A massive $700 million expansion of Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas in Austin has been submitted to the Texas Department of Licensing.
Gigafactory manufacturing in Texas is already enormous. As you make your way along its near-mile length, you’ll see what I mean.
There, Tesla has started making Model Y cars, but the assembly lines only take up a tiny part of the huge plant.
The automaker has discussed expanding the current facility to accommodate future vehicle program production, battery production, and Cybertruck production.
Today, it came out that Tesla had asked the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for permission to grow the factory the day before.
An extra 1.4 million square feet of space is being built at a cost of $717 million. Construction is expected to begin by the end of the month, in typical Tesla fashion.
According to the Austin Business Journal, these four developments are all part of the expansion:
- The Cell 1 project, which is the largest of the four, will occupy a total of 693,093 square feet. The estimated cost of this project is $368 million, making it the most expensive of the bunch. The project’s construction is scheduled to begin on January 23 and end on February 12, 2024.
- The Drive Unit project will occupy 423,032 square feet, making it the second-largest development in terms of floor area. The price tag for that endeavor is pegged at $85m. The timeline for the construction period is from February 6th, 2024 to January 15th, 2024.
- With a gross floor area of 321,186 square feet, Cathode would be the third largest development but the second most expensive at $260 million. The beginning of that undertaking is scheduled for January 30 and its conclusion for December 18.
- Cell Test Lab, the smallest of the four projects, is estimated to cost $3.7 million and will have a footprint of 2,560 square feet, making it slightly larger than the typical Starbucks. The beginning of this project is scheduled for January 30 and its end is set for August 25.
Some of the expansion paperwork, though, can be tacked onto existing blueprints.
For instance, recent drone flyovers of the cathode plant’s construction site show that the plant’s construction has already begun. Tesla says that the projects are “ground up and complete interior finish out of the [electric vehicle manufacturing] facility.”
The Tesla Bot humanoid robot, the Tesla Semi, and the company’s future vehicles built on the Gen 3 vehicle platform are all things that will be made at the Gigafactory Texas site in the future.
