Tesla Officially Opens Texas Gigafactory
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Tesla opened its Austin, Texas-based Gigafactory on Thursday, a crucial step in the company's delayed plans to begin production of its electric Cybertruck. To celebrate the opening, Tesla held an event, billed as a "Cyber Rodeo," to which it invited 15,000 people to listen to live music, eat food, and pay homage to Elon Musk and his company. "We are really entering a new phase of Tesla's future," Musk told the audience. Clad in a black cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses, Musk said he was excited to begin working on Cybertruck production at last. "I can't wait to see this baby in production, it's going to be epic." Along with a new version of the Cybertruck, Musk also showed off a new Roadster vehicle, which is slated to begin production next year. He also teased a robotaxi he said would look "quite futuristic" but didn't elaborate or provide any details. It is the company's fourth factory in the US, following the vehicle factory in Fremont, California, battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, and solar factory in Buffalo, New York. Tesla also has a vehicle factory outside Shanghai, China, and recently opened its first European factory near Berlin, Germany. Tesla spent an estimated $5 million purchasing the land outside Austin, plus another $1.1 billion to build the plant. "We need a place where we can be really big, and there's no place like Texas," Musk said. "We going to move to a truly massive scale." The Texas factory is expected to be the site where, starting in 2023, Tesla will make its long-delayed Cybertruck. Indications that the Cybertruck would be delayed first emerged last year, when the online reservation page was changed and then later withdrawn from the site. Musk had said that he expected a few trucks to be delivered to customers by the end of 2021, but no deliveries were ever made. The Cybertruck has already gone through some changes since its initial reveal in 2019 -- including the addition of a comically oversized single windshield wiper, traditional folding mirrors, and invisible door handles. In addition to the Cybertruck, Tesla also plans to build Model Ys and Model 3s destined for the East Coast, as well as the long-delayed Tesla Semi. The company has already started to build Model Y crossovers at the unfinished Texas Gigafactory in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the company's latest earnings report.
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