Tesla Gigafactory 1 now employs over 3,000 workers as it becomes biggest battery factory in the world

Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada has now become the biggest battery factory in the world with an output of 20 GWh per year and growing.

Now a new audit of the factory shows that Tesla is still on pace to comply with its obligations with the state for the factory as it now employs over 3,000 workers.

As per Tesla’s deal with the state of Nevada to build the factory there, the company receives tax breaks and other incentives as long as it respects an investment schedule and hiring requirements.

Last month, Grant Thornton completed their latest audit of the plant to make sure it fulfills all the requirements and it was released by the state this week.

Based on the report, which was for the period up to December 2017, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development has determined that all requirements have been met and therefore, they plan to issue Tesla transferable tax credits totaling $35,795,647.

In the report, we learn that Gigafactory 1 was employing 3,249 people as of the end of last year. The number is likely to be much higher at this time.

The audit reports are two quarters behind and the factory added over 800 workers in the fourth quarter alone.

Out of those 3,249 workers, Tesla was employing most of them directly, 1,955, but Panasonic also grew its workforce at the factory significantly now employing 1,201 people at the plant and adding even more employees than Tesla during the period.

They all comply with the state’s requirement to have the majority of employees come from Nevada.

During the period, Tesla also employed 1,332 construction workers for a total of 13,743 since the start of construction in 2014.

Here are the breakdowns of the workforces and capital investments of each company at Gigafactory 1, according to the report:

Tesla

Panasonic

H&T

As we previously reported, H&T, or Heitkamp & Thumann Group, is manufacturing battery cell cans for Tesla and Panasonic at Gigafactory 1.

The audit shows a total investment in Gigafactory 1 between all the companies of over $3.7 billion by the end of last year.

That number has since grown substantially as they ramped up production throughout 2018 to support Model 3 production and recently exceeded 20 GWh of annualized production – making it the largest battery plant on earth.

In its latest financial report, Tesla said that it spent an additional $402.4 million on Gigafactory 1 during the first 6 months of the year.

Most of that money went toward production capacity as the actual structure of Gigafactory 1 hasn’t grown this year even though Tesla says that it is just about 30% of its final form.

Though as we reported yesterday, they have also been building their giant solar array on the rooftop of the plant with the goal to eventually power the massive factory entirely from renewable energy.