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.
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]
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.
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.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/12/04/tesla-e...
[2] https://electrek.co/2019/10/09/tesla-panasonic-relationship-...
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]
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.
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.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/12/04/tesla-e...
[2] https://electrek.co/2019/10/09/tesla-panasonic-relationship-...