Part 7/13:
A key milestone was the development of Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada, which dramatically lowered battery costs via economies of scale, vertical integration, and automation. Musk emphasized how this “factory of the future” was bigger than the entire world’s previous lithium-ion output at the time—an almost unimaginable feat. The gigafactory not only produced batteries at unprecedented scales but also significantly reduced costs associated with raw materials like nickel, lithium, cobalt, and copper.