Report: Tesla Will Upgrade Its Plant In Shanghai To Boost Production

To handle the upgrade, production will be suspended for the first two weeks of July.

By: Mark Kane

Jun 27, 2022 at 7:12am ET

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The Tesla Giga Shanghai plant barely returned to volume production after several weeks of lockdowns, but must halt production once more.

According to Reuters' unofficial sources, Tesla will suspend most production in Shanghai in the first two weeks of July to upgrade the site (a separate report from Drive Tesla says about four days).

The article says that it's a planned operation, which has been delayed due to two-month long COVID lockdown.

The plan has recently returned to a nearly pre-lockdown level of production with expected volume in June at over 71,000 Made-in-China (MIC) Model 3/Model Y.

The upgrade is expected to increase manufacturing capacity to a now record level, towards the goal of 22,000 MIC cars per week (8,000 Model 3 and 14,000 Model Y per week or 1,200 Model 3 and 2,000 Model Y per day). As we understand, after the upgrade, the Tesla Giga Shanghai might be able to produce over 1 million cars annually (close to 100,000 per month).

Interestingly, the Chinese media reported earlier this month (Sina Tech via CnEVPost) that Tesla will lay off about 10% of its non-production positions in China (which might be a much smaller percent of the total number). But once again, the news is unofficial and none of the source was able to receive an official comment from the manufacturer.

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk said in May that Tesla does not expect to open any additional plants in China in the near future, focusing on the expansion of the existing site in Shanghai, which is the company's largest by volume.

In May we saw also a nice render of how the plant might look like in the future:

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Meanwhile, here are new flyover videos, which shows how the Tesla Giga Shanghai looks as of late June. The plant appears to be running at full swing with the parking lot full of newly produced cars and dozens of vehicle carriers.

Wu Wa reports in the description of the video (below) that after the upgrade of the plant, the production-related positions will increase by 4,000 to roughly 19,000.