AZTechBeat.com by Tishin Donkersley
Feb. 26, 2014
Yesterday Tesla Motors, the maker of the high-end electric vehicle, released plans about their “Gigafactory” where they intend to build advanced electric batteries for their next generations of cars. In the Tesla blog post, “The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs…by 30 percent…and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013.”
According to Yahoo “Elon Musk said [Tesla] has not selected a final site for the facility, but ‘we currently expect that it will be located in one of the following states: Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico or Texas.’” In a presentation by Tesla, it named Arizona as a contender.
Tesla also announced their $1.6 billion convertible notes offering and stated that the proceeds are intended to “accelerate growth of its business in the U.S. and internationally, for the development and production of its ‘GEN III” mass market vehicle, the development of the Tesla Gigafactory and other general corporate purposes.”
Tesla Motors and it’s partners (no confirmation on who) indicated that they plan to invest $4-5 billion in the Gigafactory through 2020, with Tesla directly investing $2 billion. “In cooperation with strategic battery manufacturing partners, we’re planning to build a large scale factory that will allow us to achieve economies of scale and minimize costs through innovative manufacturing, reduction of logistics waste, optimization of co-located processes and reduced overhead,” as stated on their blog post.
The factory is expected to utilize renewable energy, need 500-1000 acres and could house 6,500 employees. The finished product would return to Fremont, CA for assembly.
Read the complete press release from Tesla here.
Graphics provided by Tesla Motors
