The Palo Alto-based company began “mass production” of its lithium-ion battery cells Wednesday at its plant outside Reno, Nevada. The company has already partnered with Panasonic Corp. to build the batteries, which will be used in Tesla’s energy-storage products and in its Model 3 sedan, the company said in a blog post.
By the numbers, China looks like it’s on the way to dominating the global electric car industry. But subsidies and inferior technology threaten to leave it behind the rest of the world despite the big numbers. Chinese electric passenger car sales rose by 50% in 2016 to more than 300,000 cars, according to China’s state-backed auto manufacturers association, overtaking the U.S. China is targeting more than 4 million electric cars on the road over the next four years. Outside China, about 260,000 electric cars were sold world-wide last year. With electric cars, China is running into a familiar problem. It can put up big numbers but quality is uneven and subsidies spur much of the production. Last year alone, China spent nearly $15 billion on electric cars and charging stations. The production numbers paint a misleading picture of the industry. China has mostly stuck with inferior, indigenous technology, leaving the market dominated by low-cost, low-range electric car models and inconsistent charging-station standards. Anecdotally, consumers complain of flimsy and tiny cars that wouldn’t pass crash tests and batteries quickly going bad. It isn’t surprising that the main buyers of electric vehicles have been taxi fleets and government entities.
A San Jose solar company announced plans Wednesday to cut 2,500 jobs, including about 200 in California, as part of an effort to restructure operations and reduce expenses.
If all of these workers lost their jobs next year, it would be a huge blow to Southern California apparel manufacturing, which has steadily declined over the years, analysts said. This year, American Apparel laid off at least 500 workers as it cut production.
California’s push for zero-emission vehicles is going agonizingly slowly – sort of like getting stuck behind those Prius drivers who refuse to step on the gas so they can stay in glide mode.
Since manufacturing is the engine of economic growth, especially for the middle class, we thought we would see which states are having the sector’s best bouncebacks since the recession. Of the 32 states that average more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs overall, Michigan has attracted the largest percentage of growth with 32.49 percent since 2010. California was 24th of 32 states at 2.57 percent.
Aecom has halted construction on Faraday Future’s Las Vegas electric car factory after the Chinese-backed firm reportedly missed several payments for the project.
First Solar Inc. intends to lay off more than one-quarter of its staff and to restructure operations to focus on newer solar modules, which will lead to at least $500 million in charges and push the company into the red this year.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority filed a waiver request earlier this week with the Federal Railroad Administration that would exempt the authority from the “buy America” requirements of federal law because no U.S. passenger train manufacturers currently exist.
Eureka Landing will house around 200 employees and manufacture dashboard subassemblies for Tesla. The project will be finished later this month and SAS will move in January, after improvements are made in the HVAC and electrical systems.
Faraday hasn’t paid $21 million due in September, with bills totaling an additional $25 million due for October and $12 million for November, according to Aecom, a multinational engineering firm. The Los Angeles company is the prime contractor for Faraday’s car factory under construction in North Las Vegas, which, if completed, is expected to turn out 150,000 cars annually.
Atieva, the electric carmaker that placed Sacramento on a short list this year for locating a car manufacturing plant, has selected a site in Arizona, according to the tech news site Recode.
As factory floors become more automated and data-driven, companies such as Yaskawa America Inc. need computer engineers but often find themselves outgunned by Silicon Valley tech firms.
Electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. wants to build 4.6 million square feet of new space for its factory in Fremont — a move that would ramp up production to 500,000 cars per year and add more than 3,000 workers.
“Given what’s happening in California, where we have a lot of legislative costs imposed on employers, and we have employers leaving California, this is pretty remarkable,” said Patrick Kelly, treasurer and principal officer of Teamsters Local 952, the union representing some of the factory’s workers.