New investments pour into Tesla’s Gigafactory Nevada

In 2014, Tesla committed to investing $3.5 billion in Gigafactory Nevada. The company aimed to build a facility capable of producing 35 GWh of battery cells annually—enough to manufacture about 500,000 vehicles annually.

This level of battery manufacturing was unprecedented for a single facility at the time, with the expected output being more significant than all global battery production in 2013 combined. Along with other on-site vendors, the company planned to hire 6,500 full-time team members over the next 10 years to build and ramp Gigafactory Nevada.

Since that time, Tesla has invested $6.2 billion in Nevada and built a 5.4-million square foot (164-hectare) Gigafactory—a cornerstone of its mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. The buildout alone provided 17,000 local construction jobs.

Located less than an hour from Lake Tahoe, Gigafactory Nevada is one of the world’s highest-volume plants for electric motors, energy storage products, vehicle powertrains, and batteries—producing billions of cells per year. It continues to grow Gigafactory Nevada with two new facilities: a 100 GWh 4680 cell factory and its first high-volume Semi factory.

To date, the team at Gigafactory Nevada has successfully produced:

  • 7.3 billion battery cells (37 GWh+ annually)
  • 1.5 million battery packs
  • 3.6 million drive units
  • 1 million energy modules (14 GWh+ total)

The company hired more than 11,000 team members to complete this work.

Next stop: Build the Semi truck

Tesla will invest over $3.6 billion to continue growing Gigafactory Nevada, adding 3,000 new team members and two new factories. One is a 100-GWh 4680 cell factory (capable of producing enough batteries for 1.5 million light-duty vehicles annually) and its first high-volume Semi factory. Semi is Tesla’s fully electric combination truck, with 500 miles of range and energy consumption of fewer than 2 kWh per mile.

The California footprint

Meanwhile, in the 20 years since Tesla was founded in San Carlos, California, it has grown from a long-shot startup to the state’s largest manufacturing employer and the world’s leading electric vehicle (EV) maker.

The company’s exponential growth has been made possible by its team’s hard work, customer loyalty, and climate policy leadership in California. Tesla’s impact on the Golden State is not just measured by its environmental achievements but also by the positive economic growth it has been able to share with the state of California and its residents.

Tesla’s footprint in California comprises Megapack production and vehicle castings in Lathrop, hardware, and software engineering in Palo Alto, vehicle and battery manufacturing in Fremont, battery development and testing in San Diego, and vehicle design in Hawthorne. These efforts significantly impact California’s employment, wages, gross state product, and tax base.

Over the past decade, many manufacturing jobs have been exported outside the United States and international supply chains have been disrupted. Yet, Tesla has defied national trends by increasing domestic employment and production. Tesla-supported jobs in California increased by 40% from 2018 to 2021, and 2021 wages exceeded the state average by 50%, offering the highest compensation in its sectors.

A recent economic impact assessment conducted by IHS Markit indicates that Tesla’s economic impact in California includes:

  • Tesla-supported California jobs (direct and indirect) exceeding 80,000 in 2021. Over 43,000 stemmed from $1.6 billion in expenditures with California suppliers;
  • For every 100 direct Tesla jobs, 50 more were supported in the supply chain and 68 by follow-on consumer activity;
  • From 2018 to 2021, Tesla paid an average of $1 billion in federal, state, and local taxes annually, with approximately $400 million going toward state and local taxes in 2021;
  • Tesla’s average contribution to the gross state product (GSP) rose by 42% between 2018-2021, while the state’s GSP grew by 16%;
  • Wages from Tesla and Tesla-connected jobs resulted in $16.6 billion in economic activity, or $44.4 million injected into California’s economy daily.

In 2022, Tesla grew to 47,000 employees (direct employment) in California, and its production footprint continued to increase as its 2 millionth vehicle rolled off the lines in Fremont. Since 2016, the company has made over $5 billion in capital investments in its facilities. Tesla is confident that these trends will continue and that 2023 will be an even bigger year for Tesla in California. (Story and photos courtesy of Tesla)