Gigafactory Texas (also known as Giga Texas or Gigafactory 5) is an automotive manufacturing facility near

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

built by

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Tesla designs and manufactures electric vehicles (electric cars and trucks), battery energy storage from home to grid- ...

Construction began in July 2020, limited production of Model Y began before the end of 2021,The Tesla Cybertruck will be built in Texas and is getting an interplanetary update
, 23 July 2020,

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

and initial deliveries of vehicles built at the factory took place at an opening party called “Cyber Rodeo” on April 7, 2022. The factory is also planned to be the main factory for the

Tesla Cybertruck The Tesla Cybertruck is an upcoming battery electric light-duty truck announced by Tesla, Inc. in 2019. Three models have been announced, with EPA range estimates of and an estimated time of 2.9–6.5 seconds, depending on the model. T ...

and the

Tesla Semi The Tesla Semi is a battery electric vehicle, battery electric Truck classification#Class 8, Class 8 Semi-trailer truck, semi-truck by Tesla, Inc. The truck is powered by three motors, and is claimed by Tesla to have approximately three times ...

, and produces Model Y cars for the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

. It also serves as the site of Tesla's corporate headquarters. It is the country's second biggest factory by size as well as the second-largest building by volume in the world after the

Boeing Everett Factory The Boeing Everett Factory is an airplane assembly facility built by Boeing in Everett, Washington, United States. It sits at the northeast corner of Paine Field and includes the largest building in the world by volume at 13,385,378 m3 (472,37 ...

History

Selection process

Tesla had been considering locations across eight states in the central United States during 2019‒2020. Community groups and government officials in several areas of the US expressed interest in hosting what was expected to be a very large Tesla Gigafactory manufacturing facility. Some expressing interest in facilitating land procurement, getting over the regulatory obstacles, and considering potential

tax incentives A tax incentive is an aspect of a government's taxation policy designed to incentivize or encourage a particular economic activity by reducing tax payments. Tax incentives can have both positive and negative impacts on an economy. Among the posi ...

. Some used

social media marketing Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for ...

aiming to reach

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...

directly. By May 2020, a selection process was underway by Tesla. The

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included Austin, Nashville (Tennessee) and Tulsa (Oklahoma). Two locations in the vicinity of Tulsa had been viewed by Tesla by mid-May. The Tulsa campaign was promoted by G. T. Bynum, the mayor of Tulsa. In May 2020 Bynum discussed the suitability of "

Green Country Green Country, sometimes referred to as Northeast Oklahoma, is the northeastern portion of the U.S. state of Oklahoma, which lies west of the northern half of Arkansas, the southwestern corner the way of Missouri, and south of Kansas. Alternate d ...

" (Northeastern Oklahoma) and distributed a

photomontage Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image ...

of the Cybertruck in Tulsa Police Department livery, with a suggestion of

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, if the Gigafactory were to be situated near Tulsa. On May 20, 2020,

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was applied to the Golden Driller statue located at the Tulsa Expo Center to create a caricature of

, with the word "Tulsa" on statue's

belt buckle A belt buckle is a buckle, a clasp for fastening two ends, such as of straps or a belt, in which a device attached to one of the ends is fitted or coupled to the other. The word enters Middle English via Old French and the Latin ''buccula' ...

replaced by the "Tesla" name. In July 2020, Tesla selected Austin as the site.

Austin

In 2014, Tesla evaluated a manufacturing site on U.S. Route 79 at Frame Switch (), located between the towns of

Hutto Hutto is a city in Williamson County, Texas, United States. It is part of the Greater Austin, Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area. The population was 27,577 at the 2020 census. Geography Hutto is located at (30.544517, −97.545198), about sev ...

and

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, north-east of the Greater Austin center as its next factory. Tesla subsequently chose to construct

Giga Nevada Gigafactory Nevada (also known as Giga Nevada or Gigafactory 1) is a lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle component factory in Storey County, Nevada, US. The facility, located east of Reno, is owned and operated by Tesla, Inc., and suppl ...

(formerly Gigafactory 1) in Nevada in 2014. By June 2020, a different location near Austin was being considered. It is a site () bordering Harold Green Road ( now Tesla Rd) and

Texas State Highway 130 Texas State Highway 130 (SH 130), also known as the Pickle Parkway, is a highway from Interstate 35 (I-35) in San Antonio along I-410 and I-10 to east of Seguin, then north as tollway from there to I-35 north of Georgetown. SH 130 run ...

. On June 16, 2020 the

Commissioners' court Commissioners' court, or in Arkansas a quorum court, is the governing body of county government in three US states: Arkansas, Texas and Missouri. It is similar in function to a board of county commissioners. A similar system was in place in the ...

Travis County Travis County is located in south central Texas. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,290,188. It is the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Its county seat is Austin, the capital of Texas. The county was established in 1840 and is n ...

discussed a possible incentives package for Tesla. In July 2020, the

Del Valle Independent School District Del Valle Independent School District (DVISD) is a public school district in the Del Valle community area of unincorporated Travis County, Texas ( USA). The school district serves much of southeast Travis County. Incorporated communities in t ...

approved a tax incentives package worth $68 million, should the Tesla Gigafactory be built. On July 22, 2020, during a 2Q2020 earnings call, Tesla announced that Del Valle, Austin, Texas had been selected for Gigafactory 5. By the end of July 2020, construction had begun. The Tesla Gigafactory received state tax incentives worth about $50 million through the Texas Tax Code Chapter 313 program. The first fully completed Tesla Model Y rolled off the line at Giga Texas in the last week of August 2021 under trial production. Tesla announced a manufacturing training program in cooperation with Austin Community College District on June 15, 2021. The program was expected to start in August 2021 and the course was to last 14 weeks. In December 2021, Elon Musk estimated that Giga Texas will require a total investment of at least $10B and may employ as much as 20,000 employees within the company. Observers have spotted production cars in and outside of the factory. As of March 2022, Tesla battery manufacturers

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and

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

are scouting sites for battery factories in the US, including Kansas and Oklahoma (which are within close proximity of Giga Texas), Mexico and Canada. The State of Kansas and Panasonic announced in July 2022 that a Battery Factory location had been selected in De Soto, KS (at former Sunflower Army Ammunition facility). Huge subsidies ($1 billion) and abatements were granted to Panasonic organized by Governor Laura Kelly (D).

Equipment

Die casting

2021-01-18-tesla-giga-texas-casting-giga-press-foundations-x3-rebar

During the night of January 18/19, 2021, concrete foundations for three Giga Press high-press die-casting machines were poured at the north-east corner Giga Texas factory location. On January 21, 2021 the first Giga Press components started to arrive on site in crates and

shipping containers A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated box design, corrugated b ...

. On January 22, 2021 the base frame of the first Giga Press was unboxed and craned into position.

References

External links

Project 2020-115336 SP
plans, at Austin Build + Connect

Youtube update channels

Weekly updates with building construction progress statistics

daily drone footage of construction
{{Tesla Motors 5 Manufacturing plants in the United States Motor vehicle assembly plants in Texas Texas, Giga