The Tesla Gigafactory will reportedly start operations in 2016, rather than 2017 — a bit early. A Tesla official supposedly made such a statement in Japan on Friday.
The Gigafactory has been ahead of schedule at least since its site in Nevada was determined, but whether that would eventually translate into the Gigafactory being done ahead of schedule has always been questionable… and despite reports of the recent statement from a Tesla official, this is still very much questionable. I think almost everyone knows that construction projects often go over schedule and over budget, and there’s plenty of time for things to go wrong and Tesla to get behind schedule. Nonetheless, a statement that it will be done in 2016 sounds good!
As it turned out, both readings were partly right. The Gigafactory did open in 2016 — Tesla held the grand opening that July and was assembling battery packs on the site before the year was out — but the thing that actually mattered, mass production of cells with Panasonic, didn’t begin until January 2017. And the first 2170 cells off those lines went into Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2, not into cars. Cell production destined for the Model 3 didn’t start until the second quarter of that year.
Facility opens in phases with construction still underway. Early work is pack assembly rather than cell manufacturing.
Jointly designed 2170 cylindrical cells enter mass production, first for Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2.
Followed by the extended ramp Musk later described as production hell, which ran well into 2018.
Over 6 GWh of installed annual Powerwall capacity, Tesla Semi in commissioning, and US-made lithium iron phosphate cells ramping for Megapack.
According to Nikkei, “The plant’s launch will be accelerated to bring down production costs through economies of scale, said Kurt Kelty, who oversees battery technologies at Tesla.” Kelty left Tesla in 2017, just as the Model 3 ramp was starting, spent time at silicon-anode developer Sila, and has run General Motors’ battery programme since February 2024 — which is its own quiet comment on how much the industry has moved since this was written.
Based on the limited statements from Tesla CEO and Product Architect Elon Musk and crew in the recent quarterly conference call, it didn’t seem the Tesla Model 3 would be done early, however. So, Tesla will likely need some other revenue streams to support initial production and operations. As I reported just yesterday, Elon stated on the conference call that Tesla would be unveiling a home battery storage product in a month or two. Tesla is also bidding on grid storage projects, and will be producing a large number of Model S and Model X vehicles by 2016, so hopefully it won’t run into a supply glut before the Model 3 is ready.
That timing estimate, at least, held: the product turned out to be the Powerwall, unveiled on 30 April 2015, almost exactly two months later. It’s on its third generation now, and what a Powerwall costs is a very different question than it was at launch.
The “other revenue streams” hedge is the part that has aged best of all. Tesla deployed 46.7 GWh of energy storage in 2025, up 49% on the year, and the energy division turned over close to $12.8 billion — a business that barely registered as a line item when this was written. Economies of scale did eventually do what Kelty said they would: battery costs have fallen far enough that home storage went from a curiosity to a standard line on a solar quote.
The Model 3 arrived a year and a half after this was posted, and the pairing it was always meant to enable — solar panels charging an EV on the driveway — is ordinary enough now that you can size the battery for it in a couple of minutes. A year late on the cells, roughly a decade early on the idea.
All in all, everything seems to be falling into place as planned.
