Tesla Gigafactory: new aerial pictures of the expansion at the battery factory – January 2017

Tesla’s Gigafactory in Nevada has never been busier now that it started mass production of battery cells with Panasonic — as the two partners in the project confirmed this morning. For the occasion, Tesla released new aerial shots of the massive battery plant, which the company claims will be the biggest building on earth when it is completed.

The automaker described the factory as it currently stands:

Already, the current structure has a footprint of 1.9M square feet, which houses 4.9 million square feet of operational space across several floors.

But that’s less than 30 percent of the final factory.

The final plant will have around 13 million square feet of operational space and will employ over 6,500 at full capacity.

Here are the new aerial pictures of the plant that Tesla released today:

There are already over 1,000 employees working for Tesla and Panasonic to produce the battery cells and Tesla’s Powerwall 2 and Powerpack 2. The number of workers is expected to increase signficangtly in the comming months as Tesla ramps up production ahead of the Model 3 launch.