Tesla CEO Elon Musk left for China early this morning aboard his Gulfstream Jet and has now arrived as the ceremony to mark the first deliveries to customers is scheduled to happen tomorrow at Gigafactory Shanghai.
Tesla, who is reportedly already producing over 1,500 vehicles per week, made the first official deliveries last week to Tesla employees. The deliveries tomorrow will be to the first public customers, and is a significant milestone for the automaker.
The ceremony will take place exactly one year to the day when Tesla held a ground-breaking ceremony on the site. In just 9 months, the site went from mud field to completed factory, beating all estimates and living up to the aggressive timelines set up by Musk.
It also appears tomorrow will mark the beginning of Model Y production at Gigafactory Shanghai, based on leaked images today. A Chinese journalist who first reviewed the made-in-China Model 3, Yan Chang, posted the image below to Twitter. According to him, the sign indicates that Model Y production will begin tomorrow, January 7.
A leak photo shows Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory will begin to produce Model Y tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/VQp2tbrLar
— Yan Chang (@cyfoxcat) January 6, 2020
This would be a huge boost (if the Q4 delivery numbers weren’t enough of a boost) for Tesla, as the original timeline for Model Y production was late 2020. Then at the end of Q3 2019, that was moved up to summer 2020. Then later reports indicated production could begin as soon as Q1 2020. This image appears to confirm those reports.
