After 23 days of suspension, the automated vehicle production line of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory began to run at high speed again.
According to the information released by Tesla, more than 8,000 people arrived at work on the day of resumption of work, and the battery and motor modules in the factory are being produced at full speed. Song Gang, senior director of manufacturing at Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory, revealed to the media that many Tesla parts suppliers in Shanghai have also begun to resume work and production.
As the most recognized new energy vehicle company in the world, from industry experts to ordinary netizens, Tesla's every move is enough to make people have a hot discussion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, of course, has become a big red man on the Internet. After all, the momentum of becoming a magic dancer in the Berlin factory has not stopped, and it is going to fly back to Texas as a western cowboy, and netizens around the world have just a large amount of melon material.
With the opening of the new factory, Musk has caught fire in the Internet again. /Visual China
But rather than Musk playing Super Change in front of the camera, more people are concerned about who Tesla's second gigafactory in Asia will spend on — or which city in China will give the "Tesla Second Factory" a new hukou?
01
Exactly how many cities want Tesla
China is Tesla's fastest growing region and Tesla's second largest market. It is also true that when Musk threw out the news on the Tesla earnings conference call in January this year that "this year will be the site of the world's fifth super factory", people speculated that this super factory "will most likely still land in China".
In February this year, the news of "Tesla's second factory settled in Shenyang" spread throughout the Network, causing public concern. Although it was later debunked by Tesla, on social media, people's thinking was particularly active, speculating about which city would become Tesla's next stop: Tesla seems to only deny building a second factory in Shenyang, rather than denying that it will build a second factory in China?
Although Tesla's "friendship" in Shenyang has been debunked, it cannot stop people's endless imagination. /Figureworm Creative
As of now, the answer in the minds of car owners and the public, in addition to expanding the second factory in Shanghai, Tesla may be stationed in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Qingdao, Xi'an, Hefei, Wuhan, Shenyang, Yibin and other 9 cities.
Nansha, Guangzhou, is the place with the highest voice. After all, in addition to ports, land, and labor, when Tesla's first factory in China was selected, Nansha formulated a "T plan" to attract Tesla.
Wuhan has participated in the settlement and operation of a number of new energy vehicle projects such as Xiaopeng, Dongfeng Honda New Energy, Dongfeng High-end New Energy Off-road Vehicles, etc., and now of course it will be full of action. During the two sessions of the National People's Congress this year, a number of CPPCC members in Hubei Province submitted a joint proposal proposing to "promote Tesla's No. 2 factory to settle in the Wuhan City Circle."
Those cities that are not on the list are also chasing Tesla.
Mr. Liu, a netizen in Tianjin, left a message on the government website, suggesting that Tianjin "take the initiative to negotiate Tesla and provide convenient conditions for its settlement." The Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Commerce replied that it "maintains close contact with Tesla Motors and actively negotiates."
Like a large catfish, Tesla became the object of competition between major cities to "catch".
02
"Tesla Factory II" and Musk's business experience
In the face of surging speculation from the outside world, Tao Lin, vice president of External Affairs of Tesla, deliberately gave a warm reminder on Weibo:
After all, everyone knows the benign benefits of Tesla's "catfish". Tesla's financial report data shows that the annual delivery volume of Shanghai Gigafactory in 2021 will reach 484,130 vehicles, which is almost equal to the annual delivery volume of Tesla's 499647 vehicles in the world the previous year.
It is worth mentioning that of the 484,000 Teslas produced from the Shanghai Gigafactory, 150,000 were packaged into containers in Shanghai Port and exported to Japan, South Korea and Europe by 10,000 tons of cargo ships.
Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai. /Visual China
The output of a Shanghai factory accounted for nearly half of Tesla's global production capacity that year, which also made Tesla the boss of the pure electricity segment in 2021; even if plug-in hybrids are also included, in the new energy vehicle market, Tesla is the first.
The large increase in production capacity has also expanded Tesla's production desire. Tesla not only plans to expand the existing Shanghai Gigafactory, in October 2021, Musk also made a flag at Tesla's annual shareholders meeting - it plans to achieve an annual sales target of 20 million vehicles by 2030 and take a 20% share of the global auto market. At present, the only two established car companies in the world that can sit firmly in the position of annual sales of tens of millions of dollars are Toyota and Volkswagen.
This flag is not easy to do - to achieve the ambitious goal of 20 million vehicles per year, it means that Tesla must be prepared in advance to expand production capacity. But the current reality is that Tesla's production capacity has not kept up with the popularity of the market, even if several super factories are working overtime to expand production capacity, it is still far from enough.
