April 2, 2019

Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory progresses smoothly

Wu Qing, vice-mayor of Shanghai, meets with Gillen Jerome, president of Auto at Tesla, on April 2, 2019. [Photo/WeChat account: shlgguanweihui]

The Tesla project is progressing smoothly, with the pile foundation construction completed and work on the steel structure begun. It is expected that some production lines will be in use by the end of 2019.

Phase One of Tesla Gigafactory, which started on Jan 7, 2019, was expected to be completed within the year.

"The first phase of Tesla Gigafactory is located in Lin-gang heavy equipment industrial park. Tesla hopes to build Shanghai Gigafactory into an advanced and sustainable production base, and Shanghai Construction Group will fully cooperate with Tesla to achieve the above goals," said Xu Jiandong, vice-president of Shanghai Construction Group, which is coordinating the first phase of construction of the Gigafactory.

Unlike traditional factory construction, the first phase of the Tesla Gigafactory takes prefabricated assembly technology and BIM (building information model) to improve construction efficiency.

For prefabricated assembly, building components are made in factories and then shipped to the site for assembly, like building blocks. Compared with traditional on-site production and processing, prefabricated assembly can reduce noise and dust, and shorten the construction period. Using BIM technology is like "cloning" a virtual factory in a computer, finding out all the difficulties and solving them one by one to avoid on-site rework and save construction time.

In addition to prefabricated assembly and BIM technology, the management team of the first phase has also introduced the construction team of China International Import Expo venues, who completed the National Convention and Exhibition Center (Shanghai) in six months relying on team cooperation and scientific management.

Since the construction of the first phase of Tesla Gigafactory started at the end of January 2019, the construction team worked throughout the Spring Festival and carefully organized the management team, equipment and labor force. The Tesla Gigafactory will cover 860,000 square meters and is planned to produce 500,000 pure electric vehicles.