Although far from having completed the project, it’s quite impressive what Tesla accomplished in the Nevada desert in a little less than 2 years – of course that’s with the help of several contractors and its partner, Panasonic.
After breaking ground in July 2014, before even announcing a deal with the state, Tesla has now completed the first phase of its giant battery factory, which should soon be officially inaugurated.
You can watch a quick time-lapse of its construction below.
The factory is still under construction and currently only the first phase is up with an 800,000-square-foot footprint and 1.9 million square feet of space. Once completed, the Gigafactory is expected to have a total operational space of about 13 million square feet.
In October 2015, the company moved the Tesla Energy production line from its Fremont factory to the ‘Gigafactory 1‘ project in Nevada. Tesla has since been ramping up for volume production to start in early 2016. Consequently, we recently started seeing more energy storage projects being installed with Tesla Energy products. Tesla and Panasonic plan to start battery cell production at the Gigafactory later this year.
Tesla is planning for the factory to have a battery pack output of 50 GWh at full capacity in 2020. About 35 GWh of battery cells will be produced on site and the rest will be imported.
Here’s the quick time-lapse of the construction:
The size is impressive, but we haven’t seen much of the interior. At least until some pictures of the Powerwall/Powerpack assembly leaked last month.
Featured Image: Stunning new 4k drone footage of the Tesla Gigafactory – March 2016 [Video]
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is this the completed size of the factory? I thought it would be x4 this size yet you see completed car parks in areas where I thought it would expand into
“is this the completed size of the factory?” The article said “The factory is still under construction and currently only the first phase is up with an 800,000-square-foot footprint and 1.9 million square feet of space. Once completed, the Gigafactory is expected to have a total operational space of about 13 million square feet.” So, to answer your question: No!
I would expect more than ~15% in two years… There doesnt even look like the rest is being constructed at all.
Keep in mind that it is already functional. Building the empty shell of the warehouse, would, as you point out, go much faster.
But the need to get battery production up and moving ASAP for Powerwall as well as vehicles means that there is quite a bit of work going on inside too….which could explain the relatively slow pace.