Sunday, June 13, 2021, 00:13
With the current design of electric cars, the need to produce batteries in large quantities is created. This is because you want to ensure that all vehicles in the world are electric in the short term. The news came when the electric car manufacturer Tesla announced in 2014 that it launched a battery factory Macrop project, which called it Gigafactoría, denomination that was universally used in talking about these future factories. Remember that the prefix Giga means one billion. This denomination is related to the production capacity of these factories, when measured with the amount of Watt -Hora (WH) that can save the batteries produced. Because dozens or hundreds of Gigawatios-Hora (GWH) should produce, the president of Tesla called them Gigafactorias.
Currently, 85% of the production of these batteries is performed in Asia (Korea, China and Japan). Due to its strategic character, the US and the European Union want to invest this situation to reach world leadership in 2040. In this attempt, the President of Tesla plays a very important role, who, with his idea of Gigafactoria, wants to expand the use of home batteries and other activities. In Europe there are already between 20 and 25 Gigafactory projects, Including the North Volt project in Sweden, with more than 17,000 million euros in investment; The Italilt, with a production capacity of 70 GWh; And that of Tesla, in Germany, with a capacity of 40 GWh. This is the most advanced and the promoters hope to produce batteries at the end of this year. Spain, even though it is an important car producer until very recent dates are not away from this international strategy. It seems that you now finally want to include in European effort with the project of a gigafactoría, awaiting location.
Given the importance and interest that these gigafactories have, we have some of their most important characteristics. As a reference, we take a gigafactoría of 35 GWH, the production capacity of one of those who builds Tesla.
This requires an area of 12 km2 (more than 100 football fields) – when it is ready, it will be the second largest building in the world, behind the Boeing in the US. These are buildings with exceptional building needs. We must add to these requirements that in some projects the energy required for production can be renewed. In addition to considerably shortening the production time of the battery, it adds another important breast that is related to the scale economy.
A 35 GWH Gigafactoría includes the needs of a car factory that produces 500,000 cars/year. The investment is between 6,000 and 7,000 million euros, without counting a necessary recycling factory. Another great attraction is that it generates 6,500 direct jobs and needs a permanent R&D.
