> The whole pack, bought from a Tesla Inc. parts reseller, weighs 120 kilograms (265 pounds).
and here lies the problem. Tesla doesnt (afaik, please correct me) sell their car batteries, those are second hand post crash written off car packs(1). You cant build a scalable (planned 4000 cars a year) business around digging rare parts out of the trash.
(1) going rate for used Model 3 pack is ~$12K with maybe 10-20 available at any time in whole world
>You cant build a scalable (planned 4000 cars a year) business around digging rare parts out of the trash
No, but it should bootstrap you enough capital to be able to do your own R&D and develop your own battery pack, or at the very least enter into talks with manufacturers to lease existing battery packs for your business.
Also, Tesla is making ~5,000 cars a week. Of those 5,000, 77 have to crash and be written off (1.5%) for there to be enough battery packs for 4,000 cars a year. Not considering the 100,000+ Teslas on the road already.
This is revenue, so rent, parts and labor will significantly reduce that. I'm not sure how this would result in a good R&D budget.
As for getting supplies from written off Teslas, it doesn't take into account location. What percentage is in Europe within a economically viable shipping distance?
That's assuming that this company manages to buy every single wrecked Tesla. Given that they're a French company I would assume that this is only economically feasible for Teslas that crash in the EU, as otherwise the cost of shipping across the ocean would make a significant amount of the price. There are much less than 5000 Teslas a week just going to the EU.
If you could reduce new battery prices to the level of crash salvage with just a little R&D of your own, you would not waste time with cute conversion kits, you'd take on Tesla, China and the rest of the car industry directly.
My thoughts exactly. Are they expecting investors to look past this obvious fact? I assume their business model will start working once batteries become significantly cheaper in the next 2-3 years (optimistic).
When batteries become significantly cheaper in the next 2-3 years, there will be many companies entering this market. But only one (this one) with 2-3 years of experience in the market. That is a huge advantage.
>and here lies the problem. Tesla doesnt (afaik, please correct me) sell their car batteries
They have sold not just batteries but complete powertrains to Toyota for the RAV4 EV and to Daimler for the Mercedes-Benz A-Class E-Cell, the Smart ForTwo and the Mercedes B-Class Electric.
There are no off the shelf parts, only off the back of a towing rig if/when someone is unlucky enough to total a Tesla. You can build ~2-5 cars a month business on that, not 10 per day.
And that doesnt even touch the realities of retooling for many many used car models they would have to support in order to meet that 4000/year projection.
and here lies the problem. Tesla doesnt (afaik, please correct me) sell their car batteries, those are second hand post crash written off car packs(1). You cant build a scalable (planned 4000 cars a year) business around digging rare parts out of the trash.
(1) going rate for used Model 3 pack is ~$12K with maybe 10-20 available at any time in whole world