Free preview of the 11-year production estimates here:
Drone footage courtesy of Jeff Roberts and Joe Tegtmeyer
The final walls were put up enough to count the exterior as closed, so we’ll have one last look at that, but there are a bunch of new things to cover. Solar panels, battery production, and a whole lot more.
Let’s get the progress graph out of the way. This was a lot of work to keep up to date, and maintain over time, but it was a lot of fun, and now I’m just sad because there isn’t anything new to count. That should change soon enough.
So let’s talk about what’s new. Solar panels have arrived and they’re already placed on the roof awaiting installation. That’s a big deal. Tesla has been slow to add these to factories in the past, so this is new and a very good sign.
Joe Tegtmeyer also captured new battery equipment being added to the cell production area, which is in addition to the components that have already been installed. This suggests that there may already be some production of 4680 cells in Texas, since these are redundant machines. These are not THE capacity, they are additional capacity.
There’s also a newly paved driveway going into the southern end of the building. This is likely temporary to facilitate heavy machinery and equipment in this area, so that is still underway.
And the biggest news is the rumor from Wheelieman on Twitter regarding a big announcement coming this week regarding Giga Texas. Normally I don’t give these rumors much weight, but the timing is right. All the pieces seem to be falling into place to begin the long-awaited ramp of production in the lone star state.
So let’s take one final look at the sitemap progress and go through it, as we always have, week by week. I’ll be posting this as its own standalone video, since after this week, there will be nothing left to see on the main emerald footprint.
So there it is and there ya go. As of January 3rd, Giga Texas, the future birthplace of your CyberTruck is 97.6% done and will be complete, for lack of a better word, in just a few more weeks. It’s already “done” in some capacity, but also won’t be completely done until some time quite a bit later as more areas of the factory come online. At this point it’s more a matter of how you personally decide to count it.
So yes, the percentage will continue slowing and drag out into April before hitting 100%, but production is likely to begin any day now, and once it does, the rest of the percentage to go won’t matter quite as much. I’ve taken this long tail into account, and will use the lessons learned along the way to hopefully make the next one a little smoother.
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So what did I miss or misunderstand? Leave your wisdom and suggestions in the comments below and as always my friends, stay tuned, stay juicy, and I simply cannot wait to hear from you clever robots after the big announcement.
And for those of you who stuck it out, here is your time-and-a-half bonus. This area between the southern end of the building and the large retention pond is getting a lot of what appears to be final grading. There are already permit applications filed to extend the building another 500-feet into this space, though we don’t know the timeline for that. Could we see construction beginning here, or maybe this is where the freshly minted Model Y’s will be loaded up for delivery. Let me know what you think.
#Tesla #TSLA #cybertruck
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