Issue 18  June 21st 2016

The 80edays 2016, also known as the ELDURO, is an endurance race around the world with only all-electric vehicles – mainly Tesla Roadsters and Model S sedans. 14 international teams will rally across 25,000 km, 20 countries, and 3 continents to finish in Barcelona in 80 days or less.

Along the way, the teams will attend “over 40 events are organized to raise awareness about EV technology.” The race started this weekend in Barcelona and all the teams reached Lisbon in Portugal. They will fly the vehicles over the Atlantic ocean and continue the race in Nova Scotia, Canada.

The organisation describes the goal of the race: “They will share their EV experiences and send a strong message to the industry that sustainable technology is the future. Passing through preset presentation points (checkpoints), they will plant trees in a bid to offset the greenhouse impact from the event.” They will also collect interesting data on how the vehicles perform in different road and weather conditions considering they will literally travel around the world.

Earlier this year, breathtaking numbers of pre-orders for the Tesla Model 3 not only shocked the auto industry, but also suggested that a transition of the U.S. and world auto fleet toward electric vehicles could happen faster than expected.

Clearly, a lot of EVs means a lot of electricity use. In particular, if large numbers of EVs are charging at roughly the same hour of day... "If it increased the peak, we would have to invest more money for more generation capacity for the peak, which is the most expensive kind of generation capacity," says the Rocky Mountain Institute's Chris Nelder, one of the authors of the report.

The idea is that if we can find ways to shift when this growing fleet of electric vehicles charge up — either toward daylight hours, when they're more likely to be powered by solar, or to overnight hours, when electricity is cheap — then it opens up a number of options and efficiencies. The result, the report says, could actually be more renewables on the grid, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and cheaper electricity prices.

"Instead of investing in this peak capacity, we want to shift that charging so that it happens in the middle of the night when you've got baseload capacity sitting there running," says Nelder. The result, he says, could "actually optimize the use of all the other assets on the grid. And in so doing, it could actually reduce the per kilowatt-hour cost of electricity."

While Tesla has been manufacturing battery packs at the Gigafactory for its energy storage division since last year, new battery cell production is expected to be the real hallmark of the giant battery factory and it has yet to happen.

Panasonic, Tesla’s strategic partner at the plant, is in charge of the cell production inside the facility and it is expected to begin the process by the end of the year. Now we learn that Panasonic is “gearing up for significant growth” at the Gigafactory and it will host a special invitation-only hiring event on location next week to for “positions in advanced manufacturing”.

Panasonic accelerated its investment in the factory in recent months. During the last quarter, it invested in the Gigafactory almost as much as Tesla – $64 million.