Batteries also likely at Austin plant
Tesla Inc.’s new factory in Austin won’t build only the Cybertruck: State filings suggest the company also plans to make batteries on site as part of an ambitious strategy to further integrate its supply chain.
“The facility is proposing to operate a cell-manufacturing unit to produce the battery packs that are installed in the vehicle,” says an 188-page airquality permit application filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced during the electric-car manufacturer’s quarterly earnings call in July that Tesla had chosen Austin as the site of its next plant. In addition to building the Cybertruck, Semi and Roadster, all of which still are in development, the company’s second U.S. vehicle-assembly factory — after its flagship plant in Fremont, Calif. — also will make the Model Y crossover for East Coast customers.
At last month’s “Battery Day” event outlining its technology goals, Musk said Tesla will continue to buy battery cells from existing suppliers, but also has begun making its own cells on a pilot production line in California.
The filing with the Texas regulator in July was part of a permit-by-rule registration process allowing the company to construct equipment for use at the manufacturing facility.
Tesla currently makes the S, X, 3 and Y models at its Fremont plant and manufactures batteries at its gigafactory near Reno, Nev. But the Austin factory, which Musk estimates will be completed before another plant under construction in Berlin, appears to co-locate battery production with vehicles.