Tesla Plans To Spend $717 Mln To Expand Austin Gigafactory

(RTTNews) - Tesla Inc. is planning to invest around $717 million to expand its gigafactory in Austin, Texas, reports said citing papers filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Registration.

The luxury electric vehicle maker has applied for construction permits to add about 1.4 million square feet of space to its manufacturing plant, which was unvelied in last April. The company will add four new facilities, which will include a lab for battery-cell testing.

With this, the total area of the factory would be about 5.6 million square feet.

The construction would start as soon as later this month, and would be completed by February 2024.

At the time of Austin facility launch in April 2022, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk had stated that Texas Gigafactory was expected to become the highest volume car factory in America. Tesla plans to manufacture its long-awaited electric pickup Cybertruck at the factory, along with Model Y. The Cybertruck sales are expected to begin in mid-2023.

Meanwhile, in a June interview, Musk had referred its new car factories in Texas and Berlin to as gigantic money furnaces, noting that they were losing billions of dollars as supply chain disruptions affect the electric vehicle giant's ability to ramp up production. He added then that getting Berlin and Austin functional and getting Shanghai back in the saddle fully were their concerns.

Tesla is reportedly facing probe regarding the initial construction of the gigafactory in Austin after workers alleged that the contractors and subcontractors failed to follow safety protocols and that workers are still waiting to get money.

The 2,500-acre factory in Texas is Tesla's fifth giga factory globally. Tesla's factory in Fremont, California, is its very first car factory, and Shanghai factory is Tesla's first Gigafactory outside the United States, while Giga Berlin is the first Tesla factory in Europe. The company also has a battery gigafactory in Nevada.