In the recent Tesla’s First Quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk stated that Giga Shanghai is “coming back with a vengeance.”
Tesla just reopened its Gigafactory in Shanghai, and it is back in production again. In a video circulating on Twitter, the Gigafactory is shown with a fresh batch of units, and most of them are Model Ys. Following the reopening of the Shanghai plant, it is reported that the factory lot is filling up, even showing car carriers transporting its units. It is also stated that there are around 8,000 employees who formally resumed their work at the facility. Additionally, the factory’s battery and electric motor production lines are at full speed, although the vehicle production lines are still slowly ramping.
After its three-week shutdown, the EV automaker has to make up for its lost production time. It is reported that Tesla has incurred a loss of 50,000 units during its shutdown. In a recent South China Morning Post report, the Tesla Shanghai factory assembles 1,000 vehicles per day—which is just half of its output before the covid outbreak. David Zhang, a researcher from the North China University of Technology, estimates that Giga Shanghai’s inventory of components only supports about a week’s worth of production. “A large-scale carmaker like Tesla is supposed to have an inventory for at least two weeks of production when it is in normal operation,” “It will be some time before Shanghai-based carmakers like Tesla, Volkswagen, and General Motors can fully restore their supply chain and run at full capacity.”
Giga-Shanghai has to adopt a closed-loop system to resume its production, where the workers will temporarily live inside the vehicle plant. Tesla will provide the workers with sleeping bags, mattresses, meals, and allowances while living inside the plant. Workers are also expected to work a 12-hours shift in six days with one day off.
