Tesla has recently signed a lease to take over a large manufacturing facility in California that is expected to be used for the production of the company’s 4680 battery cells.
According to sources familiar with the deal that spoke with The San Francisco Business Times, Tesla has taken over a 210,000 square foot manufacturing facility at 48401 Fremont Blvd., just a short drive away from the company’s Fremont factory and their initial 4680 pilot production facility on Kato Rd. While neither the owner of the recently completed building, Prologis, nor Tesla themselves have commented on the deal, the same sources said the facility will be used for 4680 battery cell production.
The building was previously leased to Applied Materials, a company specializing in equipment, services and software for the manufacture of semiconductor chips, back in 2020 and was expected to spend millions of dollars to convert the space into a manufacturing hub, but the company abandoned those plans last year.
Tesla first announced their 4680 cell at Battery Day in 2020. The company initially started a pilot production line at their facility on Kato Rd, later expanding to Giga Texas, where by the end of last year was producing over 1,000 cells per week. The company’s next goal is to expand Giga Nevada to install more 4680 production lines and reach an annual capacity of 100 Gigawatt hours (GWh).
The ramp of 4680 cell production comes at a time when the company is expected to begin production of the Cybertruck in just a few months. The electric pickup truck was expected to be launched with the 4680 cells, but that has yet to be confirmed by Tesla.
While the company is clearly taking significant steps to ramp 4680 production, it is still heavily focused on production of 2170 cells that are currently used in the majority of their electric vehicles (EVs). Just this week we reported that Panasonic was going to add another production line at Giga Nevada to meet the increased demand for the 2170 battery cells.
