Tesla's first energy storage super factory project outside of the United States has made the latest progress.
On December 22nd, Tesla held a land acquisition signing ceremony with the Lingang New Area Management Committee in Shanghai. This is another important development after Tesla signed an agreement with the Lingang New Area in April this year, marking the official launch of the project.
At the signing ceremony, Tesla stated that the factory will focus on producing ultra large commercial energy storage battery packs called Megapacks, with an expected annual production capacity of 10000 units and an energy storage capacity of nearly 40GWh. The products from the Shanghai factory will be sold to the global market.
In April this year, Tesla signed an agreement with Shanghai Lingang to build a new factory in the area. This factory will be Tesla's first factory outside the domestic market in the United States responsible for manufacturing energy storage systems.
According to the announcement from the Lingang Special Zone Management Bureau in April, the construction of the factory was originally scheduled to start in the third quarter, and production will begin in the second quarter of 2024. The latest information shows that Tesla's Shanghai energy storage plant will start construction in the first quarter of 2024 and start production in the fourth quarter.
The upcoming energy storage factory is located near Tesla's other major project in China - the Shanghai Superfactory, which is mainly responsible for the production of electric vehicle products. According to data, since its operation at the end of 2019, the factory has become Tesla's largest production base worldwide.
At present, Tesla's business mainly covers electric vehicles and renewable energy, the latter including solar energy and energy storage units. The energy storage products currently provided by the company include Powerwall, Powerpack, and Megapack.
According to Tesla's official introduction earlier, Megapack is a commercial energy storage battery pack that can store and supply energy, aiming to help stabilize the power grid and prevent power outages. Megapack can reliably and safely store energy for the power grid without the need to build natural gas peak shaving power plants and avoid power outages.
Each Megapack unit can store over 3MWh of energy and meet the hourly electricity demand of 3600 households.
According to a report from LatePost on December 7th, Megapack's related business has recruited a research and development leader, and is currently recruiting a sales leader. Energy storage products will help Tesla expand its revenue and profit sources in the Chinese market.
It is understood that Megapack and Powerwall products and related businesses are currently mainly concentrated in the US market, with Megapack primarily targeting large-scale industrial and commercial energy storage, while Powerwall focuses on the home energy storage market. In 2021, Powerwall accounted for over 60% of the household energy storage market in the United States.
Currently, Tesla is facing the challenge of reversing the profitability of electric vehicles. Data shows that Tesla's energy storage business generated revenue of $1.56 billion in the third quarter, accounting for 7% of total revenue. Although the proportion of energy storage in revenue is lower than the contribution of electric vehicles, its gross profit margin reached 24.4%, higher than the data of 15.9% in the automotive business.
Industry insiders speculate that Tesla's super factory in Shanghai was initially primarily responsible for packaging and integration. The battery cell supplier is CATL, and in the future, it will increase the utilization rate of self-produced battery cells.