Investor's Corner
Tesla Gigafactory 3 seems to be preparing for the Model Y production ramp
There is a lot at stake riding in Tesla’s Gigafactory 3, the first facility of the electric car maker that would be established and operated in a foreign country. Giga 3 is set to be the first of Tesla’s next-generation Gigafactories as well, since the facility would be capable of producing both battery packs and electric cars on-site.
Tesla actually lucked out with Gigafactory 3, as it was able to secure a permit from the Chinese government to operate the facility without a local partner earlier this year. Tesla’s business license for the facility, which would be built in Shanghai, was granted to Tesla Motors Hong Kong Co., LLC, the electric car maker’s HK division, last May. The company also registered the capital for the Shanghai site at 100 million yuan, which corresponds to about $15.8 million. Interestingly, the initial filings of the company were absent of any references to battery production and electric car manufacturing.
That is, until now. A recent report from Sina Finance has noted that Tesla (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. recently registered a capital increase for its upcoming facility. The increase was significant, with the electric car maker now listing a capital of 4.67 billion yuan, which corresponds to about $680 million. Tesla Shanghai also revised its filings for the facility, mentioning references to battery separators, battery management systems, as well as electric car components such as powertrains and other electronic devices that are utilized in the company’s vehicles.
Tesla’s Gigafactory 3 would likely rival Gigafactory 1 in size once it’s completed, especially considering that the Shanghai-based facility will be producing both batteries and electric cars. Despite this, Elon Musk noted in the company’s Q2 2018 earnings call that Giga 3 would likely not cost as much as Gigafactory 1, which is expected to cost up to $5 billion once it’s complete. Musk’s initial estimate for Giga 3 is $2 billion, on account of optimizations that it learned from the Model 3 ramp.
“With respect to Gigafactory CapEx, I think we learned a tremendous amount with Gigafactory 1, and we’re confident that we can do the Gigafactory in China for a lot less. I think it’s probably closer to — this is just a guess, but probably closer to $2 billion, and that should be at a higher — and that would be sort of at the 250,000-vehicle per year rate. So I think we can be a lot more efficient with CapEx, and that would include at least a factory module and pack production, body shop, paint shop, and general assembly. Might even be less than that, but that’s about the right number for that,” Musk said.
A reporter from Beijing Business Daily noted that with the revised capital, around 30% of the funds are now ready for Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory. Perhaps even more notable were reports that the Shanghai government is assisting Tesla to obtain loans from Chinese banks to fund the construction of the facility.
It should be noted that Gigafactory 3 does not need to be fully completed before the facility could start building battery packs and electric cars. Gigafactory 1, for example, is less than 30% complete, but it is already supporting the demand for battery packs and powertrains from the Model 3 production ramp. The Model 3’s current production pace is no joke, either, as the company is reportedly on track to building at least 50,000 Model 3 this quarter.
With this in mind, Tesla only needs to get critical portions of Gigafactory 3 working before the facility could start producing vehicles. Such a strategy actually taps into a particularly impressive expertise of the country’s workforce, considering that China’s builders are proficient in quickly constructing modular structures. This type of construction was showcased by the country’s workforce when it completed the construction of a 57-story skyscraper in just 19 days back in 2015. If Tesla opts to adopt a similar construction method for Gigafactory 3, the facility could come alive well in time for the production of the company’s next big vehicle — the Tesla Model Y.
Elon Musk has noted that the Model Y would likely be built sometime next year. Being a crossover SUV, the Model Y would compete in one of the auto industry’s most competitive markets. The Model Y is expected to have a demand of up to 1 million vehicles per year, making it even more popular than the Model 3. Tesla has been quite tight-lipped about the facility where the Model Y would be constructed. Considering Tesla’s updates with Gigafactory 3, as well as Elon Musk’s past statements about the Model Y being built in China; there is a good chance that Giga 3’s vehicle production lines would likely be designed for the electric crossover.
Back in July, Tesla noted that it expects Gigafactory 3’s vehicle production to start roughly two years after construction begins. In true Tesla fashion, the company intends to ramp the facility’s production rate to 500,000 vehicles per year within 2-3 years. This aggressive timeline has been met by doubts in the United States, with Consumer Edge Research senior auto analyst James Albertine dubbing the company’s targets as “not feasible.” Fortunately for Tesla, its is a company that operates best when it is proving its skeptics wrong.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
Tesla Full Self-Driving expands to another European country
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
