Tesla CEO Elon Musk took the stage at the company’s Cyber Rodeo event to share details about the sheer size of Giga Texas.
Musk said Giga Texas was “equivalent to three Pentagons”, referring to the headquarters of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its iconic pentagon-shaped building.
Giga Texas is 338 million cubic feet in volume and spans 15 city blocks long, or 1,166 meters or 3,826 feet. It’s taller than the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building and also towers over the Eiffel Tower in France.
Musk said according to their research, they could fit “194 billion hamsters in the building,” much to the audience’s pleasure.
As for Giga Texas, “this is the machine that builds the machine, the latest version,” said Musk. He went on to reiterate, the “factory is the product”, noting “prototypes require imagination and are not easy. But relative to production, prototypes are easy and production is hard.”
Musk then claimed Giga Texas “is the most advanced car factory the Earth has ever seen.”
We saw a comparison of the current Tesla Fremont factory, which has various buildings scattered throughout and is not as efficient as it could be:
Musk then said compare this to Giga Texas, where everything is now “under one roof”:
The Tesla CEO says raw materials come in one side, a structural battery pack is made, then front and rear body parts are cast, then out comes a finished product on the other side, simply put.
Musk said, “we’re building our own battery cells,” noting Giga Texas will be manufacturing the “most advanced cell in the world.”
Musk also shared a tidbit about how it came about with its huge casting machines, which are the biggest that’s ever been made and never done before. Tesla went to six casting companies and five of them said no, but one said “maybe,” which the company interpreted as “that sounds like a yes.” These casting machines help simplify the manufacturing of the car, eliminating numerous parts.
As for the Model Y, Musk said it will have the highest capacity line of any line in the world at a factory, with a goal of making 500,000 cars per year in one factory. Giga Texas is the highest volume car factory in America, said Musk.
Tesla is seeing massive growth right now, delivering 1 million cars over the past 12 trailing months. Out of the global auto industry, Tesla has just over 1% of total deliveries. Tesla wants to attempt hitting 20% so they can “move the needle”.
This is why scale matters, said Musk, noting Tesla needs to make a lot of cars to “transition the world to sustainable energy as quickly as possible.”
