Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed at a grand opening celebration for the electric vehicle maker's new $1.1 billion factory near Austin International Airport in Texas on Thursday night. This comes after the recent opening of Tesla's Giga Berlin. Prior to the Texas event, Tesla staged a grand opening and began commercial production at a new factory in Brandenburg, Germany.
On the live stream event, he talked about how big the new facility is and teased things that are still in the works, such as the Cybertruck and a robotaxi that he claimed will appear futuristic.
With his large cowboy hat, Musk thanked his employees and addressed the audience: “It wasn’t easy building this humongous building and getting all this equipment here. If you put the building on its side, it’s taller than the Burj Khalifa” (the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai. He also joked that the structure could fit 194 billion hamsters according to Tesla's estimations.
Tesla's CEO announced late Thursday that the company wants to construct 500,000 Model Ys in Austin in a single year. Musk indicated that the Cybertruck will be manufactured in Texas starting next year.
Tesla's Cyber Rodeo Event - 7 April 2022
Tesla's deadlines, on the other hand, are always shifting. Tesla and other manufacturers are dealing with chip shortages and rising raw material prices, which have been worsened by Russia's bloody invasion of Ukraine.
He said “In trailing twelve months, we’ve delivered over a million cars. There’s still a long way to go.”
Tesla automobiles account for more than 75% of all completely electric cars sold in the United States today, with fully electric vehicles accounting for around 4% of all new vehicle sales in the country.
Musk also announced plans to broaden the reach of his experimental driver assistance program: “We’re aiming to go to wide beta for almost all Full Self-Driving customers in North America this year.”
The company does not produce self-driving cars, but it does provide a premium driver aid package called Full Self-Driving. Tesla's FSD Beta program allows premium option owners to test out new, unfinished features on public roads. The initiative is currently only available to a select group of Tesla consumers and employees.
Tesla built its Austin vehicle assembly plant from the ground up in just over two years. Tesla adapted GM and Toyota's first US car plant in Fremont, California, to create its Model S sedan and Model X SUVs, the company's first mass-produced vehicles, and eventually its more inexpensive Model 3 and Model Y.
Although Tesla's Fremont factory is still operational, the company plans to increase manufacturing of its Model Y electric vehicles and batteries in Austin, as well as construct its unique trapezoidal pickup, the Cybertruck, for North American consumers.
The new facility is desperately required. They'll require more plant space as new items arrive, and they should be able to help the corporation enhance the quality of their cars while lowering manufacturing costs.
Musk claimed on Thursday night that the Model Y automobiles being manufactured in Texas have a "structural pack," which means the high voltage battery packs' cells support the vehicle's load.
Due to severe health restrictions in the region, the company's Shanghai factory, which began car manufacturing in late 2019, has been closed for days.
Elon Musk sent Twitter's stock price skyrocketing earlier this week after financial filings disclosed that he had purchased a roughly 9% activist stake in the social media company and would be joining its board of directors.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission 13G report issued Monday, Musk holds 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, representing a 9.2 percent passive ownership in the firm.
Tesla's brand has been created on social media, particularly Twitter, and unconventional marketing events such as the "Cyber Rodeo." He did not, however, address his ambitions for Twitter during the company's Thursday celebration.
