The Future of Fremont

Tesla has filed for expansions to their factory in Fremont, California - just in time to support the start of Cybertruck production this summer - and these planned changes could point to Tesla’s intent for the future of the facility.

The filings made on April 21st show that Tesla is looking to make changes in several areas of the plant. The biggest is for a “tool installation” along with the addition of new electrical receptacles on the factory’s first floor.

But the company is also asking for the permits to move equipment from the second floor - where the plant has its battery manufacturing stations.

This is a pretty big deal in the Fremont location. Tesla originally purchased the site from a GM-Toyota project, and it was already almost at peak capacity at that time. Tesla has since expanded with out-buildings - large tents that were originally intended on being temporary, but have become more of a permanent feature.

And the building itself is located in an area that makes it extremely hard to consider expansion - so adding another production line and shuffling equipment around the second floor has to mean that something big is taking priority at Fremont.

Let’s start with the “tool installation”. This is likely a new vehicle production line - or an expansion of an existing one - as the first floor is where the vehicle assembly lines are kept at Fremont. This could be for a number of vehicles, but the timing suggests that this is likely an attempt to increase Cybertruck production efficiency until the lines at GigaTexas are up and running.

We already know that Fremont is home to the most functional Cybertruck manufacturing area at the moment - two weeks ago the company proudly showed off the line to investors during their shareholders meeting on April 19th.

But this also makes sense for the equipment shuffle on the second floor.

Fremont does a lot of its battery production on the second floor, and filings from late August last year show that Tesla has been making the Cybertruck’s battery packs there. It would make a lot of sense to expand that area in the Fremont plant to help make the production ramp up of the Cybertruck as smooth as possible.

This is a very big year for new Tesla construction and  shake-ups at established facilities. Gigafactories in Nevada, Texas, and Berlin are all going through expansions on their facilities. The MegaFactory in Lathrop, California was recently finished, and is ramping up production of the companies Megapack energy storage systems - while Tesla prepares to break ground on a second Megapack facility in Shanghai. And the Investor Day event in March confirmed a new Gigafactory is going to break ground in Mexico by next year at the earliest.

Combine all of that work with the plans for future development that Tesla’s presenters have revealed, and there could be another thing these filings at Fremont could be pointing to - and stay with us here because we’re going to connect some dots.

Fremont has production lines for the Model S, Model X, Model 3, Model Y - and of course, the prototype Cybertruck. But at 511,000 square metres of floor space, it is dwarfed by Tesla’s Austin, Texas factory and its 929 thousand square metres. And Fremont doesn’t have Austin’s 8 square kilometers of total land to expand into.

Despite this, however, Fremont continues to be an important facility for Tesla - as evidenced by the factory being picked to run the first production line for the beta Cybertruck test models. There was certainly more space at GigaTexas, and it’s possible that the company could have committed to making the beta production lines there instead.

But GigaTexas is going through a lot of construction of its own, and while Fremont doesn’t have a lot of space, it doesn’t need to make an entire, fully operational assembly area - so it makes a lot of sense to use this facility to accommodate a smaller version of the Texas Cybertruck lines - and use it as a test bed for potential changes to other facilities at the same time.

Back at the Investor Day event on March 1st, Tesla’s presenters showcased a lot of new ideas for construction methods, new vehicle platforms, and more efficient factory layouts. It’s hard to look at that and not make the connection between these filings at Fremont, and the company’s new goals for improved efficiency.

And the preproduction of Cybertruck seems to have been fairly smooth - likely because the company was able to build their prototype production line at an established facility with veteran employees. 

Given that the company is gearing up for a whole new method of organisation and production - including a brand new vehicle design, and refreshes of their older models - Fremont would make an ideal place to run lower-scale production. At the very least, the site can handle producing the battery packs used in the Cybertruck and other models.

If utilised well, the lessons learned at this factory could be of great use in new locations like GigaMexico, as well as expanding sites like GigaTexas.