Tesla’s $3.6 billion expansion plans at Giga Nevada

Operations at Tesla’s Sparks, Nevada plant are set to grow substantially in the coming years, with the company recently sharing plans to add two new factories. The factory has been a key producer of Tesla’s automotive batteries throughout the last several years, and soon it will also be a major producer of the Tesla Semi.

Tesla has announced plans to spend as much as $3.6 billion in expansions to Gigafactory Nevada, as detailed by MarketWatch in recent weeks. The investments will go toward the company’s first “high-volume” Semi factory and an updated 4680 battery cell factory, adding as many as 3,000 jobs to the location, according to the automaker.

The expansion projects will add as much as 4 million square feet of new manufacturing facilities to Tesla’s current footprint of 5.4 million square feet. Currently, Tesla has about 11,000 employees at Giga Nevada.

It’s not yet clear when the construction projects will begin, nor how long they’re expected to last. The battery cell factory will produce 100 GWh of battery cells per year, or “enough batteries for 2 million light-duty vehicles annually,” according to Tesla. In 2022, Tesla said it delivered roughly 1.31 million vehicles and most analysts forecast Tesla to deliver around 1.92 million vehicles in 2023.

The news comes amidst increasing competition, as a number of automakers are investing in factories, electric vehicles and battery cell operations in the emerging sector. Tesla also plans to begin production of its highly anticipated Cybertruck later this year, expected to reach volume production in 2024.

Before Tesla had confirmed the news, Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo mentioned the automaker’s plans for a new manufacturing facility during his State of the State speech. U.S. President Joe Biden and the White House also confirmed the plans, just a day prior to Tesla’s announcement.

The announcement also came just ahead of Tesla’s quarterly earnings call, and weeks after the company applied for multiple expansion projects at Gigafactory Texas, valued at almost one billion dollars. Tesla’s investment into expansion plans at Giga Texas are valued at $717 million and will go toward an additional 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing facilities.

On its Q4 earnings call, Tesla announced that it earned $24.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, beating out its forecast of $24.03 billion. The automaker totaled $3.7 billion in net income during the quarter, with a total of $12.6 billion in net income for the year as a whole.

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Source: MarketWatch