Tesla’s Giga Shanghai production capacity expansion has been completed. The information was related on Monday in a statement on a Shanghai government platform for environmental disclosures. The completion of Tesla’s upgrades to its China-based plant was also mentioned in a lengthy report on the city’s industrial progress.
The statement on the Shanghai government platform noted that Giga Shanghai’s fully upgraded production lines would be tested from around September 19 to November 30. The upgrades should go a long way towards making Giga Shanghai into Tesla’s most productive electric car plant this year.
Previous reports from Reuters have noted that the electric vehicle maker has been pushing to ramp its vehicle production output to about 2,200 units of Model 3 and Model Y per day. Recent comments from Tesla China VP Grace Tao also indicated that Gigafactory Shanghai’s supply chain had been 95% localized. Suppliers are within a 4-hour driving distance in the Yangtze River Delta as well.
Tesla has not issued a comment about the matter as of writing.
Beijing Daily, a state-backed newspaper, noted last November that Tesla was looking to invest about $170 million to expand Giga Shanghai’s production capacity. The upgrades are also expected to enable Tesla to employ 4,000 more people at the facility. The state-backed newspaper estimated then that the upgrades were expected to be completed around April.
Giga Shanghai’s momentum was cut in late March and April, however, as China enacted its strictest Covid-related shutdowns since the start of the pandemic. With Shanghai locked down, the activities of Tesla’s China-based EV plant ground to a halt, and even when it resumed, it took a while before normal operations were resumed. Elon Musk highlighted this during Tesla’s Q2 2022 earnings call.
“So just as a Q2 recap, Q2 was a unique quarter for Tesla due to a prolonged shutdown of our Shanghai factory. But in spite of all these challenges, it was one of the strongest quarters in our history. Most importantly, in June, we achieved production records in both Fremont and Shanghai,” Musk said.
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