Tesla is expanding the already enormous Giga Texas with an over $700 million add-on.
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Giga Texas Expanding
Tesla filed for four new projects around January 9th and this was with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. Tesla is expanding Giga Texas with a $716 million investment including a cathode plant.
These projects will provide Tesla with about 1.4 million additional square feet. Construction could start as soon as the end of January, 2023. Cathodes are an essential part of battery development and are the way electrical current flows through a battery.
In total, there will be four new facilities, but the main one will be for a "Cell 1" facility, costing $368 million and then the cathode building, which is $216 million. The drive unit and cell test lab buildings cost $85 million and $3.7 million respectively.
The scope of the work is file as new construction from the ground up and complete interior finish our of the manufacturing facility. The Cell 1 facility will be 693,093 square feet and is set to begin construction from January 23, 2023 to February 12, 2024.
The drive unit facility is 423,032 square feet and is set to begin construction from February 6, 2023 to January 15, 2024.
The cathode facility is 321,186 square feet and is set to begin construction from January 30, 2023 to December 18, 2023. Tesla had previously filed a permit on February 2, 2022, and it is unclear if those are related.
The smallest building, the cell test lab, is 2,560 square feet and is set to begin construction from January 30, 2023 to August 25, 2023.
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Construction of Facilities and Purpose
The cell facility will help supplement Tesla's expansion of EV manufacturing in the U.S. It will help make Tesla less dependent on supplier for its products, in particular batteries, like LFP batteries - from CATL.
The cathode facility, I suspect as its name is called, will be used for the production of cathodes for batteries.
The drive unit facility will most likely be used for creating drive units for Tesla's vehicles.
As for the Cell 1 facility, the biggest of all of them, it seems that the most likely use case for this will be to produce the Cybertruck - if the rest of Giga Texas is going to be dedicated to the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. If not, it's anybody's guess as to what this building will be used for.
I see Giga Texas continuing to expand in the coming years even after these buildings are complete. There is a lot of land there.
What do you think of Tesla expanding at Giga Texas? What will the Cell 1 facility be used for?
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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News.
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