Cai Lian News, January 25 (Editor Liu Rui) After the governor of Nevada "broke the news" in advance on Monday, Eastern time, Tesla confirmed its bombshell news on Twitter on Tuesday: Tesla plans to invest another $3.6 billion to expand its Gigafactory in Nevada.
In addition to the Nevada governor's plans to build a new electric truck factory, Tesla also revealed that it plans to build a new 4680 battery factory. According to Tesla, its expanded new plant is expected to cover 4 million square feet (about 371,600 square meters).
After the expansion is complete, Tesla's highly anticipated electric truck Semi may finally be on track for mass production.
Tesla will expand its first Gigafactory
On Tuesday, Tesla issued a public statement writing:
"We will invest more than $3.6 billion to continue growing the Gigafactory in Nevada, adding 3,000 new team members and two new plants: a 100 GWh 4,680 battery factory (enough batteries to produce 1.5 million light vehicles per year), and our first high-volume Semi plant."
Back in 2014, Tesla began building its first battery factory in Nevada. Currently, the company operates the plant jointly with Panasonic, which is a key battery supplier, co-lessee and co-investor in the plant.
The factory is called Gigafactory 1 (GF1), and as the name suggests, it is Tesla's first Gigafactory. Tesla emphasized in the statement that since 2014, Tesla has invested $6.2 billion in Nevada to build the 5.4 million square foot (about 501,700 square meters) gigafactory.
Despite being built at the earliest, the plant itself is still limited in production. The plant currently manufactures and supplies high-voltage battery packs primarily to Tesla's automotive assembly plant in Fremont, California. In addition, the plant is responsible for the production of Semi electric trucks, but the overall production is low.
Tesla claims that so far, the plant has produced 7.3 billion batteries (37Gwh+ per year), 1.5 million battery packs, 3.6 million drive units, and 1 million energy modules (14 GWh+ in total). To get the job done, Tesla's Gigafactory in Nevada already directly employs more than 11,000 people.
The long-awaited Semi will finally be mass-produced?
Back in 2017, Tesla first announced plans to produce the electric truck Semi, and plans to start production in 2019. But in reality, it wasn't until 2022 that the highly anticipated model actually achieved its first production deliveries.
Last December, Tesla CEO Elon Musk held a ceremony in Nevada to kick off the company's delivery of Semi trucks to PepsiCo, an early key customer.
But as of now, Tesla still hasn't achieved mass production of the Semi truck, and is currently only doing small-scale production at its Gigafactory in Nevada. However, after the completion of the Nevada Gigafactory expansion, Semi's large-scale mass production may be expected.
So far, Tesla has not publicly disclosed the cost of each Semi truck, nor has it specifically produced or sold in its fourth-quarter delivery report. However, Tesla is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter earnings report after hours on Wednesday EST. There is speculation that in the fourth-quarter earnings call, Tesla is expected to reveal more details about the Semi project.