Tesla makes progress on new Megafactory, shares render of final plant

Tesla is making progress on its new Megafactory in Shanghai, China, and it shared a render of the planned final plant.

The Megafactory in Lathrop, California, was Tesla’s first dedicated factory to produce Megapacks, which were previously produced at Gigafactory Nevada.

It is still ramping up to its full capacity of 40 GWh worth of Megapacks, a battery pack for utility-scale energy storage projects, but it has already helped Tesla break new records of energy storage deployment almost every quarter.

Last year, Tesla announced a plan to replicate the Megafactory in China through a deal with Shanghai’s Lingang authorities.

The project had an official signing ceremony late last year.

When first announcing the factory, Tesla aimed at starting construction during the second half of 2023 and production in Q2 2024.

However, the project suffered some delays.

Earlier this year, Tesla officially broke ground for the project and said that it is now aiming for production to start in the first quarter of 2025, which is still a fairly aggressive timeline.

Grace Tao-Lin, Tesla VP of China, shared an update on the project today on Weibo (translated from Chinese):

Now, Tesla’s first energy storage Gigafactory outside the United States is also speeding up construction, with a progress of about 45%, striving to run at the “Tesla speed” and “Lingang speed” again.

The executive says that the plant is about 45% complete and she shared this picture of the progress:

She also shared the first render of the planned final Tesla Megafactory Shanghai:

It shows a fairly large plant covered with solar panels.

Tesla has previously disclosed that it plans for this Megafactory to also have a capacity of about 40 GWh, which should almost double Tesla’s total stationary energy storage production capacity.