The automobile manufacturer Tesla has announced that it will open a new factory in the Chinese city of Shanghai to produce its “Megapacks”, energy storage batteries used to stabilize electrical networks and avoid supply outages. Specifically, the new Tesla plant will have a production capacity of about 10,000 units each year, as the company revealed this morning on its official Twitter account, which is also owned by the company’s CEO, Elon Musk.
The official Chinese news agency Xinhua has pointed out that the works of the so-called “megafactory” will begin in the third quarter of this year, with a view to starting production -and its sale worldwide- in the second quarter of 2024 Tesla already has one of these “megafactories” in Lathrop (California, United States), where it manufactures about 10,000 batteries each year, equivalent to a storage of about 40 gigawatt hours (GWh).
According to the company’s website, each “Megapack” can store more than 3 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy, “enough to power an average of 3,600 homes for one hour.” In 2019, Tesla opened its first “gigafactory” outside the United States in Shanghai, a plant from which more than 710,000 vehicles left in 2022, which, according to the official Global Times newspaper, accounts for just over half of its sales worldwide. global.
As reported by the Xinhua agency, since 2019 the US firm has increased its investment in the so-called Lingang free trade zone, the area of Shanghai where it locates its operations, expanding the production of its “gigafactory” and adding additional plant facilities such as the production of its “superchargers” for electric vehicles.
It is expected that, with the opening of the new Tesla factory, the value of the industrial pole in that area will exceed the Chinese news agency.
