Elon Musk’s Gigafactory is taking shape as seen in the new drone video below. When it opened this year the mode of production was far below expectations. But 6 months later, it is a different story.
Why build this huge factory? The firm foresees it will drive down the per kilowatt hour (kWh) costs of their battery pack by more than 30 percent. And keeping with Tesla’s green theme, the plant will also be powered by renewable resources, ‘with the goal of achieving net zero energy,’ Tesla says.
CEO Elon Musk said “the factory could easily employ 10,000 people in the next three to four years.”
The name Gigafactory comes from the factory’s planned annual battery production capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh). “Giga'”is a unit of measurement that represents ‘billions’.
Drone footage reveals world’s biggest building has added 2.4 MILLION square feet in just six months
Factoids:
- $5 billion structure in Sparks, Nevada will produce 500,000 lithium ion batteries annually to meet demand
- New drone footage of Tesla’s Gigafactory shows that it is now 30 percent complete
- The north end of the massive building has been finished, adding another 4.5 million square feet of space
- The factory will be used to produce batteries for products including Tesla Model 3 car
It’s deemed the biggest factory in the world – but when Tesla opened the doors to its ‘Gigafactory’ earlier this year, only 14 percent was complete. Fast forward six months later and new drone footage reveals that the electric carmaker has more than doubled the size by adding an additional 2.4 million square feet of space to the campus.
By the end of 2017, the company aims to begin production of its more affordable Model 3. And by 2020 it plans to ramp up production to build as many as one million vehicles per year, an ambitious goal considering the company expects to produce about 80,000 to 90,000 vehicles in 2016. Regardless where the numbers end up, there is no doubt that Elon Musk will change the mode of production.
