Tesla and China Could Complete Gigafactory 3 by March, 2019

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How fast can Tesla and China complete Gigafactory 3? The money, permits and a local government-owned construction company are all in place. China can build large factories in weeks. Tesla built an entire general assembly line in 3 weeks when they were under pressure to increase Model 3 production.

Online ordering for Tesla cars in China has started and the configurator is quoting first deliveries in March 2019. Those will probably be shipped from the USA. However, rapid construction of a building and putting a first assembly line within 90 days seems within what Tesla and China have done in the past. Many Tesla analysts are not expecting the first Tesla cars from the new China gigafactory until the second half of 2019.

17 thoughts on “Tesla and China Could Complete Gigafactory 3 by March, 2019”

  1. If you do not leave the weapons in space it does not violate the treaty, otherwise an ICBM is already in violation. Using the Starship as a “bomber” that only goes up to deploy, then returns, is not much different than an ICBM.

  2. If you want to kill billions an engineered virus would be cheaper, easier, and more effective.

    In fact, just buy the enhanced small pox virus from Russia. They will sell it to you for a small price.

  3. I think we already have an international treaty that outlaws Weapons of Mass Destruction in space. This is the reason why we don’t have orbiting H-bombs overhead.

    Do not forget it is easy to arrest someone and to destroy their corporation.

  4. The second he has a fully reusable orbital launch vehicle with the capacity of 5-6 B-2s and the ability to hit a CEP of 30m or less on reentry (all stuff SpaceX can do, or are working quickly towards the ability), he has already weaponized space, whether he intended to or not. The Outer Space Treaty says you cannot “weaponize space” but it says nothing about an orbital strike vehicle, otherwise all ballistic missiles would be essentially weaponizing space and the treaty is already in violation by a number of nations. The Starship would be a orbital strike vehicle, like a ICBM but with the ability to deploy and return for relaunch.

  7. Think about it with Starlink he will essentially be able to track everything in real time, then with the Starship he can attack a target with kinetic bombardment using Starlink for pinpoint accuracy.

  8. By the time that day comes, SpaceX/Musk will likely have a fleet of his Starships and thus will be capable of wiping out the Chinese government with kinetic bombardment from orbit. He might even be able to make it look like an accident, you know like a Starship with a test load of 80-100 tons accidentally crashes into downtown Beijing or something like the Three Gorges Dam at mach 10-15. China would be messing with the one man who doesn’t control a government but is capable of essentially declaring war on them and doing serious, government destabilizing levels of damage. China would be playing games with a guy who can put a knife to their throat. Though doing something like that would make Musk the worlds first true supervillain.

  10. I think Musk would be fine with that since he put the patents for Tesla in the public domain. But I don’t think the Chinese will do it since working with Musk is much better than competing with him.

  11. Slight hype here. Tesla has a WFOE company (LLC) to build and operate this in Shanghai
    s free trade zone. They do not as far as I can tell have debt funding secured, and need to borrow about $4bn. The issue is that WFOE (fully owned by Tesla) is fine if you want to have control, but to sell into the China market (even though it is built in China) will require a 25% tariff. They can always export the vehicles of course. Currently the ground-breaking etc is being done with cash. Tesla reduces the 40% tariff to 25% which is just about what the Chinese customers are willing to pay for the premium brand. But the Chinese manufacturers are extremely good at making EV’s and the sweet spot to make money is in the small compact area where you need huge volume. The 3 series is outside this profit envelope. I see this as a very risky play.

    Besides, Panasonic already has plans to build their own battery factory for the China market and is well underway with this.

  12. I would imagine the battery production rate not the final assembly line will be the bottleneck as it was with the US Gigafactory which may be a bit more out of his control.

  13. I expect the factory equipment will not be installed until after the building is substantially complete, just a guess that they’re not water proof, or construction debris hardened.

  14. This partnership will work wonderfully…right up to when the Chinese copycat Tesla needs batteries and Musk finds himself locked out of the gigafactory with no legal recourse…

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