Elon Musk says 2 or 3 more Tesla Gigafactories are coming to the US

Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have been talking for a few months about upcoming new Gigafactories with the new locations to be announced by the end of the year.

While some oversea factories have been rumored for a while, it has never been clear where those factories will be built and if the US will get some of them.

Musk now says that “2 or 3” more Tesla Gigafactories are coming to the United States.

Last month, Tesla confirmed that their shareholder meeting that they were currently working on 3 more Gigafactory locations to produce both vehicles and battery packs.

At least one in Europe and one in Asia have been rumored and Tesla recently confirmed working with Shanghai’s government to establish manufacturing capacity in China, but it wasn’t clear if the US, which already has Gigafactory 1 and 2, will have one of those 3 new factories.

Now, at the National Governors Association today, Musk confirmed that “2 or 3 more Tesla Gigafactories” are coming to the US “within the next few years.”

He made the announcement in a room full of governors wanting to attract those factories in their own state.

As Musk explained during his talk, Gigafactory 1 in Nevada represents a $5 billion investment to get it started and it could create as many as 10,000 jobs directly. He then explained what attracted them to Nevada, including the tax abatements, which he stressed weren’t the main factor.

Instead, the CEO gave a speech on how to think about regulations, which he suggested should have expiration dates – stating that they are “immortals” unless someone removes them once they stopped making sense.

Musk had previously praised Nevada for their forward thinking in term of deploying factories rapidly and easily.

While he says that Tesla will build more Gigafactories in the next few years, they are doing it before their first Gigafactory is even completed.

The structure itself is about 30% completed, but as we showed with a new aerial shot of the plant, there’s a lot of activity now as it starts Model 3 production. They started battery pack and powertrain production, which are then shipped to Tesla’s Fremont factory to be assembled into cars.

Interestingly, in the past, Musk said that Tesla’s future Gigafactories would likely incorporate both the production of the batteries and the completed vehicles – meaning that those new factories to soon be announced could be even more impressive in term of size and output. At full capacity, Gigafactory 1 is expected to produce more li-ion batteries each year than the entire current world capacity – enough for over 1 million all-electric vehicles per year.

Tesla has been promising announcements for those new factories by the end of the year.