Giga Shanghai Impresses Even With Shutdowns

Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai, China has published its numbers for March, and they’re pretty stellar.

The beleaguered production facility managed to turn out over 65,000 vehicles, which is a 100% year-over-year growth - and that’s while the facility was shutdown TWICE due to COVID restrictions.

China has been very careful with the Pandemic, a tactic that has borne out in the low numbers of casualties from COVID (Until recently), so it’s not surprising that shutdowns would happen periodically as the newest wave hits the world. What is surprising is that not only did Giga Shanghai double its numbers from last March, but they increased output even over this February by about 16%!

Now, overall this quarter’s output has been less than last quarter - 190,446 vehicles behind 310,000 vehicles last quarter - but this is still very good considering the staff having to work around lockdowns, the most recent of which has been extended into this week.

The hope is that Giga Berlin and Giga Texas will soon be able to take some of the global burden off of Shanghai. The Fremont factory, which Shanghai has just eclipsed in terms of production, turns out about 600,000 vehicles per year. Giga Shanghai is currently projected to output about 800,000 vehicles per year with the new expansions to the facility. Giga Texas meanwhile is predicted to have somewhere around 500,000 units of just Model Ys.

Now, Shanghai ramped up very quickly, almost doubling its output in a year. Given what we know about Giga Texas’ complex infrastructure, automation, and battery production, how quickly might we see a ramp-up at that facility?