ROME – It’s easy to say Gigafactory. The definition, born in 2013 with the project of the first large factory dedicated to the production of electric motors and batteries for electric cars and domestic energy storage systems of Tesla in Nevada, today refers to very different systems.
To orient yourself in the world of Gigafactory, whose name comes from the union of Gigawatt (GW, that is million Watt, unit of measurement of power) with the term factory, therefore factory, it is essential to understand what is produced inside these large industrial containers. If the term was born for the Tesla factory in Spark, Nevada, which produces both electric motors and batteries, today it is mainly applied to production plants of accumulators only. A Gigafactory is a factory capable of producing batteries with a total storage capacity of tens of Gigawatt hours (GWh) every year. Tesla’s Gigafactory in the US produces batteries for over 20 GWh per year.
Those who dream of a near future made up of innovative technologies in the storage sector, find in the Gigafactory the demonstration that the revolution – in the battery sector – has already taken place and is the one that has led to the spread of lithium-ion technology. All the huge factories under construction will produce hundreds of thousands of lithium batteries over the next few years. With expected improvements in electrode chemistry and materials, but fundamentally very similar to current batteries. Gigafactory’s mission is to make the process less expensive and more reliable. With the great challenge linked to the ecological footprint of production, i.e. the pollutants emitted during the process and the environmental impact linked to raw materials. This is the most important weapon in the competition between European battery production and current Asian and, in particular, Chinese domination.
If the electric car does not emit pollutants while running, in fact, the same cannot be said for the production of the batteries that make up its heart. The goodness of Gigafactories will increasingly be measured by their ability to produce with lower emissions and less use of raw materials. As well as with a design and construction of the accumulators that guarantees the greatest possible recyclability when they have exhausted their useful cycle. Plastics and metals must be made recoverable from every single component. And the company is anything but trivial.
The other major discriminant, in terms of battery production plants, is related to the production phases that are carried out there. It is one thing only to assemble the electrochemical cells, perhaps imported from China, in a battery with the creation of the electronic charge and power management system. Another thing is the production of the individual cells, starting from raw materials and having its own ability to create and improve their characteristics. Gigafactory is really strategic if it produces both cells and batteries. And maybe it is also ready to welcome the disassembly with recovery of the materials when they become a waste to be recycled.
Then there is the future, probably related to solid-state lithium battery technology. The production process has many elements in common with the current one, but it differs from it in some fundamental steps that provide precise characteristics of the place where the cells are made and assembled. A Gigafactory is born already old if it is not ready for a possible rapid adaptation to the production of solid-state lithium batteries, in case of diffusion on the market of the new solution.
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