Expanding Tesla's production capacity is the most urgent priority in Musk's mind. /Visual China
The Berlin Gigafactory, which opened last month, has undergone a series of twists and turns in the construction process, and the Shanghai factory will need to be a "handle" for a long time before Tesla's next gigafactory is officially opened.
The Shanghai factory certainly deserves it. According to reports, in 2021, the output value of new energy vehicles in Shanghai will exceed 160 billion yuan, and Tesla's Shanghai factory will contribute more than 150 billion yuan, making Shanghai's new energy automobile industry gilded with gold.
In the face of this promising and attractive "economic account", any powerful and ambitious automobile industry city can not be moved.
03
Fight for Tesla, why is it so important
The settlement of the "Tesla Second Factory" will bring considerable economic contributions to the local area, which is a matter of course, but the figures on the ledger are only the most intuitive and shallow things.
When "double carbon" becomes the general trend of economic development, the new energy industry has become an important track for urban industrial competition, and the first-line new energy vehicle companies have naturally become the fragrant food of the market economy.
No industry can thrive, including Tesla.
A list of domestic Tesla supply chains shows that Tesla's batteries, vehicle stamping abrasives, body sheet metal, interiors, and electronic equipment are all provided by Chinese companies. A previous article in the Liberation Daily revealed that the localization rate of parts in Tesla's Shanghai factory has exceeded 90% compared with the 73% localization rate of tesla's California factory.
Around Tesla, many upstream and downstream suppliers have settled down around Tesla's gigafactory, opening up an industrial chain that can promote coordinated development. According to statistics, many of the more than 100 intelligent new energy vehicle related enterprises gathered in the Lingang area are Tesla suppliers. Among them, the battery supplier Ningde Times has also soared with the help of cooperation with Tesla and has become the world's most prominent new energy battery manufacturer.
At the same time, with the continuous development of the regionalized economy, the new label of "intelligent networked car city" has become another fashionable label in addition to the new energy industry - compared with the new energy automobile industry, the intelligent networked automobile industry is "higher", directly connecting new energy and Internet technology, and even participating in the construction of future urban transportation development.
During the 2021 China Import and Export Expo, visitors experience intelligent driving technology. /Visual China
This is especially important for some cities that have their own automotive industry clusters. After all, efforts to build a new energy industry matrix, cultivate more competitive new energy vehicle enterprises, and then supplemented by advanced technology to create a test platform for intelligent driving, have almost become the access conditions for "show muscles" between cities.
Not to mention the talent training and talent output in the process of "showing muscle". In recent years, as new energy vehicles have become a particularly common new species on the road, coupled with the incubation of intelligent driving car technology, whether it is a car-making company or an Internet factory, they are thirsty for talents related to automobile manufacturing, and the news of "car-making new forces with millions of annual salaries" has become common.
Of course, this is also indispensable to the participation of local universities with automotive majors. In particular, those universities with strong strength have signed school-enterprise cooperation agreements directly with car-making enterprises, and the talents cultivated in the school will be directly transported to the enterprises, contributing to the expansion and strengthening of China's automobile industry.
During the fourth CIIE last year, Tao Lin publicly said in an interview with the media that she hopes that in the near future, not only The Tesla models made in China can achieve nearly 100% localized productivity, but also witness the Tesla models that are completely independently designed and manufactured by the Chinese team on the roads of China.
The reason why the public is willing to speculate which city Tesla will settle in the "second factory" in China is actually to hope that tesla, a "catfish" that crosses the Pacific Ocean, will establish a more novel and more competitive brand awareness for china's automotive industry, use the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries to see the gap, and realize the survival of the fittest in China's new energy vehicle market by revitalizing the chain of the automobile industry, and enhance the overall development level of the entire industry.
Improving the overall development level of China's new energy automobile industry is particularly important at present. /Visual China
The same is true for a city. When a city can clearly see its shortcomings on the road of industrial competition, and self-optimize through iterative updating, the chemical reaction it produces is not only the economic output value and market share written on the ledger; maintaining the economic vitality of a city often relies on the industrial clusters that are constantly formed in the process of optimizing the short board, thereby promoting healthy competition between cities - no matter in this, whether there will be "catfish" like Tesla stirring the entire industry.
This is what we should understand from the global city competition for Tesla.
Reference Articles:
[1] The battle for Tesla, the new energy dark war in Chinese cities | Spiral Labs
[2] 9 Cities Race! Who will end up winning Tesla's second factory? | National Economics
[3] Tesla's "Shanghai speed" surpasses the "American speed", by what? | Shangguan News
[4] Competing for Tesla's second factory, who has the advantage | China Automotive News