According to foreign media reports, supported by Toyota electric car maker Tesla Motors said that as battery costs, the company’s Model S sedan sales far below in the case of Nissan Leaf still achieve significant profits.
Straw Bear Tesla CTO, said in an interview, as a price of $ 57,000 electric sedan, Model S’s annual sales reached 20,000 for the Tesla will be able to bring profit. And in sharp contrast, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn (Carlos Ghosn) has previously said that if the government does not provide subsidies, then the Leaf’s annual sales to reach 50 million units to ensure that the company profitable.
Straw Bear in the interview Wednesday, said: “The Nissan is using a larger lithium-ion battery type, so the production cost issues they face more difficult to be solved. In point reached before the internal sustainable cost Nissan to profitability by increasing sales to ensure that. ”
Since 2008, Tesla began selling prices can be charged for the $ 109,000 Roadster sports car, the car to thousands of pieces of small lithium-ion battery power. These cells by the suppliers such as Matsushita Electric Company production, with the typical laptop computer battery is very similar. So far, Tesla has yet to achieve profitability. The Silicon Valley start-ups that, compared to Nissan and General Motors Chevrolet Volt Leaf used in large-scale lithium batteries, the batteries used by the company in the foreseeable future, will all provide a better cost savings of. Under the plan, Nissan and General Motors are starting from this month, selling its electric car.
Tesla founder and former CEO in November of this year Eberhart interview pointed out that Tesla’s battery pack can be reduced to the lowest cost 200 U.S. dollars per kilowatt, compared with the large lithium ion battery pack cost 700-800 U.S. dollars per kWh. For Eberhart estimated cost of the battery pack, Straw Bear declined comment.
On the other hand, Nissan spokesman for Lott, said Nissan’s electric car company Tesla strategy strategy and not comparable. However, Lott declined to elaborate in more detail. Lott said: “Throughout the product cycle, Nissan Leaf production projects is the ability to generate profits.” However, Lott declined to Leaf in the end product life cycle is long. Lauth also noted that Nissan had in the past two decades in the development of its lithium battery technology, its R & D costs over the past many years has been amortized.
Under the plan, from 2012 Tesla company began selling Model S. Straw Bear said that despite the high price of this car to be able to lower case sales profit, but lower the battery cost is the company to ensure that the main reason for this car profitability.
Center for Automotive Research studies of new vehicles, Smith said the experts, the company plans to Tesla Model S Roadster production significantly over the current expansion, so the company’s main challenge is how to ensure the battery pack and the quality of the assembly process. Smith said: “The benefit for the Tesla companies is that they use the battery pack has been widely used in notebook PCs, although the two are not identical.”
As a result of that, Tesla do not need to spend a lot of battery R & D costs. Smith said: “For small producers, they made the logical decision-making needs.”
