Musk is cutting the ribbon for his factory again! Tesla unveils its new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas

Musk is cutting the ribbon for his own gigafactory again.

At 4 p.m. local time on April 7, 1,500 guests poured into Austin, Texas, where an all-night party was about to take place. The party was marked by musk and the completion of Tesla's fifth gigafactory, the Austin, Texas plant.

This is just two weeks after Musk and German Chancellor Scholz jointly cut the ribbon on March 22 for Tesla's 4 super factory, the Berlin gigafactory.

Two weeks two factories

Like the Berlin Gigafactory, the Austin Gigafactory plans to have a planned annual production capacity of 500,000 Tesla models, mainly Model Y. It seems hard to imagine that Musk, who at the beginning of the year was still frustrated that the production of 936,000 units for the whole year of 2021 did not meet the expectations of a million units, has now nearly doubled its paper production capacity in just two weeks.

What makes Musk more satisfied is undoubtedly that Austin, which has a gigafactory, is obviously more like a headquarters.

On December 1, 2021, Tesla officially relocated its headquarters from Silicon Valley, California to Austin. In Musk's promotional letter on social media, the picture of the "world's biggest party" is full of geeks, while the caption is completely blank, completely without Musk's polite words of "thank you to Berlin, thank you to Germany" when he cut the ribbon in Berlin.

Back in early 2020, Austin Mayor Steve Adler personally invited Musk to Texas and promised Tesla all the necessary support, including $60 million worth of tax breaks.

Today, mayor Adler's private efforts are clearly coming to fruition. Austin not only became the location of the new gigafactory half a year later, but also became the headquarters of Tesla, and the Austin factory was the "big brother" of all the gigafactories. The length and width of the completed Austin plant are 1500 meters and 400 meters, respectively, which is comparable to the Shanghai Super Factory and slightly larger than the Berlin Super Factory. But if you consider the total area of the plant and the corresponding future expansion capacity, the potential of the Austin plant is significantly stronger than that of other plants.

Image source: electrek

Tesla bought 810 hectares of land for the factory in Austin, far larger than the 300 hectares of the Second Largest Factory in Berlin and more than four times the size of the Shanghai factory. In the aerial aerial view video that has been released, the huge plant area makes the Austin plant itself look amazing.

According to Tesla's current plan, the 350,000 square meters of the factory area will be used for the production of model Y, and the annual production capacity is expected to be 500,000 vehicles, which may also include the low-end low-cost version of model Y that Musk is raising for 450 kilometers of range. The remaining area of the plant will be allocated to the power battery factory, a small part of the Model 3, Tesla's controversial pickup truck Cyberruck and Tesla's electric truck Semi. Before the Austin plant can independently produce power batteries, Austin's power batteries still need to rely heavily on battery exports from Shanghai. In addition, Tesla does not rule out the possibility of building a new R&D center building or administrative building in the Austin factory.

Tesla's two-year built-up area costs Tesla about $1.1 billion, and after the plant area is fully utilized, Tesla expects to invest at least $10 billion and create at least 20,000 jobs in Austin.

Unlike the Berlin and Shanghai factories, the Austin factory also deliberately opened up a so-called "ecological paradise" in a corner of the factory in order to highlight Tesla's social responsibility for energy transformation and clean travel. According to Musk's propaganda, the plant's ecological zone adjacent to the Colorado River will be accompanied by "fish in the water, birds in trees, and butterflies."

Tesla's old problem: resistance from environmental groups

Although the ecological area of the factory seems to be full of gimmicks, in the eyes of some local residents and environmental organizations, this move is just to block the hype of Yo-Yo's mouth.

Similar to Musk's fierce opposition from local residents and environmental agencies in Berlin, Tesla's trip to Texas is not short of opposition even against the backdrop of the lure of money moving in and the prevalence of American business culture.

The biggest of these problems remains the issue of water resources.

Unlike Shanghai and Berlin, which are not short of water, much of Texas, where Austin is located, is drier, with summer temperatures often reaching above 35 degrees Celsius. The natural conditions of the local drought make its water use heavily dependent on a series of reservoirs formed by the Colorado River, which recorded the lowest water levels in history between 2008 and 2016. This has also forced local residents to save their annual per capita water consumption from 190 gallons all the way to 120 gallons, and the arrival of Tesla will undoubtedly reverse this trend.

In contrast to the local drought, Austin is also in the floodplain and is plagued by a short rainstorm season. Local environmental groups have widely questioned that the large cement floor at the higher-lying Austin plant will lead to an increased risk of flooding in low-lying residential areas.

Another problem that fits Tesla's style is Tesla's arrogant attitude. Tesla not only bypassed all residents to sign a water supply agreement directly with the local water company, but also appointed commissioners from Boston when negotiating with residents, and the local Residents, who accounted for a large proportion of Hispanics, could not communicate smoothly with Old Money on the East Coast by relying on plastic English.

Although there is always a discordant phenomenon in the local area, this does not affect the continuous development of Tesla's global layout and Tesla still handed over a bright report card in the first quarter.

Compared with other automakers trapped by the new crown epidemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war, the chip crisis, raw material prices soaring and other unfavorable factors, Tesla released data on April 3 showed that Tesla's global delivery volume in the first quarter reached a new high, up 67.5% year-on-year, reaching 310,000 vehicles. In contrast, General Motors and Toyota motor vehicles announced a year-on-year decline in sales, especially GM's first quarter electric vehicle deliveries in the United States were only a pitiful 457.

Even without focusing on the electric vehicle market, Tesla has surpassed the global sales of established manufacturers such as Skoda (878,000 units) and Volvo (698,000 units) with sales of 936,000 units in 2021 alone. If Musk's goal of mass production of 1.4 million Teslas this year is successfully achieved, the next thing to feel the crisis will be audi, the "light factory" that sold 1.68 million units last year.