To date, the Gigafactory in Nevada, USA is Tesla’s biggest and most important endeavour.
The name comes from the factory’s planned annual battery production capacity of 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh) where one GWh is the equivalent of generating (or consuming) one billion watts an hour. When completed, the US 5 billion dollar investment is set to occupy a space of 108 football fields and provide 10,000 jobs.
The Tesla Gigafactory which itself would run on renewable energy sources, will serve to supply enough batteries to support its projected vehicle demand and also to achieve its goal of producing 400,000 preordered Model 3S by the end of 2018. Built in phases, the Gigafactory is expected to reach full capacity by the same year, producing more lithium ion batteries annually than there were produced worldwide in 2013.
With a projection of manufacturing half a million cars per year in the later half of this decade, Tesla alone will require today’s entire worldwide supply of lithium ion vehicles.
In 2015, Tesla sold just 50,580 Electric Vehicles, proving there is plenty of room for growth. To keep up with increasing demands related to all things production of Electric Vehicles, Elon Musk has also confirmed that there are additional two or three factories in the pipeline. These factories are set to be opened in the USA in the coming few years, even though the first factory isn’t even completed!
With a reported total of 10 Gigafactories expected to be erected in the US and beyond, Musk expects most new cars in the USA to be Electric Vehicles within 10 years with the aim of dominating the market in 20. Without having enough factories in place, Tesla would risk losing businesses when electric transportation eventually goes mainstream.
In cooperation with Panasonic and other partners, the Gigafactory will produce batteries for a fraction of today’s high cost with innovative manufacturing, waste reduction and by having most of the manufacturing process under one roof.
