'Tesla Speed:' Senior Exec Says Construction Of Company's New Shanghai Factory Dedicated To Energy Storage Products Is About 45% Complete

Tesla Inc. TSLA senior executive Grace Tao Lin said on Tuesday that the company has completed about 45% of the construction of its megafactory in Shanghai dedicated to building energy storage products.

What Happened: Tao Lin, who is Vice President of External Affairs at Tesla, also shared images of the upcoming factory, together with a concept image of the factory once complete.

The Tesla Shanghai megafactory is the company’s first factory dedicated to the production of energy storage products outside the U.S. The company started official construction of the factory in May.

Currently, Tesla has only one other factory dedicated to manufacturing batteries, located in Lathrop, California. The Lathrop facility has the capability of producing 40 GWh of energy storage products.

Tesla said last month that the company is eyeing starting production at its new Shanghai factory in the first quarter of 2025.

Tesla has another factory in China called Giga Shanghai which produces the company’s popular Model 3 sedans and Model Y SUVs.

Why It Matters: Tesla reported a whopping 100% year-on-year jump in revenue from its energy generation and storage segment in the second quarter, even as revenue from the automotive segment dipped. The company's second-quarter revenue from the segment totaled $3 billion after it deployed 9.4 GWh of energy storage products.

For the entirety of 2024, the company now expects the growth rate of revenue in its energy business to outpace the automotive business.

During Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting in June, Musk said that the company is on track to complete a “massive number of energy deployments.”

“We seem to be tracking to sort of a 200- to 300-percent year-over-year growth in energy storage deployment and stationary pack. So it's giant. And the limiting factor really is being able to build more Megapacks and build more Powerwalls (energy storage products),” he said.

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