It was revealed last week that Tesla was moving ahead with expansion plans for Giga Berlin, just seven months after the factory opened. The first order of business was to clear approximately 173 acres (70 hectares) of land at the northern end of their 300 acre parcel to make way for new buildings.
That work began on Friday, and crews wasting little time in clearing a large portion of that land over the weekend, as seen in this image from a drone flyover of the area on Monday.
Drive Tesla is now learning more details about the expansion plans, which will increase the factory’s vehicle production and battery cell production capacity to more than 1.5 million vehicles and more than 100 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, respectively.
As we reported last week, Tesla will be completing the expansion plans in phases over the next few years, and will include both new buildings and additions to existing facilities.
According to our sources, the first and second phases Tesla will seek approval for is mostly related to changes to existing facilities. This will include adding new areas for hazardous materials storage and recycling and building a new battery cell testing lab, among other things.
Some temporary structures will also be added to allow for vehicle deliveries to take place at Giga Berlin.
Phase 3 is when Tesla plans to begin add vehicle production capacity with two additional buildings in the northern section of the lot in the area where the land is currently being cleared. These buildings will supplement existing production capacity with their own paint shop, press area, and more.
In Phase 4 Tesla will build a permanent delivery center and improve logistics on the factory complex.
Phase 5 will see the start of vehicle production in the new buildings. Based on their experience building Giga Berlin Tesla is anticipating construction will start in the first half of 2023, which will mean the start of vehicle production in the new buildings in 2025.
There have so far been no details about which vehicles will be built with this new production capacity, but it will triple the planned capacity from 500,000 to 1.5 million cars each year.
Phases 6 and 7 involve battery and drive unit production where Tesla will construct additional buildings. Drive unit production will increase to be able to supply more than one million vehicles annually, while the changes will add another 50GWh of battery cell production.
All of this work is being planned in distinct phases to give Tesla flexibility in their plans with the anticipation that there will be setbacks along the way, much like what happened over the course of the more than two years when constructing the current Giga Berlin factory complex.
You can watch the full drone flyover of Giga Berlin below.
