Tesla's Giga Shanghai Has Overtaken The Fremont Factory In Output

Elon Musk broke the news and congratulated the Tesla China team for an "incredible job."

Dan Mihalascu

By: Dan Mihalascu

Oct 8, 2021 at 6:48am ET

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The Giga Shanghai plant has exceeded the Fremont factory’s output, Elon Musk has confirmed during the Annual Meeting of Stockholders that took place at the Giga Texas plant.

The chief executive pointed out that Giga Shanghai took about 11 months to build, reaching full volume production a year later. Since it started operations, it has driven a noticeable increase in Tesla’s production and delivery numbers.

The Chinese factory is Tesla’s main export hub, so its output will play a major role in the company’s worldwide growth.

“We’ve got three new factories. Giga Shanghai has done an incredible job. And Giga Shanghai now exceeds Fremont in production.”

Elon Musk went on to praise the Tesla China team for the achievement.

“Actually, I’d just like to give a special hand to the Tesla China team. So it’s the best quality, lowest cost and also low drama. So it’s great.”

Gallery: 2021 Tesla Annual Meeting of Stockholders

While we can’t know for sure, Teslarati suggests that the “low drama” reference might allude to Tesla China's swift legal actions against individuals who sparked the brake failure allegations in China and those who supported the protest with false anecdotes.

Back to our main topic, Musk did not talk numbers regarding Giga Shanghai’s output. However, we do know that in early January 2020, Giga Shanghai was making 3,000 vehicles a week. A year later, the plant reached a weekly output of 8,000 units.

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The weekly production rate has continued to grow since. Reuters reported that Tesla expected to produce its 300,000th electric car in Shanghai by the end of September 2021.

In early August, Chinese social media personalities invited to the plant shared information on Giga Shanghai having a reported annualized production run rate of 450,000 (Model 3 and Model Y combined). However, based on later reports, Tesla China has already exceeded that rate and may be well on its way towards 500,000.