Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) has spent June without any Gigafactory revelation giving way to more speculations. The EV manufacturer did not make any announcement even on Monday (last day of the month) about the initial work to be started on Gigafactory, which is said to give jobs to 6,500 workers.
Not unlike Musk
Back in May, CEO Elon Musk suggested some substantial announcement in June while he was speaking to the analysts over company’s first quarter earnings.
“We expect to break ground on the first of those sites probably next month,” Musk said at that time. “Shortly thereafter, maybe a month or two later, we’ll break ground on a second one.”
The company is now considering just 5 states for its factory including New Mexico but has said that it is considering other states, as well, so that any last-minute hurdles do not affect its plan to produce sufficient batteries for powering its vehicles. Other States in the race are Arizona, California, Nevada and Texas. Tesla needs to build factory in time if it wants to deliver a new sedan in 2017, priced at $35,000.
According to the company, Gigafactory will produce sufficient batteries by 2020 to fit in 500,000 vehicles per year following which it will become the World’s largest manufacturer of the lithium-ion batteries. Officials at Albuquerque said that Gigafactory would be set-up somewhere in Metro of New Mexico if selected.
Tesla plant, a lot depends on it
Gigafactory has been a hot topic of discussion among the analysts and investors. Analysts Simon Moores noted that the factory will enhance the value of lithium, graphite and cobalt mining companies. Moore, who is an expert on industrial minerals, said that Tesla Motors $5 billion Gigafactory will produce 500,000 batteries once it runs in the full capacity. Tesla is planning to bring down its cost of building electric vehicle by around 30% as the management is hopeful to sell cars to the masses by reducing the price of the cars. Gigafactory is expected to be completed by 2017 and Tesla will start selling its less expensive Model.
Additionally, the factory would start producing batteries for other companies as well like for the Solar industry or mobile device industry. There were some initial reports about Apple tying up with Tesla for batteries. Moore’s initial belief was that Apple can assist Tesla in designing the electric vehicle but now he thinks that Tesla has done pretty good job even without any assistance.
