Panasonic Ncr18650a 3100mAh Rechargeable panasonic

I still can't see how that place can profitably employ 6,500 people. That's a huge head count for a US industrial plant. As I pointed out yesterday, the largest auto assembly plant in the US, Ford's at Kansas City, has 3700 employees. The Leaf battery plant has about 250. Modern manufacturing plants which crank out identical products in high volume don't need many people. 6500 employees is the kind of number you'd get if you looked at a non-automated battery pack plant in China.

Low-end battery plants in China usually have cells manufactured in automated facilities (often in Japan) which are then assembled by hand into battery packs. That may be Tesla's plan. Cell manufacturing in the Reno plant will be done by Panasonic Energy Corporation of North America. They're hiring.[2] Panasonic writes: "Panasonic Corporation will cooperate with Tesla Motors, Inc. to construct a large-scale advanced battery manufacturing facility known as the Gigafactory in the state of Nevada. Panasonic's role in the Gigafactory will be to manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells and invest in the associated equipment, machinery, and other manufacturing tools based on the battery demand from Tesla. Tesla will take the cells and other components to assemble battery modules and packs."

So it looks like the factory will make round Panasonic cells a lot like the current Ncr18650 ones[3], using Panasonic technology and employees, which will then be hand-assembled into packs by Tesla employees. That's essentially what they're doing now. Unclear why this will reduce cost per unit.

[1] http://www.industry.siemens.com/topics/global/en/battery-man... [2] http://panasonic.taleo.net/careersection/external/jobdetail.... [3] http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Ncr18650a-3100mAh-Rechargeab...