Tesla releases picture of Gigafactory Shanghai, latest drone video shows new structures

Tesla has released a picture of Gigafactory 3 Shanghai and says that it is “going well” as the latest drone video shows new structures.

Gigafactory 3 is Tesla’s first manufacturing facility in China, and it’s also the first electric vehicle factory wholly owned by a foreign automaker in the country.

As the trade war between China and the US keeps getting more complicated, it’s becoming more important than ever for Tesla to have manufacturing capacity in China.

They will be able to avoid increasingly uncertain import tariffs in the biggest auto market in the world.

They have been moving extremely fast to get Gigafactory 3 ready.

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

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

Recent updates showed impressive progress, and last month, Tesla released the first pictures from inside Gigafactory 3, which confirmed that they started installing the production lines.

Today, Tesla shared a new picture of the outside of Gigafactory Shanghai and they said that it is “going well”:

So, Gigafactory Shanghai is going well… pic.twitter.com/x0wzMVHAXs

— Tesla (@Tesla) August 6, 2019

On the outside, it looks like Tesla is focusing on finishing work, as most of the current work is focused on the inside and getting ready for production.

However, a new drone video of the factory shows that Tesla is still building new structures around the plant:

CEO Elon Musk believes it’s the fastest-building major factory in the world, and it’s important to Tesla’s business plan, because it will enable the automaker to stop having to import some Model 3 vehicles in China, the biggest auto market in the world.

Tesla is guiding a start of production by the end of the year and a rapid production ramp-up in phases, starting with 3,000 vehicles per week.