Tesla Giga Shanghai plant expansion ahead of schedule

Reports from China indicate that Tesla has completed the main sections of the expansion of its Shanghai plant. The development, which will facilitate the production of Model Y, is expected to be completed in October or November.

It is, therefore, possible that production of the Model Y in China will start this year, rather than in the first quarter of 2021 as previously planned. Tesla began the expansion of Gigafactory 3 earlier this year, and now reports indicate that work on the main building and individual facilities are about to complete. The interior work is almost done, and initial tests seem to have started.

Two versions of the Model-Y made in China are already available for advance sale on the manufacturer’s Chinese website. The price of the long-range version is currently 488,000 yuan, the equivalent of 60,550 euros. For the performance version, Tesla calls 535,000 yuan (66,370 euros). The date for the start of sales is now only “2021”.

Short review: In October 2019, production of the Model 3 started in Shanghai. The first units were handed over to employees in the presence of Elon Musk at the end of December, and deliveries to customers began in January. In other words, there were around ten weeks between the start of production and deliveries. We are curious to see how long this period will be for Model Y.

In the meantime, Tesla has completed the capital increase announced on 1 September. The electric car manufacturer has raised five billion dollars by issuing new shares. These 4.25 billion euros should be invested immediately in the growth projects currently underway – in addition to the expansion of Giga Shanghai, these include the construction of Gigafactory 4 in Brandenburg and the Cybertruck Gigafactory in Texas. There is also the development of the Roadrunner battery project – details of which Tesla will announce at the long-awaited Battery Day on 22 September.

Tesla took advantage of a month-long rise in the share price for the capital increase, and the stock market value had meanwhile risen to record levels. On Tuesday, however, the Tesla share received a damper and closed 20 per cent lower. The reason for this was that Tesla was surprisingly refused admission to the S&P500 share index – instead, companies with a lower market value but more regular quarterly profits were included. Analysts disagree, however, whether the stock reaction was a natural and overdue price correction, or the beginning of the end of the month-long rally in tech stocks – Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Google’s parent company Alphabet also suffered losses.

One thing is clear: With the daily loss of around 20 per cent, Tesla has lost approximately 80 billion dollars in market value. Ford and General Motors aren’t even worth that much together. As Bloomberg calculates, the shares of Elon Musk alone lost around 16 billion dollars in value that day.

globaltimes.cn, teslarati.com (both China), electrek.co, teslarati.com (capital), cnn.com (stock market)