esterday Tesla enthusiast and a Torque News friend Joe Tegtmeyer flew his drone and took this nice video of Tesla Giga Texas, sharing December highlights from Tesla's fifth gigafactory's progress.
This is spectacular drone footage from Giga Texas, especially over the columns and big pit.
Right now Tesla is building three separate buildings at Giga Texas.
"The origin of the idea of 3 separate buildings separated by roads may have something to do with criticism of Tesla for the original gigafactory design (ala GF1) as presenting a fire danger due to the distance of egress within such a large monolithic structure. Giga Shanghai took a different approach, making the buildings long and relatively narrow, and adding several smaller ones. Then, with Giga Berlin, we see all but the Drive Unit building merging into a monolithic structure, but with massive concrete firewalls separating the different sections. Maybe we'll see a similar approach here, with concrete walls separating sections. That may be why some rows of footers are bigger and deeper than others, which may be to support large divider walls," comments James Hoffman under Tegtmeyer's video.
Here are significant highlights from Giga Texas as of December 1.
The steel structure has grown again, adding another 4 sections of the first floor, another 4 sections of the second floor, and roof truss structures. It looks like preparations were underway for another expansion as I departed.
Many more trucks arriving bringing materials, steel, and concrete beams ... as I was leaving, two very long trucks carrying two huge concrete roof beams arrived but I was not able to capture a photo ... if you watch other Quad Squad videos taken later today, you will see them, possibly even installed.
Over a thousand footings have been completed and dozens more underway ... almost as far as you can see there are footings on both foundation halves. The march south with the construction of footings on both halves of the foundation seems to be accelerating.
Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.
