Tesla plans 2-week suspension for most production lines at Shanghai Gigafactory for upgrade
Carmaker expects to produce 5,000 more Evs per week after upgrade
• Carmaker expects to produce 5,000 more Evs per week after upgrade
• Tesla initially planned to manufacture 8,000 Model 3s and 14,000 Model Ys per week by mid-May
Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) is planning to suspend most of its electric vehicle manufacturing process at its Shanghai plant in the first two weeks of July to work on an upgrade of the site, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing an internal memo seen by the news outlet.
After the upgrade, the US carmaker aims to boost the output of the Shanghai Gigafactory from 17,000 EVs per week to get closer to its goal of producing 22,000 cars per week, the report said.
A two-month-long recent COVID-19 lockdown in China has delayed Tesla’s initial plan of reaching production of 8,000 Model 3s and 14,000 Model Ys per week at the Shanghai plant by mid-May.
“Our constraints are much more in raw materials and being able to scale up production,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday.
“We are increasing production capacity as fast as humanly possible,” he added.
Production at the Chinese manufacturing facility is on track to fall by over a third this quarter from the first three months of the year as Beijing’s zero-COVID lockdowns caused more profound disruptions to output than Musk had predicted.
Last year, Tesla EVs from its Shanghai plant, which were sold locally and to overseas markets such as Europe and Australia, accounted for around half of the 936,000 vehicles it delivered globally, Reuters reported.
Tesla’s website showed while Australian customers will have to wait until the first quarter of 2023 for their Model Ys, customers in Europe can only pick up their cars at the earliest in the fourth quarter of this year.
For buyers in China, the waiting time for Chinese-made Tesla cars is between 10 and 24 weeks, the website showed.
Picture Credit: Business Insider
ALSO READ:
