Amazing new aerial pictures of the Tesla Gigafactory suggest lots of activity at the plant – February 2016 [Gallery]

Recent pictures of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada have been scarce since two journalists from Gannett’s Reno Gazette Journal (RGJ) were involved in an altercation with two Tesla safety managers on the property while they were trying to take pictures. Though we can’t really confirm that this incident is the cause of the recent shortage of images.

Las week we managed to find two pictures taken from the ground near the factory earlier in the month, but today we get our best look at Tesla’s battery factory in months with a new gallery of aerial pictures taken earlier today (24/02/16).

Pilot Joshua Mcdonald from Nevada Tailwheel sent us some amazing aerial shots of the Tahoe-Reno industrial center where the Tesla Gigafactory 1 is located.

The pictures show a full parking lot at the plant suggesting a lot of activity inside, whether it is for construction or for the production of Tesla Energy products, which have recently started shipping out.

The latest state report confirmed that Tesla and Panasonic respectively had 232 and 40 Gigafactory employees at the end of last quarter.

Here’s the new gallery, can you spot something interesting?

Images reprinted with permission courtesy of Joshua Mcdonald from Nevada Tailwheel.

Of course, what we see in these pictures is only the “pilot plant”. The final version of the factory will be several times bigger. Even the planned version will be bigger than we anticipated. Tesla said that the Gigafactory will be nearly 40% larger than expected, but the company has yet to update the production output since the unveiling of the project.

Considering Tesla both increased the planned floor space and said that the project is more “space efficient” than initially expected, it would have been fair to assume that the planned production output is now more than the initial 35 GWh of battery cells and 50 GWh of battery packs, but CTO JB Straubel  reiterated the figures during the Q4 conference call last week.

If you want more Tesla Motors and electric vehicle news, make sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ to get our latest articles.