Tesla's Shanghai megafactory kicks off trial production

SHANGHAI - US carmaker Tesla's megafactory in Shanghai has kicked off trial production seven months after its construction started, according to Tesla China on Tuesday.

The company told Xinhua Tuesday that the factory is dedicated to manufacturing Tesla's energy-storage batteries, Megapack, whose mass production is expected to fully start in the first quarter of 2025.

The project, Tesla's second plant in Shanghai, underscores the US company's commitment to investing in the world's second-largest economy, defying the rhetoric of "decoupling" and "de-risking" from China ratcheted up by some American politicians.

The plant construction set a new record of "Tesla speed" in China, as Gigafactory, Tesla's first plant in the eastern Chinese financial hub, was built and inaugurated within a year in 2019.

The new factory is built with an initial capacity of producing 10,000 units annually, equal to around 40 GWh of energy storage.

Covering an area of approximately 200,000 square meters, the new plant represents a total investment of around 1.45 billion yuan ($201.7 million), according to the administration of the Lin-gang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone.

The mega factory is the first of its kind built by Tesla outside the United States, following the inauguration of its gigafactory in 2019, which involved an initial investment of over 50 billion yuan.

At the launch ceremony of the megafactory in May, Tesla signed a deal with Shanghai Lingang Economic Development (Group) Co Ltd, securing the first batch of orders for its Megapacks in China.