Tesla tries to replicate Giga Shanghai’s success in the US with Chinese engineers

Tesla is looking to replicate the massive success that it achieved at Gigafactory Shanghai in the United States by bringing some of its Chinese engineers to help improve production at the Fremont factory.

It’s hard to overstate the success that has been Tesla Gigafactory Shanghai.

Tesla was extremely successful in ramping up production at Gigafactory Shanghai, which became the most productive electric vehicle factory in the world at an incredible pace.

The automaker went from breaking ground in 2019 to starting production by the end of the year — something virtually unheard of.

Now the factory already has a production rate of 1 million vehicles per year, and it’s the largest electric vehicle factory in the world by volume.

On top of the impressive output achieved over such a short period of time, Giga Shanghai is producing industry-leading gross margins and costs.

CEO Elon Musk has often praised Tesla’s China team for the incredible success at the plant, which resulted in Tesla greatly expanding in the important Chinese EV market.

Now Tesla is reportedly looking to replicate the success of the factory in the United States by bringing some of its engineers from Giga Shanghai to the Fremont factory in California.

Bloomberg reported:

The Elon Musk-led carmaker will dispatch staff — in particular automation and control engineers — to assist efforts to increase output in Fremont, where Tesla produces the Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. About 200 people will head to California on assignments that will last at least three months, one of the people said. The first workers are setting off as soon as this month, the person added.

Tesla Fremont factory is producing vehicles at a rate of over 600,000 units annually, but Musk has recently said that he believes there’s still room to grow at the plant, despite the fact that it’s the highest production rate that the factory has reached in 30 years.

Electrek’s Take

People like to undermine China’s manufacturing success by saying that it’s all about cheap labor. To be fair, that’s certainly part of it, but you can’t ignore Chinese manufacturing engineering talent.

In 2020, China produced 1.38 million engineering bachelor’s degrees. In comparison, the United States only gave out 197,000 engineering degrees (including computer science).

The country is producing engineers at an incredible rate, and with decades of building a strong manufacturing industry, a lot of engineering talent in China is going to manufacturing instead of flashier engineering fields.

This is a smart move for Tesla to bring some of that talent to the United States – even if it’s just for a short period of time.

You can bet that if this approach is successful, those same engineers are also going to take trips to Texas and Germany soon.