Elon Musk opens the door to the giant factory Tesla – Expansion MX

(CNNMoney) –

In the desert, just after Electric Avenue east of Sparks, Nevada, just over 1,000 workers build what will be the world’s largest building in terms of its footprint on earth.

This is the Gigafactory, where Tesla plans to build sufficient lithium ions to return to their vehicles popular. It measures about 5.8 million square feet, just over 53 hectares when completed in 2020.

Tesla believes that the adoption of electric vehicles has been hampered by the high cost of lithium batteries and you plan to use this factory to increase production dramatically.

The factory currently has nearly 200,000 square meters, 18.5 hectares of space on several floors, and the structure is only 14% complete.

“I think the Gigafactory be the most exciting in the world factory,” Musk said of the project.

By 2020, Tesla expects to produce more batteries in this factory which occurred worldwide in 2014. With that flow batteries, Tesla says it can reduce costs by more than 30%.

for now, Tesla only assembled in this factory battery packs for its energy storage products for home and industry. The same batteries are not being manufactured here yet. Workers are assembling batteries made in Japan battery packs that go inside the Powerpack powerwall and Tesla products.

Later this year, Tesla plans its battery partner, Panasonic, battery cells manufactured here. Panasonic and Tesla will operate each part of the facilities function as a large building.

Panasonic battery cells create and assemble as the Tesla battery packs.

However, Tesla is building. Even what is itself built without hiring a contractor.

The plant is strategically located about five hours Tesla factory in Fremont, California. That’s where car batteries will be assembled in new cars Model 3. lower cost batteries produced here will be crucial to keep the base price of the Model 3 accessible, at about $ 35,000. By 2018, Tesla hopes to create enough battery packs here to make 500,000 cars each year. The original plan was to reach that goal by 2020, but the firm that goal two years ahead by speeding up construction in parts of the factory and installing the equipment before.

By 2020, Tesla expects to produce enough packets a year to 1.5 million cars per year support. A large part of the production of the batteries will be used, not cars, but points static storage, a business that Musk expected to grow even faster than electric cars.

Inside, the building is reinforced Gigafactory huge red X tremors resistant steel. Although it will be a building shaped diamond, the Gigafactory is constructed as separate as protection against catastrophic damage by earthquakes structures.

While the building will have four floors, in some places only have two or three real story, which allows the use of high-altitude machines, some even dozens of feet tall.

Musk said he gets emotional when thinking about its enormous battery factory. “I think it’s quite romantic, in fact,” he said.

When completed, it will have almost diamond with one side pointing directly to true North. It is also nestled in a valley where thousands of wild horses run under the desert heat.