Hi Richard first off thanks for the post. The part where they talk about the battery costs per kWh being $350 in 2015, that can't be right can it? I mean maybe lead acid or something but Lithium ion? That would make Zero's 13 kWh monolith $4500. I thought it was $1000 per kWh in say 2012 and now closer to $850 am I that far off? I saw a video of Elon saying the $1000 figure and his Giga factory would bring it closer to $100 in like 20 years.
1. It's not always clear, when costs per kWh are being thrown around, if they are referring to cell costs or battery costs. Zero benefits from efficiencies of scale at the cell level, but assembling cells into battery packs requires a lot of low volume pieces: cabling / bus interconnects, BMS and other circuit boards, weatherproofing, enclosure, etc. Plus assembly to put the monolith together.
2. At the cell-level, costs are already approaching
$200/kWh or
even lower.
With all that said: $4500 sounds reasonable to me for Zero's marginal cost for the ZF13 4-brick monolith.
