Just months after its opening Tesla Gigafactory delivers as promised.
In March 2022, Tesla’s fourth Gigafactory and also its first in Europe was officially opened by the company’s CEO Elon Musk. The milestone was reached around two and a half years after Tesla initially announced its plans to build a factory on the site, which is located just outside the German capital of Berlin and it was given the name Giga Berlin-Brandenburg.
As part of the opening ceremony, Tesla management were handing over the first production cars made at the factory to customers which were 30 Model Y compact SUVs. Reuters reported that these are the performance configuration of the vehicle, which have a range of 320 miles and sell for €63,990 (which is about RM297,000 before all costs are included).
Tesla management at the time of launch mentioned that they hoped to ramp up production to around 1,000 units a week, and that the factory could contribute a maximum of 30,000 vehicles over the first half of 2022.
Now, we hear that Tesla has managed to keep to that promise of 1,000 electric cars a week and have built and parked ready for delivery 1,000 electric cars.
Giga Texas is also a new factory and is ramping production of Model Y vehicles (and some with 4680 batteries), as well as the upcoming much talked about Tesla Cybertruck, which is set to be released in 2023.
Tesla has had to ramp both of these factories despite a trouble economy and supply chain issues where parts and supplies are hard to come by and raw materials, like Lithium, are increasing in price. Despite all these difficulties, Tesla is making progress and ramping production.
Eventually, Tesla has said it aims to produce as many as 500,000 cars and 50GWh of battery capacity annually at the location. Reuters reports that the company has hired over 3,000 of the 12,000 workers eventually expected to staff the factory.
Creating a European manufacturing hub will be an important logistical victory for Tesla, which currently imports European cars from its factories elsewhere in the world. The Berlin Gigafactory follows locations in Nevada, New York, and Shanghai, China. A fifth factory is currently under construction in Texas, where the company will also have its headquarters.
