Tesla appears to be in the process of building a new permanent tent at the Fremont factory, as per a filing seen by InsideEVs on the City of Fremont website.
The company has categorized the filing under the building permits section, and its title reads as, “Installation of permanent tent at road – light tunnel structure, electrical and controls.” The project cost is $750,000. The filing also mentions the installation of several light fixtures, switches, and receptacles along with multiple circuit breakers.
There’s no information on the square footage or the exact purpose of the tent, but such spring structures aren’t a new sight in Fremont. The brand raised spring structures previously to add production lines and meet demand. So it’s possible that Tesla could use the new tent for manufacturing purposes.
After churning a record number of vehicles in the first two quarters of 2023 from its factories worldwide, CEO Elon Musk stated during the Q2 2023 earnings call that production could be down in Q3 2023 due to factory upgrades. Last week’s filings indicated that retooling was underway at Fremont, and now it seems like expansion might be ongoing as well.
The brand has two highly anticipated models in the pipeline, the Cybertruck and the so-called Model 3 Project Highland. The former will be manufactured at Gigafactory Texas, while production of the latter might be split between Fremont and Shanghai. The internet is flooded with spy shots of both models, as testing appears to be underway.
With scaled-up production, delivery times for Tesla EVs have reduced compared to last year. Most models have a waiting period of roughly one month, as per Tesla’s website. Although it might vary marginally depending on the delivery location. The same is translated into sales, as Tesla was the second best-selling EV maker in H1 2023 globally, behind BYD.
Although BYD tallies both its PHEVs and BEVs together its sales numbers, which puts Tesla right on top of the charts when it comes to pure EV sales.
