Giga Texas joins Giga Berlin with 5,000 Model Ys made weekly

10 May 2023

The 5,000 units is a magic number for Tesla, the company considers it to be a sign of the factory actually mass-producing vehicles. It’s not the end goal, it’s a point at which apparently every Gigafactory becomes profitable as it further scales up the volume production.

The team at the Giga Texas has a lot of reasons to celebrate this week, the factory has finally achieved the 5,000 Model Y units a week goal after Giga Berlin beat them to it in March. With both factories now officially at volume production speed, each should manufacture around 250,000 electric vehicles every year.

While Giga Berlin had its own issues with scaling up, Giga Texas was faced with a completely different struggle. Tesla Model Y vehicles made in Texas are supposed to be fitted with the new 4680 battery cells. Unfortunately, that manufacturing process is nowhere near up to speed and causes constant delays.

Not all Model Y vehicles leave the Texas factory with the new cells, the majority are still equipped with the 2170 units. Tesla did not share the details on this but the manufacturing issues with the 4680 battery cells are widely reported.

While both Texas and Berlin factories are ramping up their production as fast as they can, they have a long way to go to catch up with Shanghai. The Giga Shanghai is churning out 20,000 vehicles weekly on average and according to Tesla, it is capable of more. For Tesla to reach its yearly manufacturing goals of 2 million EVs this year, both the Berlin and Texas factories would have to double their respective output by the end of this year.

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