When are they going to reduce battery cost by progressing the Lithium -air solution that has 10 times capacity of current cells? Surely that would be far more economical?

@ livin_the_dream - Lithium air is great...on paper, since that is the only place it exists. Tesla isn't going to sit on their hands and wait (at least) 15 years for this tech to mature to the point of being ready for an electric car.

any body want to take a bet as to how successful the effort will be many have tried - all have failed bigger factory may end up just being bigger losses

Yes, let's all just sit back and bet against it, since it makes so much more sense to assume we will never run out of fossil fuels.

@Dekarate - Elon Musk has been successful at: Setting up an electric car company (Tesla) Setting up a dot com giant (Paypal) Setting up a spacecraft company (SpaceX) Setting up a solar power generating company (Solar City)
All against the predictions of negative people like you. So I'll definitely take up your bet.

Lithium-air has higher capacity, but is much more difficult to recharge. Experimental versions are close to solving the recharging issue, but more testing is needed before Tesla would ever be willing to begin producing those.

Dekarate,
You are very wrong at this. As in everything - many have tried, but as in everything - many have been sucessful. The idea of the "gigafactory" is deffinitely not new and deffinitely so many gigafactories do exist today. The important thing for Tesla will be to bet on the right technology or technologies. And that the gigafactory can do things cheaper, because of economies of scale is almost a sure thing.

The biggest bet is that lithium battery technology is the tech of the future. Huge respect to Elon Musk, one of the smartest people on the planet, but I note he hasn't actually committed to this yet and I doubt he will.

OK, Let's Beat On Dekarate some more, The first really big "Gigafactorys" were places like the Ruhr steelworks built by the Krupp family, or Henry Ford's giant River Rouge plant. Literally in each place raw materials flowed in one end and either finished steel or cars rolled out the other. Both of these giant plants were fairly successful in their day. And None of the owners were rigidly wedded to only one solution to any given problem. And neither is Elon Musk. Eventually air-lithium might work out well and maybe also a lengthy list of other great ideas that right now are just ideas or maybe lab toys. Why wait until some future possibility? Best to start building some useful future right now and continue to change along the way.

How about sending the production plant here @ Bath County ,Va,we have land availible shouldnt be too hard to get the wind and solar acess,we have around 545 sq miles with a population of around 5K people here and we need a good green industry here-Kevin