Tesla has begun assembling new cars at its just-commissioned Gigafactory 3 located in Shanghai, China. The first 15 EVs were immediately handed over to key employees, but anyone will be able to order their own car soon enough.
According to Chinese media reports, several hundred Model 3 sedans have already left the lines as of December 31, 2019. Elon Musk said the company pledged to deliver these to their respective buyers before the end of the year.
The U.S. carmaker’s next factory, aptly named the Gigafactory 4, will be located in Berlin, Germany, next to the city’s new airport. It will become the first major Tesla production facility in Europe (the only other spot existing to date is an assembly line in Netherlands, and it is by no means a high-throughput one). The fourth factory will focus on producing the Model Y, as well as traction batteries and powertrains.
The Gigafactory 1 based in Nevada, USA remains the company’s primary production site to this date. Among other things, most of the batteries and powertrains for the Tesla Model 3 are manufactured there. The Gigafactory 2 in New York specializes in solar panels.