Tesla releases rare look inside Gigafactory 2 with solar roof tile production images

Tesla is ramping production at Gigafactory 2, where they manufacture their solar roof tiles and where Panasonic manufactures exclusive solar panels for the company.

Now they are releasing rare new images of inside the factory.

Tesla Gigafactory 2

Gigafactory 2 is a 1.2 million-square-foot facility located in Buffalo, New York.

Tesla inherited the plant through its acquisition of SolarCity.

The solar company itself inherited it from a solar module startup that it acquired and it aimed to use it to produce the new solar panel technology that they developed.

When Tesla acquired the company, they changed the plans and instead, they made another manufacturing agreement with Panasonic to accelerate the production of solar products at the factory.

They called the factory Gigafactory 2 because they aim to produce over 1 gigawatt of solar products at the factory, which also happens to work under a similar deal as Gigafactory 1, where Tesla and Panasonic manufacture batteries.

Panasonic invested in the production of solar cells at Gigafactory 2 and Tesla agreed to buy those cells to put inside the solar roof tiles that it itself manufactures at the location. Panasonic is also separately producing solar modules at Gigafactory 2 for Tesla’s solar retrofit business.

They have been ramping up production lately and we recently reported that Tesla Energy is now mainly using its own ‘Tesla-branded’ solar panels made at Gigafactory 2 by Panasonic.

Tesla has now confirmed that between them and Panasonic, they have over 800 employees at the factory and they are looking to expand the workforce significantly in the coming months to support a production ramp.

On top of the solar module production, Tesla says that they are going to reach volume production of solar roof tiles next year.

They invited local media to visit Gigafactory 2 and they released a ton of new images – including rare images of solar roof tiles production:

Here’s a video of the inside and outside of the factory released by Tesla: