Joe Tegtmeyer Talks Tesla Solar Housing, Tesla Giga Texas Site Map, & New Giga Texas Property Purchase
Joe Tegtmeyer, who is a member of the Tesla Giga Texas Quad Squad of drone operators that document the daily progress of Giga Texas, has been documenting his thoughts along with daily progress at the Giga Texas site on YouTube. The two videos below are from July 10 and July 12.
In the first video, Tegtmeyer shares his thoughts on Tesla’s new solar housing project, among other things.
Tesla’s Solar Housing Project
Tesla, Brookfield, and Dacra are creating a Tesla solar neighborhood that aims to be the nation’s most sustainable residential community.
“This announcement is particularly exciting for Austin and the area around Austin, as the amount of growth this city has seen recently has made finding affordable housing difficult.”
Although this next part isn’t mentioned in the video, I think it is notable. Austin’s Mayor, Steve Adler spoke to Yahoo! Finance yesterday and shared his hopes about Tesla’s new solar neighborhood plans.
“We met with Tesla folks as well as the residential subdivision developer, the utility infrastructure expert. I mean, this is an exciting idea, and that kind of development probably is the wave of the future for residential development to get greater and better uses of batteries and solar tiles and the like.
“I’m hopeful that Tesla and Elon Musk build a lot of housing for the number of employees that they have coming in, even as they’re working out these new technologies. We need the units.”
Giga Texas Site Map
In the second video, Tegtmeyer shared a Giga Texas site map.
“This map shows the entire Gigafactory Texas property shown in red outline and all the construction areas including the original phase 1 and main foundation area shown in green, six areas of additional construction, and the magenta area where the battery cathode plant is being constructed.”
New Land Purchase
After showing the Giga Texas site map, Tegtmeyer went over a new land purchase and included illustrations. He noted that Tesla bought the land from the State of Texas and the documents have just recently been made public. He reminded everyone that Giga Texas is also synonymous with the Colorado River Project, LLC. He shared the image from the original site plan, noting that it was annotated, and then dove into the highlights of the land purchase.
“The State of Texas acquired certain land for highway purposes. This is for State Highway 130, which runs north/south next to Giga Texas. A portion of that land was deemed no longer needed for the highway purposes, and in the case where that land is no longer needed, the Texas Transportation Commission may recommend the sale of any interest in the right of way no longer needed to any abutting or adjoining landowners. …
“The Commission recommended to the governor that they should convey all the state’s right, title, and interest for $130,738, and this was completed in February of this year.”
Tegtmeyer looked at page 2 of the document and noted that 1.819 acres (~79,235 square feet) are the tract of land. This translates to around 0.74 hectares. He shared a map that gives you an idea as to where this land is in relation to Giga Texas.
“The red outline on the map is the total Giga Texas property. The site is located where the arrow is and you can see it’s right in the middle west area near where State Highway 130 is located.”
“Taking a look at page 3 of the document shows the size and shape of the new land area that was purchased, and taking a look at the original site plan document on the right-hand side, I’ve kind of shaded in where that is located. You can see the green phase 1 location, the outline of the main factory foundation, and where the site is located in the yellow.”
He also added a recent photo from the drone footage that showed context compared to the documents. In his photo, he highlighted the new tract of land in yellow.
Giga Texas Latest Updates
As of right now, Tegtmeyer’s video shows the latest updates on the progress at Giga Texas. Although, as I’m writing this, I’m sure he’s out taking more footage and you can follow him on YouTube for daily updates. In the video, he recorded the installation of the first steel column in the central area and noted that there are two cranes in the area that should speed things up.
He also saw several trucks arriving and bringing steel and other parts to various locations — all the way from Arkansas. He spoke to a few of the drivers who were interested in what was going on at the site. He noted that the drivers were excited to hear what the parts they were bringing in were for.
I think we are all excited about what this factory will achieve in the coming years.
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