Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai to expand annual production to one million EVs—oops, make that two million

Tesla recently announced plans to expand production at Gigafactory Shanghai. Reuters reported that Tesla filed documents with the local city government to increase its parts production in order to meet growing demand for exports. The automaker plans to add production workshops, increase the number of workers at the plant and increase the lengths of shifts.

Above: Tesla's Model 3 at the Shanghai Gigafactory (Twitter: Tesla Greater China)

Last year, Tesla announced that Gigafactory Shanghai had surpassed the company’s Fremont factory in production capacity. Tesla has made the Chinese factory its main export hub. In 2021, Tesla sold over 470,000 China-made cars, of which more than 160,000 were exported, according to the Xinhua news agency.

As of the end of 2021, the Shanghai Gig’s annualized production rate had grown to over 800,000 vehicles, and the company appears to be moving full speed ahead with more expansion. The latest announcement is in addition to plans announced in November, which included investing around $190 million and adding 4,000 more employees to the current headcount of 15,000.

Elon Musk has said that he envisions the factory producing over a million vehicles per year.

CATL, Tesla’s main battery cell supplier in China, is currently building a battery factory near Gigafactory Shanghai, which is expected to have a capacity of 80 GWh per year—enough to power some 800,000 EVs.

All this adds up to a pretty ambitious expansion strategy—but Tesla is not just a moving target, it’s an accelerating one. Just a couple of days after the news of the planned expansion broke, “two people familiar with the matter” told Reuters that Tesla plans to start work on an entire second factory in Shanghai, possibly as soon as next month. If and when the new plant comes online, the automaker’s production capacity in China could be as much as two million cars per year.

'Go Giga' Video Series

Above: Tesla recently released a fascinating video series, Go Giga, to showcase the capabilities of Tesla and its Shanghai Gigafactory (YouTube: Tesla Greater China)

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This article originally appeared in Charged. Author: Charles Morris. Sources: Reuters, Electrek