Tesla Gigafactory Berlin finally reaches goal of 5,000 electric cars a week

Tesla Gigafactory Berlin has finally reached its goal to produce 5,000 electric cars in a single week, which is considered achieving “volume production.”

When ramping up a new vehicle to volume production at a new factory, Tesla generally considers 5,000 units per week to be the goal.

After starting production late in 2021, Tesla originally aimed to achieve that at Gigafactory Berlin by the end of 2022.

But the goal was ambitious amid a continuing global supply chain crisis.

Instead, Tesla announced that it finished the year with a respectable production rate of 3,000 Model Y vehicles per week at Gigafactory Berlin.

At the end of February, the factory reached a new milestone of 4,000 units per week.

Now just a month later, Tesla Gigafactory Berlin has managed to produce 5,000 Model Y vehicles in a single week.

Tesla confirmed the achievement with a tweet:

The factory appears to have beaten Gigafactory Texas to the important milestone.

If it can maintain this newly achieved production rate, it would mean Gigafactory Berlin can produce over 250,000 vehicles per year.

What’s interesting is that Tesla is now approved to produce 500,000 vehicles per year out of the factory, and now that it has achieved its goal with Model Y production, Tesla is expected to add a new model to Gigafactory Berlin’s lineup.

Originally, Model 3 was supposed to be next, but Tesla hasn’t commented on the plan in a long time.

Furthermore, Tesla recently submitted an application to the authorities to expand production at Gigafactory Berlin to 1 million vehicles per year. This expansion is going to require further development of the factory’s footprint, and the company needs to obtain environmental approval before going forward.

Tesla’s future production lines to be deployed are expected to feature Tesla’s new unboxed manufacturing process unveiled at Investor Day earlier this month.

Electrek’s Take

Congrats to everyone involved. Achieving 5,000 vehicles per week just about a year after starting production is impressive.

To put things into perspective, Tesla has a bigger production capacity for long-range electric vehicles at Gigafactory Berlin than most legacy automakers have overall. And it’s just Tesla’s latest of four Gigafactories producing electric vehicles.

It’s hard to beat Tesla when it comes to deploying electric vehicle production capacity.