Tesla prepares to upgrade Gigafactory Shanghai to produce 21,000 EVs per week

Tesla is preparing to partly shut down Gigafactory Shanghai for a few weeks in order to upgrade the factory to a production capacity of 21,000 electric vehicles per week.

After a forced shutdown due to COVID-19 restrictions in Shanghai and then supply chain issues limiting the production, Tesla is now preparing to do a voluntary shut down to at least part of the production in order to do some significant upgrades.

Bloomberg reported that the upgrade will start in July and run through early August, and the upgrade aims to bring the total production to over 21,000 vehicles per week:

Upgrade work at the factory south of Shanghai is expected to be complete by around Aug. 7, with output of the Model Y SUV then increased to 14,000 units a week, from about 11,000 pre-pandemic, and production of the Model 3 sedan at 7,700 units a week from 5,500 previously, the people said.

This would bring Tesla’s production capacity in Shanghai to over 1 million electric vehicles per year.

CEO Elon Musk recently noted that Gigafactory Shanghai is just now back to a full production capacity of about half a million vehicles per year after the citywide lockdown. But prior to the shutdown, Tesla was already planning to greatly expand Gigafactory Shanghai to the point where the expansion has been referred to as a whole new factory.

If the upgrade is successful, Tesla is expecting that Gigafactory Shanghai will become the world’s largest vehicle export hub. Many vehicles produced at Gigafactory Shanghai are exported to other Asian markets, Oceania, and Europe.

Simultaneously, Tesla is also trying to ramp up production at Gigafactory Berlin and Texas, where Model Y production started just a few months ago.