Tesla currently has six factories on three different continents, most recently opening Giga Texas and Giga Berlin earlier this year. With rumours of a Canadian Gigafactory on the horizon, Tesla wants to expand even further and have manufacturing capability on all continents.
The importance of the company’s manufacturing diversification was shared by Tesla chair Robyn Denholm while speaking at the National Press Club in Australia on Wednesday.
Denholm said that having factories on different continents is important for Tesla as they want to limit the distance a car has to travel from where it is produced to where it is finally delivered to a customer to reduce the automaker’s CO2 emissions.
“Producing vehicles on continents is important because, again, when you’re setting a supply chain for the long term, you want those miles those cars travel before someone actually owns them to be the shortest possible, and that includes shipping and sea freight because all those processes add to CO2 emissions,” Denholm said (via Bloomberg)
Having factories on all the continents will also help Tesla reach their goal of producing 20 million vehicles each year by 2030.
“Our view is the world is going to electric vehicles and to batteries that are lithium-ion based and we need to be in all the major markets around the world. Markets around the world are really important so having manufacturing capability on each of the continents is important,” Denholm explained.
One of the markets Denholm hopes can help Tesla in their expansion is her home country of Australia.
The country is rich in some of the raw materials required for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, but she feels Australia is missing out by shipping much of their product to other countries to process.
“Australia should aim to do the refining, the battery cell manufacturing, and the vehicle manufacturing. We can and should do all of that.” (via Financial Review)
