page_title: Tesla Factory
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Tesla Factory / Production
caption_attribution_description: New car pickup at Tesla's Fremont CA factory.
context_page_description: The Tesla Factory is an automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, operated by Tesla, Inc. The facility opened as the General Motors Fremont Assembly in 1962, and was later operated by NUMMI, a former GM–Toyota joint venture. Tesla took ownership in 2010. The plant currently manufactures the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y employing 10,000 people as of June 2018.
context_section_description: The plant's first series production vehicle is the Tesla Model S full-sized battery electric sedan.
  In 2011, Tesla transitioned from 20 hand-assembled "alpha builds" to 50 "beta builds", production-validation vehicles built entirely at the Tesla Factory. These cars would also be used for system integration, engineering testing, and federal crash-testing and certification. Tesla expected to produce about 5,000 Model S sedans in 2012, with production ramping up to 20,000 in 2013 if necessary. The first retail delivery of the Model S took place during a special event held at the Tesla Factory on June 22, 2012. Production grew from 15–20 cars completed/week in August 2012 to over 200 by November 5 and 400 by late December. In late December Tesla revised their 2012 delivery projections down to 2,500 cars.
  Deliveries reached 6,892 units in the last three months of 2013. In December 2013, California announced it would give Tesla a US$34.7 million tax break to expand production by an estimated 35,000 vehicles annually from its Fremont, California plant.
  Tesla announced that production was expected to climb from 600 cars per week in early 2014 to about 1,000 units per week by year-end. Tesla produced 7,535 units during the first quarter of 2014, and expected to produce 8,500 to 9,000 cars in the second quarter of 2014. As of early May 2014, the production rate was 700 cars per week.
  As of 2015, about 1,000 cars are made per week, mostly to pre-orders. Musk says they average around 20 changes to the S per week.
  Production of the Model X joined the Model S during 2015, following a short reconfiguration of the production line in July 2014. The first Model X that didn't need corrections was made in April 2016. Tesla moved some of the equipment to their Tilburg final assembly plant in the Netherlands in 2015.
  On July 2, 2015, Tesla announced that it had delivered a total of 21,537 vehicles in the first half of 2015. All vehicles were manufactured at the Fremont plant.
  In May 2016 Tesla raised $1.46 billion in stock, of which $1.26 billion is to prepare production of the Model 3 scheduled for late 2017. Changing from serially producing the Model S and X to the mass production of Model 3 is viewed by experts as a significant step. Tesla stated in May 2016 that it does not have that capability and needs to acquire it, which it partly did with the acquisition of Grohmann Automation in 2016 and purchase of mass production equipment. Whereas the Roadster was delayed by 9 months, the Model S more than six months, and the Model X more than 18 months, analysts estimated in December 2016 that the Model 3 production preparation was on schedule for the second half of 2017.
  On August 3, 2016, Tesla announced that it was consistently producing 2,000 vehicles per week at the end of Q2 2016. About 2,500 workers operate the day shift and 2,000 attend the night shift.
  Tesla makes many parts itself, which is unusual in the auto business. Tesla also works with 300 suppliers around the world, of which 50 are in Northern California, and 10 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tesla's dashboard supplier SAS rents a 142,188-square-foot building near the factory, beginning in January 2017 with 200 employees. Other suppliers to have opened facilities in the area to be close to Tesla include Eclipse Automation and Futuris Automotive Group. Tesla produces many of its seats at its own seat factory a few miles south of the main factory.
  In 2020, Tesla implemented virus mitigation efforts in its Shanghai and Fremont factories. Shanghai resumed production on February 10th, while the Fremont and New York factories were to reduce activity by March 24. On May 9, Tesla sued Alameda County in order to force the reopening of the Fremont Factory. Tesla told its employees that it had received approval to restart production in the week beginning May 18, and the lawsuit was dropped on May 20.
caption: New Tesla Model S cars at the Tesla Factory in 2012
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