Transportation

Tesla Aims For 500,000 Cars Per Year At New German Gigafactory


In November, Tesla boss Elon Musk revealed plans to construct a new ‘Gigafactory 4’ vehicle production facility in Germany. Landing in the back yard of BMW, Mercedes and the Volkswagen Group, the factory will build Model 3 and Model Y cars for the European market.

Now, it is reported by Germany newspaper Bild (via Reuters) that Tesla plans to produce 500,000 vehicles per year at the new factory, which will sit on the outskirts of Berlin.

It is also claimed the facility will create 10,000 jobs, cost €4 billion ($4.41bn), and cover land the size of 420 soccer pitches. Construction is expected to begin in 2020 and be completed by the end of 2021 – and if Tesla’s new Chinese gigafactory is anything to go by, the German facility will go up in record time.

This will be Tesla’s fourth so-called gigafactory. The first produces lithium-ion batteries in Nevada, US, the second makes photovoltaic cells for solar roof tiles in Buffalo, New York, and the third makes vehicles in China.

To put that 500,000 vehicles-per-year figure into context, that is around 100,000 more than Tesla expects to deliver worldwide in 2019. It is also double the expected output of its new Chinese factory in Shanghai.

The reason for the Berlin factory taking up such a sizeable share of Tesla’s global production effort is the vehicles it will produce. The Model 3 is far-and-away Tesla’s best-selling car to date – and as for the Model Y, when the compact crossover was revealed in March 2019 Musk said he thinks it will become Tesla’s most popular vehicle.

And there is no reason to doubt him. Car buyers the world over are in love with the SUV, and smaller crossovers like the Model Y sell particularly well in Europe. The Model Y does’t have European pricing just yet, but is expected to cost between $39,000 and $60,000 in the US.

There’s no word yet on where Tesla plans to produce its second-generation Roadster, due out in 2020, and its latest vehicle, the Cybertruck.



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