Tesla's Nevada plant will have a half-factory built as part of a $3.6 billion upgrade.
Tesla announced Tuesday that it will build a semi mass production plant as part of a $3.6 billion plan to invest in a sprawling factory near Reno, Nevada, known as Gigafactory Nevada. [Limited production of the Semi began late last year at Tesla's plant near Austin, Texas, but reservations for the Class 8 semitrailer truck closed last August, just a few months after it began. This means that only a few early customers, like Pepsi, took delivery of their vehicles.
An update on the semi program will be presented at Tesla's Q4 earnings call today.
As part of the investment, a new battery plant is also planned for the Nevada site. It will produce Tesla's 4,680 battery cells, with an annual production capacity of 100 gigawatt-hours, enough for 1.5 million small cars, Tesla said.
The investment, which is expected to create about 3,000 new jobs, is in addition to the $6.2 billion investment Tesla has made at its Nevada site since 2014. Tesla currently produces batteries and other components at the plant. No mention was made of the timing of the upgrade.
Tuesday's investment announcement came weeks after details of Tesla's $717 million investment in its Texas plant surfaced. The Texas plant produces small quantities of the Semi as well as the Model Y for the eastern United States. It is also the planned site for production of the Cybertruck pickup truck, which could begin later this year.
Tesla is believed to be planning at least two more plants for its growing global portfolio. One is to build a second plant in Shanghai to increase annual production capacity to more than 1 million vehicles. Tesla mentioned the second plant in a letter sent last May to officials in the Shanghai Lingang Special District, where the existing Shanghai plant is located.
A plant may also be built in Mexico; Bloomberg reported last month that Tesla was close to announcing plans to build a plant in the northeastern Mexican automotive hub of Nuevo León state.
