Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday in a quarterly financial call that it picked the area near Austin, Texas, to build its next Gigafactory that will assemble the Cybertruck and other models.
The Austin factory, Musk confirmed, will assemble the Cybertruck, the Semi, and Model 3 and Y for the Eastern half of North America, while the Fremont, California, plant will assemble the Model S and X for the world, plus Model 3 and Model Y for the Western half. Fremont will also assemble the Roadster.
Tesla Semi
The announcement wasn’t a huge surprise because the company reportedly already negotiated several tax incentives in Austin, which was one of the final two likely contenders (Tulsa, Oklahoma was the other).
Tesla was profitable for its fourth quarter in a row, despite production challenges amid a continuing coronavirus pandemic.
In its second-quarter update released Wednesday, the company reported a net profit of $104 million for the quarter, with about $6.0 billion in total revenue. It made $428 million in the sale of regulatory credits—more than any other recent quarter.
Tesla also said it plans to deliver 500,000 vehicles by the end of 2020, due to the installation of “additional machinery” at the Fremont factory that will boost Model 3 and Model Y output to a combined 500,000 vehicles from their present ceiling of 400,000.
Tesla confirmed previous numbers, with a total of 90,650 vehicles delivered for the quarter.
Despite the rocky stop and start of the Fremont facility, it reported that it ended the quarter running at installed capacity there for Model Y.
Tesla factory, Fremont, California
The quarter, which ended in June, included a very tempestuous series of exchanges between CEO Elon Musk and local health officials in California—including what might best be described as an outburst on Tesla’s Q1 financial call, followed by an antagonistic exchange with Alameda County health officials and the declaration that it would move its headquarters out of California. Musk’s eventual restart of the Fremont factory in May,was in violation of an order issued by the county.
That call earlier this year also included an accusation made by Musk against the U.S. EPA, claiming that the agency flubbed the range test of the most recent Model S—a claim that the EPA then denied. The agency confirmed a later retest and record-breaking 402-mile range result for the Model S.
Expansion goes beyond the new Austin plant and the European Gigafactory in Berlin that’s under construction. Tesla also stated that the construction of Model Y assembly lines at the Shanghai factory “is progressing as planned, with first deliveries expected in 2021.”
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