A new report from Chinese media outlet Cailian, citing sources familiar with the matter, shows that Tesla intends to increase Shanghai’s Giga production capacity to more than 1 million units annually in the coming years.
The plant’s current capacity is stated by Tesla at over 450,000 vehicles per year, most recently confirmed in the annual report for 2021 published at the end of January.
The Shanghai factory is wholly owned by Tesla and is the first and only foreign passenger car plant in China exempt from being operated by a joint venture.
In November last year, Tesla had announced that it would invest up to 1.2 billion yuan ($187.91 million) to expand production capacity at its Shanghai factory that will allow it to employ 4,000 more people at the site.
With Tesla’s additional RMB 1.2 billion investment in the Shanghai plant, its use is optimized in the existing production lines, in the process expanding the production capacity of the press shop, body shop, paint shop, final assembly shop and logistics operation center.
The project is expected to be completed by April 2022. As of now, Tesla is already actively hiring for various roles, and offers positions in 11 categories, including sales and delivery, service, research and development, manufacturing, and infrastructure and supply chain, offering a total of 1,523 positions.
Our take:
The factory can already produce more than 834,000 units per year, which is before the new extension has taken effect.
Despite information from Cailian’s source, many factors indicate that Giga Shanghai will end 2022 with a much higher installed production capacity than 1 million units.
