New Tesla Gigafactory Location LEAKED!
In today’s post, we have rumours of a brand new Giga Factory under construction in Shanghai, while Giga Berlin is nearing the finish line for approval, new updates for the Model S and X, potential troubles for the new Lithium 12 volt battery and FSD Beta is coming to Canada. So let’s get going.
Tesla Building New Shanghai GigaFactory
There has been speculation abound lately about the location of the next Tesla GigaFactory - could it be India? Maybe the UK? Russia is definitely out of the running at this point. But none of us had really considered that the new GigaFactory might end up in the same palace as the old GigaFactory; though it turns out that might be the case.
New reports out of China by Reuters indicate that Tesla plans to start work on a new plant in Shanghai. This is already the location of Tesla’s first international manufacturing plant that is currently nearing a run rate of 1 million vehicles produced per year.
According to Reuters, the new plant in Shanghai would be equal to the first, with a combined production capacity of 2 million cars per year. The city of Shanghai currently serves as Tesla’s primary export hub, sending product not only to the Asian market, but also to Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United Kingdom.
Now, before we get too deep, this reporting is based on two unnamed sources who Reuters claim are familiar with the matter. Tesla has declined to comment. The Shanghai government has yet to comment either.
If Tesla were able to approach that 2 million vehicle capacity it would set them up as one of, if not the largest automaker in China, not electric auto maker, just the largest automotive company in China. Period. As of right now, Toyota are building 1 point 6 million cars per year in China, General Motors are doing 1 point 4 and Volkswagen build 1 million cars per year in China.
And this could all happen very fast. So, construction of the second Giga Shanghai is said to begin as early as March 2022, that’s this month. And so far for Tesla, building in China has proven to be a very fast and affordable process. The first Giga Shanghai was completed from first shovels in the ground to initial production of the Model 3 in just 10 months and only cost about 2 billion dollars.
Tesla has been pretty secretive about its plans to build its next big electric vehicle factory, with CEO Elon Musk stating during the Q4 2021 earnings call that the that Tesla would be looking at new locations to see “what makes the most sense” and that an announcement would likely be made by the end of the year.
Giga Berlin Reaches Final Phase of Approval Process
A spokesperson from the Environmental Ministry for the German state of Brandenburg has announced that Tesla’s Giga Berlin car factory is now in the final phase of the approval process. And that production could start as early as this week.
A German newspaper has reported that Brandenburg Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke met with a special task force for the Tesla project last week and that the team managed to agree on the environmental approval of the project.
This approval will enable Tesla to start producing Model Y vehicles for customer deliveries, which are now expected to happen by the end of March.
The same report also states that Tesla is planning a “grand opening” ceremony, likely on March 22 or 23, to deliver the first vehicles built at Gigafactory Berlin.
Working through levels of bureaucracy in the German system has been an ongoing and exhausting process of public consultations, objections and court cases as local interest groups argue against the environmental impact of the EV production facility.
This puts Giga Berlin on track to start Model Y deliveries at nearly the exact same time as Giga Texas, which is a considerably larger factory and started construction months after Berlin.
However, the new Model Ys from Texas are expected to feature Tesla’s new 4680 battery cells while the new Model Ys from Germany are going to be equipped with the standard 2170 format.
New Updates for Model S and X
Tesla has officially killed off radar sensors in all of their new vehicles. After removing the radar function for the Model 3 and Model Y in spring 2021, the company has now removed radar sensors from all Model S and Model X built after mid-February 2022.
This means that the cars now only ‘see’ through Tesla Vision - that is to say, the eight digital cameras that are positioned around the vehicle and provide a continuous, 360 degree view. Each of these eight camera feeds are processed in real time by the vehicle’s computer into one vector space, which is basically a 3D, digital rendering of the real world that the car uses to navigate when Autopilot is engaged. In the vector space, the computer is able to identify road markings, traffic signs and lights, while also being able to judge speed, distance and trajectory for all other vehicles and pedestrians on the road. Tesla says that it’s vision system can see up to 250 meters in all directions.
All other automakers currently rely on a combination of cameras and radar, or even high powered lidar to accomplish their advanced driver assist features.
