Tesla announces new investment in Gigafactory Shanghai on road to 1 million electric cars per year

Tesla announced a new investment to expand production at Gigafactory Shanghai on the road to achieving a production capacity of 1 million electric cars per year at the factory.

Last year, CEO Elon Musk disclosed that Gigafactory Shanghai has now surpassed Fremont Factory in production capacity, and Tesla has made the Chinese factory its new main export hub.

When Tesla first announced plans for Gigafactory Shanghai, the automaker made it clear that it doesn’t plan to export cars out of China, but the plan changed earlier this year after production ramped up.

Shanghai went from beginning construction in December 2018 to starting production in December 2019.

Within just two years of starting production, it is now the biggest/most productive electric vehicle factory in the world by a wide margin.

It finished 2021 with an annualized production rate of over 800,000 vehicles, and it appears to still be growing.

This week, Tesla filed with the local city government new documents for an expansion of its parts production that will involve growing its workforce and adding a shift on some equipment (via Reuters):

Tesla Inc plans to expand parts production at its Shanghai factory to meet growing demand for exports, according to a document it filed with the city government. The automaker will add production workshops, increase the number of workers and lengthen the time equipment is operational, the document.

The actual production numbers and number of new hires were redacted from the documents filed with the city this week.

This new investment in expanding production at the factory comes after another $200 million investment in November.

At the time, Tesla was talking about having 15,000 employees at Gigafactory Shanghai and planning to hire 4,000 more.

Musk has previously said that he sees a potential for the factory to produce over 1 million vehicles per year.

CATL, Tesla’s main battery cell supplier in China, is building a battery factory near Gigafactory Shanghai, which is expected to help accelerate production.