GigaBerlin Meets Production Goal
Tesla announced that the gigafactory in Germany has reached their goal of 5000 vehicles produced per week.
On March 25th, the company posted a celebratory tweet boasting that their facility had hit this goal about one year after they delivered the first Model Y to customers.
The Berlin team has been pushing hard for this milestone - which Tesla calls “volume production”, and considers to be the goal for any facility once it begins production. The company had hoped to reach this rate of workflow at the end of last year - but they’re not too far behind that mark.
Sure complications with the pandemic - and the supply chain issues that it caused - made for a bit of a stumbling block; but it only took three months for GigaBerlin to climb from 3000 Model Ys produced per week to the 5000 they were aiming for - that’s still very impressive.
Next on the plate, Tesla intends to continue increasing production rates - which could be enough to add another Model of vehicle to their lineup at the factory.
Tesla has already applied to expand GigaBerlin to accommodate a rate of 1 million vehicles per year. Currently, they’re approved to produce 500,000 units - and expanding that number will reportedly require adding more room to the facility to fit extra production lines.
Tesla has had a notoriously difficult time appeasing local environmental activists - but that’s led to the company coming up with some really ingenious ways to conserve water and plan their operations more efficiently.
Because of this, Tesla has claimed that their proposed expansion at GigaBerlin will not require any more fresh water usage than they agreed to when they broke ground during the first phase of the project.
That’s certainly a point in their favour, but it’s likely Tesla will still have to wait a bit for the local environmental groups to have their say - which is probably the reason the company has applied for this expansion before hitting their current production goal of 500,000 per year.
It might take a bit to get all those forms filed, but by then GigaBerlin will have likely gotten close to that new milestone, and construction can put up some new factory lines without disrupting operations there.