Tesla to boost Fremont production with help from Shanghai

Recent production upgrades to Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai location have boosted the company’s weekly output in China, and now the automaker may be looking to draw on this expertise for its U.S. plant in California. After Tesla’s record delivery month in China just a few months ago, the move help is expected to boost the Fremont plant’s production significantly in the month’s to come.

Tesla is sending around 200 employees from Giga Shanghai to Fremont to help boost the California plant’s production, according to a report from Automotive News. Specifically, the automaker plans to send automation and control engineers to the Fremont factory for assignments lasting at least three months, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Tesla had a record delivery month in China in September, delivering 83,135 units built at Gigafactory Shanghai. The boost came after Tesla upgraded production at the Shanghai plant, effectively doubling its annual capacity to around a million vehicles, according to past Bloomberg reports.

Tesla also made major cuts to delivery wait times after the production upgrade, dropping all of its vehicles’ estimated delivery times to between one and four weeks — while some of its vehicles previously took as long as 22 weeks to arrive for buyers. Meanwhile, the automaker has had trouble actually getting its vehicles to customers amidst high demand.

In Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk noted that the automaker needs to move away from its typical end-of-quarter delivery push model. Musk explained that smoothing out deliveries to be more consistent throughout each quarter will help ensure there are enough carriers at any given time to physically deliver Tesla’s vehicles.

"There weren't enough boats, there weren't enough trains, there weren't enough car carriers to actually support the wave" of Q3 deliveries, Musk said during Tesla's earnings call. "Whether we like it or not, we actually have to smooth out the delivery of cars intra-quarter, because there just aren't enough transportation objects to move them around."

The first round of Giga Shanghai employees is heading to California this month, according to one of the sources. Tesla produces all of its currently available models at the Fremont factory, and overseas buyers of the Model Y could have to wait up to 20 weeks to take delivery, according to estimates on the automaker’s website.

The news also comes as Tesla continues to ramp up production at its newer Gigafactory Texas — where the automaker recently made its 20,000th Model Y unit.

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