, but not in the US. Average pay for manufacturing engineers is about $78K, according to Glassdoor. Senior level, maybe $82K. This is for a job which today requires understanding real-time computer control, electronics, mechanical engineering, and organizational behavior.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/12/04/tesla-elon-musk-reno-gigafactory-theft-nevada-investigation-report/2610328001/" rel="nofollow">https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/12/04/tesla-e...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://electrek.co/2019/10/09/tesla-panasonic-relationship-hits-hard-times-tesla-make-own-batteries/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2019/10/09/tesla-panasonic-relationship-...</a>