Electric car maker Tesla Motors is on track its lofty ambition of producing 500,000 electric cars each year by 2018 with the grand opening of its Gigafactory this summer. Earlier this month, the facility was only 14 percent complete.
Tesla plans to hold the launch celebration for the gargantuan battery factory located outside Reno, Nevada, on July 29, according to an email to winners of its Model S referral contest. The notified customers won tickets to the event by referring more than five others in the car referral program.
With the email also posted to Reddit, Tesla confirmed with Fortune magazine that a customer-focused launch will take place that night.
The Gigafactory, which will cost at least $5 billion to build, likely won’t be finished within the next two months. Tesla, however, has already hosted smaller events in parts of the facility where construction is already completed.
At the beginning of May, for instance, Bloomberg reported that it was only 14 percent done.
Aimed to produce more lithium-ion batteries in a factory than were produced in the entire world in 2013, the Gigafactory is an important piece of the puzzle for the electric car and energy storage business of Tesla.
The Elon Musk-owned company intends to build the cells and packs for its vehicle batteries – as well as its Powerwall and Powerpack batteries – at the Gigafactory. Tesla was initially eyeing enough battery production to support 500,000 cars a year by 2020, but has accelerated its timeline target by two years.
Panasonic provides part of the funding and supplies the battery production equipment.
In its quarterly shareholder letter, Tesla released updates on the Gigafactory, including its construction being “ahead of [the] original plan.” Construction is on time for cell production to start by the end of this year, while the company managed to deliver 2,500 Powerwalls and nearly 100 Powerpacks during the first quarter.
Not everyone, though, is optimistic that Tesla will meet its 2018 goal.
“It’s a very challenging target and it will be very difficult to get there,” UBS analyst Colin Langan told CNBC, which also reported not finding firms on Wall Street that expect Tesla to even reach 400,000 in yearly sales in 2018.
Back in December, Tech Times released the first images of Gigafactory – photos that show off the interiors of the humongous factory courtesy of photographer James Lipman via his Instagram account.
