New Shanghai Production Facility?

Reports are coming in indicating that Tesla is aiming to start construction on a new vehicle factory in Shanghai as soon as this month.

New reports out of China by Reuters indicate that Tesla plans to start work on a new plant in Shanghai. This is already the location of Tesla’s first international manufacturing plant that is currently nearing a run rate of 1 million vehicles produced per year. 

A second plant added to the current Giga Shanghai facility would increase capacity to about 2 million cars per year. This also would potentially make Tesla the largest automobile producer in China; with all other major suppliers like Toyota, GM, SAIC Motor Corp, or Volkswagen only managing around 1.6 million vehicles per year at most.

Currently, the Shanghai facility has been a key export hub for other markets like Japan, Australia and Europe (as the Giga Berlin delays needed to be covered). 

And this could all happen very fast. So far for Tesla, building in China has proven to be a very fast and affordable process. The first Giga Shanghai was completed from first shovels in the ground to initial production of the Model 3 in just 10 months and only cost about 2 billion dollars.

The new plant will reportedly be located in the area of the company’s current production base in Lingang, Pudong New Area, but Tesla itself, and the Shanghai government, aren’t currently commenting.