Still, some features of Autopilot will be limited on pure vision based vehicles for the time being, the significant being that autosteer is restricted to 80 miles per hour top speed and there will be longer than usual following distances from cars ahead in traffic. Tesla says that in the weeks ahead they will be worrying to remove those limitations via over the air software updates.
And speaking of updates to the Model S and X, here’s one that is unconfirmed, but is pulled directly from Tesla’s software code. The so-called ‘Tesla hacker’ on Twitter “@greentheonly” has spotted an update to Tesla’s service tools software with mention of a steering wheel swap with the option for “Yoke” or ‘”Round”.
Now, this is not a service that is available right now, but the fact that they’ve written this option into the code seems to suggest that the choice is coming to have a yoke steering control converted to a round wheel. Or maybe even the other way around. But primarily this would make sense for the Model S and Model X, which only ship form the factory with the yoke.
The yoke is a divisive subject in the Tesla world. It’s unusual, that’s for sure. Most people say that you get used to it pretty fast. Elon Musk loves the yoke. But others are dead set against it, so this might be a move to appease certain customers.
Trouble With Tesla’s New 12 Volt Li-Ion Battery
Drive Tesla Canada is reporting on a string of customer issues with the new 12 volt lithium ion battery. It seems Model 3 owners in Europe are experiencing trouble with battery failures under certain conditions.
It’s also reported that this problem only impacts newly delivered Model 3s with the lithium iron phosphate or LFP battery pack.
So, in the past, Tesla’s had the same 12 volt battery as any other car, big and heavy with lead acid chemistry. That seems weird because they already have a gigantic battery pack under the floor, but most automotive components are designed to run off of 12 volt power. With the Model S Plaid in 2021 Tesla introduced a much smaller and lighter 12 volt battery that ran off of lithium ion chemistry. In 2022 that new 12 volt was added to the Model 3 and Model Y as well. In theory, the 12 volt lithium ion battery should resolve a long-standing issue of the traditional lead acid batteries dying much faster in EVs than they typically do in ICE vehicles.
But it appears as though the problem hasn’t been completely resolved as numerous owners in Europe are reporting the new battery can also fail very quickly under certain conditions.
The problem only impacts newly delivered vehicles with an LFP main battery pack, where the 12 volt can die within 20 minutes of the vehicle’s main battery reaching a state of charge less than 10%.
So, a very low charge in the main battery leads to failure of the secondary battery, and that leads to the vehicle being stranded and undrivable even though the car shows there is still range left in the main pack. This problem is made even worse because you can’t boost the lithium ion 12 volt from a regular car with a lead acid battery.
Tesla says that it is aware of the issue, and believes this is happening because the LFP battery hasn’t been calibrated properly since leaving the factory. Apparently with an uncalibrated battery, the vehicle computer is estimating it still has some range left, but in reality it is actually at 0%. And when there is no power in the main battery, the 12 volt isn’t being charged anymore and dies within minutes.
Tesla has already issued an internal memo recommending new owners charge their LFP battery straight to 100% as soon as possible after taking delivery. This will calibrate the battery and the computer will know more precisely how much range the battery has left in it.
Tesla is also recommending to avoid running the battery to below 10% until you have performed the calibration.
So, not a big deal, but just a little FYI. When you get your new Model 3 home, charge it to max and then try your best not to run it down too low.
Tesla Starts Rolling out FSD to Canada
Tesla’s cutting edge, Beta release of their Full Self Driving software is expanding outside of the United States for the first time. Tesla has officially started rolling out its Beta testing program in Canada.
This is something that Elon Musk has been promising us up here in the North for quite some time now, but it is finally happening. On February 25th a new software update was delivered to vehicles that adds a button to request Full Self Driving Beta access.
Of course, it’s not quite that easy. Once “requested,” you start the approval process, which consists of giving your day-to-day driving a “safety score”. If it’s high enough, they seem to prefer at least 95/100, then Tesla might push you the actual FSD Beta software.
We’re gonna see if the Tesla Space team can drive like good boys and maybe we can get some FSD Beta videos of our own out there. Leave a comment if that's something you’d be into seeing on the channel - we’ve got plenty of snow right now to keep things interesting.
Elon recently said that Tesla has been internally testing FSD Beta in Canada with about 60 vehicles. This expansion to regular owners who bought the FSD package will greatly increase the number of test vehicles out there and feed all kinds of new data into the neural network.
