So, What Actually Is Tesla's Gigafactory?

Image: Tesla Motors

Since 2014, electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc TSLA has been constructing what they call a Gigafactory. But what, exactly, does that mean? What makes it different from a regular factory?

According to Tesla, one of its goals as a company is to expedite the process of transitioning to global sustainable transportation. In order to do this, enough vehicles must be produced to sway change in the automobile industry as a whole; Tesla plans to have a productions rate of 500,000 electric cars every year by the second half of this decade, which will require a huge supply of lithium ion batteries, a type of rechargeable battery. Thus, the Gigafactory was born.

The name “Gigafactory” is a term that comes from Tesla’s planned battery production amount per year of 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh). In quantifiable terms, “giga” is a measurement unit that stands for “billions”; one GWh is the same as generating one billion watts for one hour, or one million times more than that of one kilowatt-hour (kWh). 

Tesla’s Gigafactory is located outside Sparks, Nevada, with production of batteries beginning in 2017. The car maker hopes full capacity will be reached in the year 2020; they also expect to produce more lithium ion batteries per year than were manufactured back in 2013.