Update: If you’re not familiar with it, familiarize yourself with Hofstadter’s law.
It’s no secret — Tesla doesn’t have a history of hitting its timelines. It’s also no secret that construction projects often run behind schedule. So, it would be quite idealistic to think Tesla would finish its (first) Gigafactory on time, let alone ahead of schedule. However, a Tesla official has reportedly said that it will be done ahead of time and operations will actually begin in 2016. Wow! That would be awesome. But let’s also remember that only about $53 million of the projected $5 billion that is going into this factory seems to have been spent to date… so, we’re still at the early stages, and there’s a lot of room for things to go wrong. Nonetheless, my hopes have been raised. Here are some more deets from an EV Obsession repost.
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.
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.”
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.
All in all, everything seems to be falling into place as planned.

