Tesla announced spending $3.6 billion to expand its Reno, Nevada, manufacturing facility. This announcement can be viewed as an appetizer ahead of the company’s Q4 results for 2023.
In Reno, Tesla will construct not one but two new factories. One will be devoted to the production of Tesla’s Semi, an electric heavy-duty truck. Tesla’s 4680 battery cells, which the company claims have finally been perfected and are steadily increasing in yield, will be produced at the other factory.
Tesla announced spending $3.6 billion:
The current Tesla cars’ battery packs and electric motors are produced at the Reno facility. The factory produces Powerwall home batteries simultaneously. The Reno plant has produced 7.3 billion battery cells, 1.5 million battery packs, 3.6 million electric motors, and 1 million energy modules since 2014, some of which were Powerwall batteries.
Today, we’re announcing $3.6B of new investment in Giga Nevada.
– 4M sq ft of new manufacturing footprint
– 3k additional team members
– 2 new manufacturing facilities: a 100 GWh 4680 cell factory & our first high-volume Semi factoryDetails → https://t.co/4CBOIFLwAW pic.twitter.com/rqXzyE7eRK
— Tesla (@Tesla) January 24, 2023
After initially planning to spend $3.5 billion to build the Reno factory, Tesla ended up investing $6.2 billion. 17,000 construction workers were hired and 11,000 ended up working for Tesla. Despite the huge investment, the company – just like all other EV manufacturers – realized this wasn’t nearly enough to meet the growing demand.
Elon Musk took to Twitter (where else?) to announce the $3.6 extra investment and planned recruitment of 3,000 employees once the facility is completed. The battery factory will have a planned capacity of 100GWh of the 4680 battery cells – that’s an additional 1.5 million cars right there.
The second factory will be dedicated to scaling up the Semi production, but Elon Musk or Tesla did not divulge any more details about its planned production capacity.
It has become a tradition for Elon to announce big plans just before earnings calls. You can’t blame him for trying to lift the mood of investors who are simply getting tired of his escapades.
It has become a norm as well that the bigger announcement he makes, the less rosy the earnings results are. Does that mean Tesla missed its Q4 targets? We don’t have to wait too long to find out.