Tesla Gigafactory 3 building in Shanghai looks almost complete

A new drone video update of Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 construction site shows that the main building is almost complete as Tesla rushes to start production in China.

Tesla waited a long time to make its Chinese factory deal happened in order to be able to own the entire plant, which had until recently been impossible due to the country’s protectionism laws.

They moved extremely fast.

About 7 months ago, Tesla announced a deal with the Shanghai government to build a wholly owned local factory and only about 5 months ago, they secured the 210-acres of land for Gigafactory 3 in China necessary.

They officially broke ground in January and plan to be done with the building by this summer.

Considering the size of the building, it seemed almost impossible, but a new drone video update shows that the building is almost complete (from Jason Yang):

Only a few weeks ago, it was mainly a steel structure, but Tesla’s contractors have quickly completed most of the roof and the walls of the factory.

Here are a few pictures of the new plant:

At the Model Y unveiling, Tesla unveiled the finished design of the factory and we are already starting to see the project look a little that the rendering.

Musk claims that the factory will look like this by the end of the year:

But completing the building is actually the easiest part of the ambitious manufacturing project.

Tesla also wants to have vehicle production within the location by the end of the year and they need to quickly deploy complex production lines.

When first announcing the plant, Tesla said that it expects “construction to begin in the near future” and that it “will take roughly two years” until they start volume production with a planned capacity of 200,000 units and “then another two to three years before the factory is fully ramped up to produce around 500,000 vehicles per year for Chinese customers.

More recently, Musk said that Tesla wants to produce 3,000 Model 3 vehicles at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai by the end of the year.

The CEO said that they plan to start production at the beginning of the fourth quarter.